2011 Round 23: Negatively Marked
/I can acknowledge the beauty in them but I find it difficult to watch Olympic events such as the Ice-Skating, Gymnastics and the Diving, where the final marks are essentially deductions from perfection rather than accumulations from zero. It's for similar reasons that I loathe wagering weekends like the one we Investors are facing this week where success is largely about avoiding losses rather than about totting up gains.
The Head-to-Head Fund has two sizeable wagers for the weekend that, together, represent 30% of the Fund yet offer only about a 3% upside between them, and the Line Fund's not helping much by risking almost one-sixth of the Fund on teams offering around 7 and 12 goals start.
Five away teams are this week playing at venues where they've no experience in the past 12 months, and two more are playing at venues where they've only 4 games or fewer experience. In the remaining contest - the Saints v the Roos at Docklands - both teams have relatively deep experience at the ground, though the notional Home team, the Saints, has less experience than the notional Away team.
Back to the wagering for a moment, it's clear that an upset Dogs win on Saturday will spoil the entire weekend as will an upset Swans win. The only significant joy would result from a Hawks win by 7 goals or more.
The majority of the Head-to-Head Tipsters agree that the favourites will all win this weekend though they're a little less certain that Adelaide will defeat Richmond and that the Saints will beat the Roos. In every other game, at least 11 of the 13 Tipsters is siding with the favourites.
Meantime, it's a block vote by the Margin Predictors for every favourite. They're even in broad agreement about their likely margins of victory, with the largest standard deviations being only 10.5 points for the Geelong v Sydney clash, and 10.6 points for the Melbourne v Gold Coast clash.
For most of the Margin Predictors, these predicted margins are about as relatively pro-Home or pro-Away team as has been the norm this season, with the exceptions that:
- ProPred_7 is more pro-Home team this week than is the norm, so much so that it's the most pro-Home team of all the Predictors this week
- WinPred_3 and WinPred_7 are decidely pro-Away this week while their normal stance is pro-Home. So pro-Away team is WinPred_3, in fact, that it's the most pro-Away team of all the Predictors this week
- Combo_7 is pro-Home team this week while it's normally pro-Away team
- Combo_NN1 is, for the sixth round in succession, pro-Home team this week, which has finally dragged its season-long stance into a mildly pro-Home team one
- Combo_NN2 is far less pro-Away team this week than it is normally
There's no debate at all this week amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors about which team should be favourite in each game and only the barest of dissention about the favourites' respective chances in each game.
The Line Fund algorithm has rated the Hawks as over 75% chances to win on line betting, the sixth-highest probability it's assigned to any team this season. Essendon are also considered strong chances; they're rated at 67%.
