MAFL 2010 : Round 13 Results (Interim)

If I've much more practice in being philosophical after wagering losses I fear I'll wind up smoking a pipe, blogging about the meaning of truth, affecting a permanent, faraway look and calling myself Bruce. (Any Monty Python fans here?).

So far, Round 13 has not been a happy one for any Investor. The Recommended Portfolio has shed 3.7%, MIN#002's Portfolio has dropped 7.5%, and MIN#017's Portfolio has fallen 7.1%, these falls largely due to poor showings by the Blues and the Lions, who went down by 9 and 19 points respectively.

Given the likely prices on offer for the remaining three games, it seems unlikely that a net profit for the round will be the final outcome. Only an upset Sydney win over the Pies might make a difference, but it doesn't look as if any of the Funds is especially keen to invest in that particular result.

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 - Part I

And so we enter the first half - well five-eighths actually - of the split Round 13.

Recommended Portfolio holders have wagers in four of the week's five games, with the Eagles v Dogs clash the only one failing to attract the interest of at least one Fund. New Heritage is the boldest Fund (who'd have guessed?), wagering about 22% of the Fund on three bets including two that are for around 10% of the Fund both of which are on teams that are favourites but by no means raging hot ones in the form of the Hawks and Lions. The third bet is a contrarian, away team wager on Port Adelaide that, when offset by the wagers of Prudence and the Heuristic-Based Funds on the Roos in the same game, makes the outcome at best a small profit for those with the Recommended Portfolio.

Four other Funds have also made three wagers, Shadow, the Heuristic-Based and ELO-Line Funds, all of which are risking 15% of their respective Funds, and Prudence, which is risking a little over one-half of that percentage.

Shadow, you'll remember, has been stripped of its Heuristic-Based Fund managing duties, this onerous responsibility having now been placed in the hands of Short-Term Memory I, a heuristic which, as I've previously noted, has the equivalent footballing knowledge of a goldfish.

Hope has taken the weekend off, though it does look likely to make two wagers in the three games next weekend.

So that's 15 wagers in total this week for those with the Recommended Portfolio, collectively worth about 12% of the entire Fund.

Here's the detail:

From this week's Ready Reckoner it's fairly easy to see that Hawks and Lions victories are required for the profitability of all portfolios bar MIN#002's. His portfolio instead requires a Blues victory, coupled with a win by either of the Hawks or the Lions.

There's a modicum of disagreement about three of the weekend's games, and unanimity or near to it for other two.

Here are the details:

• Hawthorn are the week's only unanimous favourites. They take on Essendon on Friday night. Tipped margins of victory range from a low of 9 points to a high of 30 points.
• Carlton are 11-4 favourites over Fremantle, though Freo has the moderately credentialled Follow The Streak and Ride Your Luck in its corner.
• Brisbane are 11-4 favourites over Richmond. Amongst the Tiger supporters are Easily Impressed I, and Short-Term Memory I and II, which makes for a formidable, albeit inanimate supporter-base if tipping form is anything to go by.
• The Roos are 11-4 favourites over Port Adelaide. Easily Impressed II and Short-Term Memory II are both siding with the underdogs.
• The Dogs are 14-1 favourites over the at-home Eagles. Some signs of nervousness are, however, evident amongst those tipping the Dogs: three of the Margin Tippers are predicting Dog victory margins under 3 goals.

I almost didn't bother posting the HELP predictions for the week, but pondered what I'd do if HELP suddenly started making tips superior to those which I could instead make using the spare change in my pocket. It'd look a little suspicious if HELP's best performances were those I posted about after the event, not having pre-published its predictions beforehand.

So, unadorned by commentary, here they are:

With probability estimates this extreme HELP will record an aggregate probability score of about -17 for the round if all line results are unfavourable, and a score of about +15 if all are favourable, which represents about one-quarter of the aggregate score it's painstakingly accumulated across the first 11 rounds of the season.

MAFL 2010 : Round 12 Results

As I've probably mentioned before, I dislike draws, not so much for their inconclusive nature, but more for the fact that they make the statistics messy. All the formulae in my spreadsheets that calculate returns need to cater for this once-or-twice-in-a-season phenomenon, and all the tipping statistics now sport an awkward .5 at the end.

At least the Dees v Pies draw provided me - and most other Investors - some recompense for the inconvenience. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the head-to-head wagering rules, or who have might forgotten them, head-to-head wagers pay half-price on draws. We had the Dees at $5, so they paid out at $2.50 for us.)

