2012 Finals Week 3 - Wagers & Tips : Swans by a Few and Hawks by a Lot

I'm beginning to wonder if I should file a missing persons report with the police about the Line Fund, which has yet again failed to submit a wager, thereby ensuring it will enter Grand Final week with a perfectly imperfect 0 and 0 record. There's no such reticence from the Head-to-Head Fund, however, as it's made a wager of over 5% of the Fund on the only home team (the Swans) that its rules allowed given prevailing market prices, and there's even less coyness from the Margin Fund, which has wagered once more on both contests on offer, preserving its record of having wagered on every contest in the Finals so far.

Should the Swans win by between 10 and 19 points, and the Hawks by between 50 and 59 points, Investors will see their Portfolios increase in value by a little over 7c. Twin upsets would, instead, knock a bit over 2.5c off these Portfolios, while a Swans win and any result in the Hawks v Crows game other than a win by the Hawks in 50 to 59 point range would leave Portfolios virtually unchanged.

Hawthorn at $1.14 are the shortest-priced Preliminary Finalists in my data set since the Cats of 2008, which were priced at $1.10 in their clash with the Bulldogs, a contest that they ultimately won by 39 points, failing only narrowly to cover the 41.5 point spread they were required to provide on the TAB.

Even if we expand our view to consider all weeks of the Finals since 2006, Hawthorn can still be considered very short-priced contestants. Only Geelong at $1.14 in the Qualifying Final of 2008 against St Kilda, Adelaide at $1.10 in the Qualifying Final against Essendon in 2009, and Geelong at $1.11 in the Semi-Final of 2010 against Fremantle, have enjoyed similar - and, as it transpired, well-placed - certitude in relation to their victory chances.

Upsets, however minor, are rare in Finals and unheard of in Preliminary Finals: no underdog has won a Preliminary Final during the period that my (trusted) bookmaker data covers (2006 to the present).

All the MAFL Tipsters and Predictors also fancy the Hawks' and the Swans' chances of progressing to the Main Game.

It's the WinPred-based Head-to-Head and Margin Predictors that are least confident about the home team favourites' chances, but even they find the likelihood of a Crows victory fairly remote. Combo_NN1 is the Head-to-Head Tipster most certain about a Swans victory, while Combo_NN2 is most certain about the Hawks. Amongst the Probability Predictors, ProPred rates the favourites' chances most highly, in particular rating the Hawks as near certainties.

The Line Fund algorithm feels that both home teams are being asked to offer too much start - especially the Hawks, which it rates only a one-in-three chance of overcoming a six-goal handicap.