It’s been quite the week to be a football followers and punter. I’ll make no comment on the specifics of the Swans situation, but simply report the wagering market fact that the Swans have moved from about 5-goal favourites to 1-goal underdogs, as you’ll see in the table below.

As I type this there is no Totals market up on the TAB for the Swans’ game so I’ve just assumed it’s the same as the Sportsbet market.

With all that by way of background, MoSHBODS’ average total this week is almost a goal less than the bookmakers’, with differences in the 9 to 12 point range for three of the games. In only two of the games is the MoSHBODS projected total higher than the bookmakers’.

The average absolute difference between MoSHBODS’ and the TAB’s expected margins is 4.9 points per game and between MoSHBODS’ and Sportsbet’s expected margins is 5.0 points per game.

Despite the disparities in the projected totals, this week there is agreement about the most-likely highest- and lowest-scoring teams, and the highest- and lowest-scoring games:

Highest Scoring Game

All: Sydney v North Melbourne

Lowest Scoring Game

All: Essendon v Port Adelaide (tied with Adelaide v GWS for the TAB)

Highest Scoring Team

All: Geelong

Lowest Scoring Team

All: Richmond

WAGERS

MoSHBODS fancied seven wagers again this week, but four of them were vetoed by the Too Good To Be True rule. Curiously, had the bet in the Eagles v Hawks game been on overs, it too would have been vetoed, but by the rain rule. Investors instead are on the unders, which seems encouraging if the forecast rain does arrive.

The three surviving wagers are one overs and two unders and total just over 5% of the original Overs/Unders Fund.

The estimated overlays for the wagers range from about 5 to 6 points.

Incidentally, I had ChatGPT review MoSHBODS’ Totals forecasts for the last few years and it concluded that they included no information not already captured by the market and recommended abstaining from wagering in this market.

PREVIOUS WEEK

Last week saw MoSHBODS take mean absolute error (MAE) honours for Game Margins and Home Team Scores, and the TAB do the same for Away Team Scores and Game Totals. Those results allowed left the season-long metric leaders unchanged.

The leads in each race are now as follows:

Game Margins: TAB 2 points ahead of Sportsbet and 19 points ahead of MoSHBODS
Home Team Scores: TAB 13 points ahead of Sportsbet and 38 points ahead of MoSHBODS
Away Team Scores: Sportsbet 10 points ahead of the TAB, and 123 points ahead of MoSHBODS
Game Totals: TAB 5 points ahead of Sportsbet, and 255 points ahead of MoSHBODS

Wagering and Game-by-Game Performance

There were three bets last weekend, a losing overs bets with Sportsbet, and one winning and one losing bet with the TAB.

That left MoSHBODS at 23 and 19 against the TAB and 12 and 10 against Sportsbet.

Overall, MoSHBODS was on the right side of the TAB in only 3 of the 9 games, taking it to 94 from 198 (47%) for the season, and on the right side of Sportsbet also in only 3 of the 9 games taking it to 91 from 198 (46%) for the season.

The round-by-round performance is shown in the following table.