This draw was sufficient to secure a very small nett profit for the round for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio, which grew by 0.38c and now stands at 89.29c. It wasn't, however, enough to drag MIN#002 or MIN#017 into the black: MIN#002's portfolio fell 1.8c to 85.80c, and MIN#017's portfolio fell 1.57c to 61.43c.

For all Investors then MAFL still has much work to do.

Here's the week's MAFL Dashboard.

You'll notice that Shadow lost money again this week for the Heuristic-Based Fund and, as a consequence, now cedes control of this Fund to Short-Term Memory I, which is the Fund with the best level-stake return on its home team selections across the season to date.

ELO-Line produced another profitable round this weekend, its third in succession, during which time is has made 11 profitable wagers and only 3 unprofitable wagers. This Fund is now up by 28.5% since the start of the season.

On tipping we now have three joint leaders: Short-Term Memory I, Easily Impressed I and Easily Impressed II. They're all on 64.5 (there's that ugly .5) from 96, which is about a 67% record. The next seven tipsters trail by no more than three tips.

ELO has tipped 26.5 from 40 across the last five rounds, which is the best performance of any of our tipsters during that period, and goes some way to explaining the profitability of the ELO-Based Fund in recent weeks.

The MARS Ratings of all but five teams changed on the basis of this weekend's results. West Coast recorded the largest drop, falling three places to 15th as a result of its thumping by the Tigers. The Dogs, Dees and Roos recorded the largest climbs, each jumping two spots on the back of their better-than-expected performances. Geelong remains 20 Ratings points clear at the top of the table.

All the Margin Tippers saw their Mean APE's head in the wrong direction this weekend. BKB still has the best Mean APE, with LAMP now in 2nd and ELO in 3rd on this measure, these two tipsters swapping places over the course of the round.

Using the Median APE metric ELO and LAMP are now joint leaders, with BKB in 3rd, a full 1 point behind.

HELP tipped just three correct line results from eight this week and generated probability scores that pushed it even further from naivety.

Even with the Pies shocking 9.22 effort the weekend still produced the most accurate kicking seen since Round 7. In aggregate, the eight matches produced just 188 goals and 155 behinds, which represents a 54.8% conversion rate.

Round 13 is the split round, so we'll only have five games to savour next weekend, and three the weekend after.

MAFL 2010 : Round 12

Is it really the second half of the season already?

Recommended Portfolio holders can look forward to another weekend of cheering for favourites one game and underdogs the next. This week they've one game (Kangaroos v Carlton) in which their interest is solely in the line and not the head-to-head result, and another game in which they've no interest at all (Richmond v West Coast).

They have 18 wagers in total, four from ELO totalling 20% of the Fund, three from New Heritage totalling a tick over 30%, three more from Hope totalling around 16%, another three each from Shadow and Heuristic-Based totalling 15% of each Fund, and two more from Prudence totalling a little over 6% of that Fund. In aggregate, that's about 17% of total funds at risk.

About one-third of that money is on the Dogs, either at $1.28 head-to-head or $1.90, and about another one-quarter is on the Hawks, all of it at $1.36 head-to-head.

Here's the detail:

Despite the large amounts on the Dogs and the Hawks, their contests are only the second- and fourth-most important in terms of largest swing between best and worst possible results. These games do, however, represent the largest downside.

The game that represents the largest swing is the Melbourne v Collingwood matchup, which is also the game with the largest upside. Next largest upside belongs to the Essendon v Cats game.

Here's the Ready Reckoner:

There's something far more settling about seeing a portfolio of wagers where the best and worst possible outcomes are roughly equidistant from zero. So call me a symmetrist ...

Three of the weekend's games have the tipsters scratching their collective non-existent heads: Port v Sydney, Richmond v West Coast, and Fremantle v St Kilda. For none of the games are our tipsters unanimous.

Here are the details:

• Carlton are 14-1 favourites over the Roos, with only Home Sweet Home tipping the Roos. LAMP, while tipping the Blues, does so by only 10 points, making this its Game of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over Adelaide. The Crows do, however, have the competition leaders, Easily Impressed I, tipping their victory.
• Geelong are 14-1 favourites over Essendon. Chi's tipping the Cats, but only by 1 point, making this his Game of the Round.
• Port Adelaide are 8-7 favourites over Sydney. HAMP, which tips Port by 7 points, and BKB, which tips them (probably) by 6.5 points, both have this as their Game of the Round, though in BKB's case it's one of two such games.
• West Coast are 8-7 favourites over the Tigers. BKB will, in all likelihood, tip Richmond by 6.5 points, which makes this its other Game of the Round.
• The Dogs are 13-2 favourites over the Lions. The two tipsters selecting the Lions do have solid tipping form, however. They're Easily Impressed I and Short-Term Memory I, which lie first and third in our tipping competition.
• St Kilda are 10-5 favourites over Fremantle. ELO tips the Saints by just 1 point, making this its Game of the Round.
• Collingwood are 14-1 favourites over Melbourne. Only Home Sweet Home expects the Dees to win.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is 3.5 this week, which is an historically high value for this metric.

