2025 - Round 28 Results (Finals Week 4) - Big Cats

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Regardless of who’s on the end of it or how well the victors played, it’s always a bit disheartening to witness a Grand Final that ends with such a large margin of victory.

That win by the Lions improves the record of 3rd v 2nd in Grand Finals to 4 and 1, and to teams from 3rd generally in Grand Finals to 8 and 5. Teams from 2nd are now 7 and 7. Across all Finals, however, teams from 2nd still have a better record than teams from 3rd.

None of the Head-to-Head Tipsters selected the Lions so the season-long collective average record ended at 149.2 from 216 (69%). Honours went to MoSHPlay_Marg on 160.5 (74%) ahead of Bookie Knows Best 158.5 (73%) and ENS_Linear 155.5 (72%).

MoSSBODS_Marg produced the round’s best MAE of 56.5 points per game, which was two points better than the next-best in Bookie_Hcap.

The all-Predictor average was 60.2 points per game, which left the season-long average at 26.6 points per game.

The round-by-round history of Margin Predictor rankings appears below, and shows no changes in the ranking of the Predictors this week. As such, honours go to ENS_Linear (25.89), MoSHPlay_Marg (26.31), and Bookie_LPSO (26.34).

Interestingly, ENS_Linear was on the right side of the bookmaker line in about 57% of games, which is 4% points better than any other Predictor.

Log probability scores were all negative this week for all forecasters, worst of all for MoSHPlay_Prob, and best for MoSSBODS_Prob

Honours go to Bookie_LPSO (0.232 bits per game), Bookie_RE (0.229), and Bookie_OE (0.225). MoSHPlay_Prob finished fourth on 0.223 bits per game.

WAGERING

A very small profit this week for Investors, thanks entirely to the final quarter points spree from the Lions, which resurrected a very sick looking o170.5 wager at 3 Quarter Time.

So, a season-ending profit for the Combined Portfolio of just under 7c from a +2.8% ROI on a 2.4 turn. There were times during the season when I thought we’d end up with a season-end profit of much more than 7c, and other times when I was fairly certain we’d not end up with a profit at all.

Once again it was the perfomance of the Line Fund that most impressed, so much so that I have to wonder about increasing its weight in the Portfolio next season.

Thanks to all of you who’ve dropped by during the season and best wishes to you for the off-season.