2016 Round 21 : Is Don; Are Good?

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This week's wagers provide another fascinating example of the gap that can sometimes emerge between the views of a (possibly under-informed) team rating system and a (probably better-informed) expert bookmaker.

That's right; MoSSBODS is tipping a Dons victory over the Suns.

As a result, Investors face a standard-sized head-to-head wager and a chunky line wager on the Dons, amongst a portfolio that includes another four head-to-head bets, one on an underdog, and five more line bets, two on underdogs.

In total, the 11 bets put about 8.5% of the initial Overall Portfolio at risk and carry a maximum upside of a bit over 10%.

Over three-quarters of that upside is under the control of just two teams - the Dons, who I've already mentioned, and the Saints who we've picked up head-to-head at $4.80 and on the line market at $1.90 with 32.5 points start.

Those two teams also, between them, harbour a bit less than one-half of the downside, the Dogs, Giants and Power representing almost all of the remainder and in roughly equal proportions.

A good week this week would go a long way to locking in a profit for the season, while a bad week could make it a 50:50 proposition.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

Without Home Sweet Home we'd have near-unanimity amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters this week, the exception coming in the Essendon v Gold Coast game where MoSSBODS' influence has encouraged three Tipsters to join Home Sweet Home in predicting the upset Dons victory.

For the Margin Predictors the debates centre mostly on the Dons v Suns, Saints v Swans, and Dockers v Crows games, where the all-Predictor mean absolute deviations (MADs) in all three cases have come in at over a goal.

Across all of the games, however, the MAD is just 4.9 points per game per Predictor, quite low in the overall context of this season.

That MAD has been driven up by the usual contrarians - the three MoSSBODS-based Predictors, C_Marg and Bookie_3 - and constrained by ENS_Linear, ENS_Greedy and Bookie_LPSO, the competition leader.

MoSSBODS_Prob has the highest MAD amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors, its probability assessments the most extreme in four of the games. C_Prob, who has the second-highest MAD has the most extreme assessments in five games. Bookie_LPSO has the smallest MAD and the most extreme assessments in just two games. 'twas often thus ...

The overall MAD of 4.0% points per game per Predictor is also quite low this week in historical terms.

MoSSBODS DETAILS 

Richmond, according to MoSSBODS, is the only home team not benefiting from the venue for its game this weekend, the Tigers assessed as 1.2 Scoring Shots (SS) worse off in playing the Cats at the MCG than they would be playing them on a notional "neutral" ground.

That's fairly inconsequential though as it turns out since the Cats are assessed as being over 9 SS better than the Tigers on raw offensive and defensive ability alone.

Conversely, Essendon's alleged favouritism over the Suns stems solely from the venuing of that game according to MoSSBODS, in particular the fact that Docklands is a long way from the Gold Coast. The 3 SS penalty that the Suns incur because of that fact is enough to have MoSSBODS assessing the Dons as 2.4 SS favourites.

Only two teams this week are projected by MoSSBODS as scoring more than 100 points -Adelaide (105) and Port Adelaide (100) - though three more are projected as scoring 98 or 99 points. Richmond, with a projected score of just 61 points is tipped to be the round's low-scoring team.

Looking lastly at totals, only one game (Lions v Blues) is expected to produce more than 180 points, and one (Dogs v Pies) is expected to produce less than 150 points.