2017 - Round 16 : Overs/Unders Update

This week the four forecasters foresee lower average scores, reflecting recent history which has seen average Totals fall below 179 points per game in every round since Round 7. Last week's average of 168.1 points per game was the second-lowest of the season, above only the 165.3 points per game in Round 13.

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS both forecast Adelaide, Sydney, Geelong and North Melbourne to score over 100 points this week, an opinion shared by the TAB and Centrebet bookmakers only about the latter two teams.

MoSSBODS has Sydney as the round's high-scoring team, while MoSHBODS, the TAB and Centrebet all have Geelong in that spot. All four agree that the Gold Coast are the likely low-scoring team with estimates ranging from 68 (MoSSBODS) to 71 (MoSHBODS). 

The quartet also agree that the Lions v Cats game will be the round's high-scoring game with a likely total between 193 and 198 points, and that the Blues v Dees game will be the round's low-scoring game with a total of between about 161 and 164 points.

Overall the MoS twins have the home teams faring, relatively speaking, slightly better than do the bookmakers, they forecasting an average home team margin of 3-4 points to the bookmakers' 1-2 points.

All in all though, there's a very high level of agreement between the MoS twins and the bookmakers.

WAGERS

As a direct consequence of that broad convergence of opinion, Investors have only two wagers this week, both of them overs.

In the first of those wagers, which is on the Crows v Dogs game, the estimated overlay is 14 points, though the forecast for the Adelaide Oval is currently for showers, so the true overlay is probably a little smaller than that. For the second wager - on the Pies v Dons game - the overlay is just over the minimum 6 points required for a wager. The forecast for the MCG for that game is "possible showers", with a very small expected volume of rain.

For the remaining games, the overlays range, in absolute terms, between about 2 and 5 points, which means that the overall average absolute overlay is only about 5 points per game.

Last week was a good one for the TAB bookmaker in mean absolute error (MAE) terms. He was closest in terms of Home team scores (23.6 points per game) and Total scores (23.8 points per game). MoSSBODS did best on Away team scores (6.6 points per game), while the Centrebet bookmaker was best on Margins (25.6 points per game).

That left MoSHBODS still with the best season-long performance on game Margin and Away team scores, Centrebet still 1st on Home team scores, and TAB still (narrowly) 1st on Totals.

MoSSBODS, after recording another 5 from 9 performances against the TAB and Centrebet last week, now has a 68 from 126 (54%) season-long record against both TAB and Centrebet Totals. MoSHBODS recorded a pair of 4 from 9s and now has a 67 from 126 (53%) record against the TAB, and a 70 from 126 (56%) record against Centrebet.