Matter of Stats

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2016 Round 15 : Another Weekend Off

If last weekend's Head-to-Head and Line Fund activity levels seemed a little pedestrian, this weekend's have stopped only just shy of comatose.

With three home team favourites and two more home teams priced barely as underdogs, I thought Investors would have some action in at least three games this weekend. But, no - only the one.

So, at this point, with the Overs/Unders Fund yet to have had its say, we've a standard head-to-head bet on Port Adelaide at $1.37 facing the Tigers on Friday night, paired with a modest line bet on them giving just over 3 goals start.

That makes for a bite-sized ready reckoner, which appears at right.

Worst case, the Overall Portfolio will fall on the game by 1.4c, and best case it will rise by half that amount. A victory that fails to cover the spread will be enough to see us finish the game in roughly the same financial position as we started.

With so little activity for the current round to talk about, I thought it might be a good time to cast a quick eye in the rear-vision mirror to see which teams have been kind and which cruel to us in the wagering markets so far this season.

In this first table we review the results on the basis of the team that was designated as the home team in the games in which the Head-to-Head or Line Fund wagered.

So, for example, the Head-to-Head Fund wagered on three games where Adelaide were playing at home, and was successful in all three, adding 6.4c to the value of the Head-to-Head Fund in the process. The Line Fund also wagered in two of those games, landing both those bets and bolstering that Fund's coffers by 1.7c. Combined, with each of these Funds enjoying a 40% weighting in the Overall Portfolio, those two profits amount to a 3.2c increase in the value of the original Overall Fund.

Scanning down the rows we can see that the Gold Coast, Port Adelaide and Richmond have down most to reduce the value of the Overall Portfolio, and GWS, Essendon and the Western Bulldogs have done most to increase its value.

We can also look at the season's wagering activity from the perspective of the designated away team in every contest in which a bet has been made by either Fund.

Now we find that the Kangaroos, Adelaide and the Western Bulldogs are to blame for the largest aggregate losses, and Melbourne, Fremantle and the Gold Coast have been responsible for the largest aggregate gains.

Interestingly, the Funds have not yet wagered in any game where the Lions, Dons or Saints have been the visiting team. By comparison, looking back at the previous table, we see that every team has been wagered on at least once when playing as the home team.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

In three of this weekend's games the Head-to-Head Tipsters are unanimous, and in two more it's only Home Sweet Home that's preventing this same situation. For the sixth, the Blues v Pies game, Home Sweet Home is joined by Consult The Ladder in the minority camp. When you consider that HSH and CTL currently fill last and second-last places on the MoS Leaderboard, I think it'd be fair to call that effective unanimity across the board.

The Margin Predictors are similarly united in their opinions about which teams will win, but the slimness of the predicted margins in a number of games provides a more nuanced view about the implied certainty of some of these outcomes.

Overall, the greatest uncertainty has been expressed about the size of the Eagles' win on Thursday night (MAD of 8.9 points per Predictor), and the least uncertainty about that of Port Adelaide's on Friday night (MAD of 2.4).

MoSSBODS_Marg is Predictor Most Extreme in only two contests this week, the same number as C_Marg. Bookie_9 is the outlier in three games, including two where it is the only Margin Predictor tipping a home team win.

Amongst the Probability Predictors, MoSSBODS_Prob finds itself as the Predictor Most Extreme in five of the six contests, and C_Prob in three. An upset win by Melbourne on Sunday would be particularly harmful to MoSSBODS_Prob's probability score for the round.