HELP has taken the high-risk approach this week, with no probability estimate below 73% and five of them in the 90s.

With probability estimates this extreme HELP will record an aggregate probability score of about -17 for the round if all line results are unfavourable, and a score of about +15 if all are favourable, which represents about one-quarter of the aggregate score it's painstakingly accumulated across the first 11 rounds of the season.

MAFL 2010 : Round 11 Results

Absent an upset victory by either the Tigers or the Eagles - both of which outcomes seemed possible for at least a portion of their respective games - that was just about as good a weekend as Investors with the Recommended Portfolio might have hoped for.

An improbable Dogs victory also tantalised for a few minutes late in the final term on Friday, but that outcome ultimately proved unattainable, leaving the Recommended Portfolio up 2.4c on the weekend and down now just 11.1c on the season.

The portfolio of MIN#017 also finished in the black, though the 8.4c hike has left much still to do to return that Portfolio to parity, languishing as it does still some 37c down on the season. Still, how does one eat an elephant? The conventional answer is: one spoonful at a time.

MIN#002 was the only Investor to suffer losses this week. His portfolio fell 6.3c to 75.2c, a victim of Hope's curiously lacklustre performance so far this season, which has seen it land just 4 of 12 wagers.

Here's the detail.

Shadow lost money for the second week in row and so is now at risk of losing control of the Heuristic-Based Fund. Short-Term Memory I will assume control from Round 13 if Shadow loses money again in the next round and if the profitability of wagering on STM I's home team tips continues to be the highest amongst all the heuristic tipsters.

Speaking of heuristic tipsters, their overall tipping performance this week might best be described as adequate, with almost all tipping fewer than BKB's six. Ride Your Luck was the only tipster to match BKB, and Chi was the only tipster to outperform it. Chi tipped seven, but still remains a considerable distance from the lead bunch.

Easily Impressed I, which tipped just 4 from 8 this week, retains outright leadership on 61 from 88 (69%). Easily Impressed II is second on 60 and Short-Term Memory I is third on 59, each of them also tipping correctly in just 4 from 8 contests. These uninspiring performances have allowed BKB to narrow the gap so that it is now just 4 tips from joint-leadership.

MARS Ratings saw some jostling amongst positions 3 to 6, with St Kilda claiming third and Carlton fifth, dropping the Dogs into fourth and Freo into sixth. No other changes in ladder position occurred, a consequence of the weekend's generally close games in which no victory margin exceeded 41 points and in which six games were decided by margins of four goals or fewer.

Amongst the Margin Tippers, LAMP benefited most from the narrowness of victory margins since they most closely resembled its prediction. Its Mean APE for the round of just 14 points per game enabled it to lop 1.5 points off its season-long Mean APE, and the fact that none of its APE's for the round exceeded 27 points meant that it also lopped a stunning 7 points off its Median APE. This performance leaves LAMP third on Mean APE and has catapulted it into first on Median APE.

BKB retains overall leadership on Mean APE - though all but Chi have now joined BKB in having a sub-30 Mean APE -but it now finds itself third on Median APE, behind LAMP and ELO.

HELP recorded another unreportable set of results finishing with just 3 from 8 correct line picks and an overall sub-naive set of probability scores.

In aggregate, the weekend's matches produced just 173 goals and 171 behinds, comfortably the lowest total for each scoring type in a round this season. Though the weather could legitimately be cited as a contributory cause this week, the general inaccuracy in front of goal that saw almost as many goals scored as behinds has been a season-long phenomenon. To date, the season has seen 2,260 goals scored and 2,110 behinds - a conversion rate of just 51.7%, which is significantly below the long-term average. Only nine teams have a conversion rate above 50%, and seven of them are in the top eight. The exceptions are Hawthorn, who are eighth and have a 48.9% conversion rate, and Essendon, who are ninth and have a 51.8% conversion rate.

MAFL 2010 : Round 11

Every week I learn a little more about my tolerance for risk.

I feel far more comfortable with an array of wagers that includes the Tigers at $5.50 and West Coast at $6.00 than I did with last week's festival of favourites. Wagering at odds-on prices still feels inordinately Sysyphean to me.

