2025 - Round 20 : Why Not?

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All but three of this week’s games could easily get ugly, at least if bookmaker-expected margins are anything to go by. They have four contests being settled by about 7 goals or more, and two more being settled by about 5 goals. The remaining three games are all expected to have single-digit margins, which at least offers some hope for the round.

How much contrarianism then, I hear you ask. Let’s find out.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

Virtually none, is the answer, with Home Sweet Home’s four contrarian forecasts representing the entirety of its kind for this week.

Amongst the Margin Predictors there are double-digit forecast ranges in all but one game, but most notably 25 points in the Dons v Dogs clash, 22 points in the Hawks v Blues clash, and 20 points in the Dockers v Eagles, and Tigers v Pies matchups.

Bookie_3 is the extreme Predictors in five games this week, and Bookie_9 and MoSSBODS_Marg in four each.

Amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors there are only three games with a double-digit percentage point forecast range, most notably 18% points in the Hawks v Blues game, and 13% points in the Adelaide derby.

MoSSBODS_Prob and MoSHBODS_Prob are the extreme Predictors in five games each this week, and Bookie_LPSO in four games.

WAGERS

MoSHBODS has found bets on every day except Sunday this week, with six head-to-head bets totalling just under 5% of the original Head-to-Head Fund, and five line bets totalling just under 7% of the original Line Fund.

That line bet total would have been larger but for a quirky situation. Sportsbet were offering Carlton +29.5 at $1.91, which has a +20.2% EV and thus meets our criteria of the EV for a line bet on an away team needed to lie between 20 and 50%. We wanted about 4.5% but Sportsbet would take only 2.3% and the TAB were offering Carlton +29.5 at only $1.90. The EV on that is just below 20% so we end up with only the Sportsbet wager.

Anyway, once again this week Investors still have more than enough to be concerned about.

(Please click on the image below to access a larger version.)

The week’s Ready Reckoner reveals that Carlton, even with its truncated line wager, carries the most risk in the sense that the difference between a loss by 30 points and a win represents 5.9% of the original Combined Portfolio. On the same metric Essendon carry 4.5% risk, Gold Coast 1.6%, West Coast 1.4%, North Melbourne 0.9%, and GWS 0.2%.

A best case set of results would boost the Combined Portfolio by just over 9c, while a worst case set would snip just over 5c off the price.

To finish, here are MoSSBODS’ and MoSHBODS’ opinions about likely team scoring.

Commentary about these forecasts will come in the week's Overs/Unders blog and MoSHPlay’s various forecasts will be posted after the relevant team line-ups are made public.