Anyway, the Recommended Portfolio includes 23 bets this week, which represent, in aggregate, about 15% of total funds. The ELO-Based Fund is the most active, with 6 bets totalling 30% of the Fund. New Heritage is next most active, with 5 bets totalling 15% of the Fund, three of them contrarian bets on away teams - an indulgence afforded only to this Fund and an annoyance to those with the Recommended Fund who win and lose on this game no matter the outcome (though in both cases they win more if the home team prevails).

All four remaining Funds - Prudence, Hope, Shadow and Heuristic-Based - have just 3 bets each representing aggregates ranging from about 4.5% of the Fund in Prudence's case to 17.5% of the Fund in Hope's case, a startling return to activity from a Fund that's wagered not much more than this over the course of the last 3 rounds combined, and nothing at all in Round 10.

Here's the detail:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, it's the Eagles v Cats game that represents the largest swing between best and worst outcomes, and the largest upside - hardly surprising, I guess, when you've thrown a wad of cash at a team priced at $6. The next-largest upside, and the next-largest swing as it happens, comes from wagers on the Tigers at $5.50.

The largest downside is associated with wagers on Sydney at $1.72 facing the Dons, though a Lions win over the Roos would hurt almost as much.

Here's the detail of the week's Ready Reckoner:

Two games - Dogs v Pies on Sunday and Swans v Dons on Saturday - are generating the highest levels of disagreement amongst tipsters this week, and only one game has elicited unanimity.

Here are the details:

• The Saints are 13-2 favourites over the Tigers, though the competition-leading Easily Impressed I is one of the two tipsters backing the Tigers. The Margin Tippers are predicting Saints victory margins ranging from 7 to 40 points.
• Carlton are the week's only unanimous favourites. They take on the Dees. Predicted margins of victory for the Blues range from 12 to 29 points.
• Fremantle are 14-1 favourites over Adelaide. ELO, though tipping Freo, predicts just a 6 point margin making this its Game of the Round.
• Brisbane are 12-3 favourites over the Roos. Two of the three Roos tips come from Margin Tippers: Chi tips them to win by just 1 point, and LAMP tips them to win by 3 points, making this game both of these tipster's Game of the Round (in Chi's case, one of two such Games).
• Geelong are 14-1 favourites over the Eagles, with the Cats tipped to win by between 17 and 42 points.
• Sydney are 10-5 favourites over Essendon. HAMP, which tips Sydney to win by 2 points, and BKB, which tips them to win by 6.5 points, have this as their Game of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over Port Adelaide. Predicted margins for the Hawks range from 7 to 29 points.
• Western Bulldogs are 8-7 favourites over the Pies. Chi and BKB are the only Margin Tippers selecting the Pies, in Chi's case by just 1 point, making this his other Game of the Round.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is about 2.6 this week, up considerably on last week's 1.1.

HELP's has again selected all 8 away teams as line betting winners this week, but has attached probabilities in a much narrower range: 63% to 67%.

This week those with the Recommended Portfolio would like to see a round riddled with upsets. Wins by the Tigers and the Eagles would be especially welcomed (though I'll settle for just one of them winning).

MAFL 2010 : Round 10 Results

When seven of the weekend's eight contests produce the result that you expected - the right team winning head-to-head, the right team winning on handicap, in some games both - I think you've a reasonable expectation of profit.

No such luck.

Port Adelaide just had too much money riding on them, so the triumphs in the other seven contests nevertheless left those with the Recommended Portfolio down a little over 1 cent for the round. MIN#002 fared no better, his portfolio also dropping by about a cent, while the portfolio of MIN#017 did even worse, dropping over 5 cents.

Here's the MAFL Dashboard for the round.

Most tipsters managed 5 from 8 this week though Home Sweet Home recorded a 7 and Short-Term memory I scored only 3, dropping it to third on the ladder, two tips behind Easily Impressed I and one tip behind Easily Impressed II. Only five favourites won, so BKB made no impression on most of the tipsters above it and remains 6 tips from joint-leadership.

It's interesting to note that no tipster has a better tipping record over the past 5 rounds than it has over the season as a whole, a reflection of how difficult tipping has been recently.

On MARS Ratings, Geelong widened the gap between itself and the Pies and the Dogs. It now has a 16.5 Ratings point lead over the second placed Pies and a lead of almost 19 Ratings points over the third placed Dogs.

Three teams climbed a spot on the Ratings ladder (Fremantle, Essendon and the Eagles), and three fell one spot (Carlton, Adelaide and Port Adelaide). Eleven teams are now rated 990+, and with a rating of 1,000 generally sufficient to see a team make the finals, we can look forward to a tightly contested second half of the season.

BKB still leads the Margin Tipsters on the Mean APE metric, but has been joined by ELO in the race for Median APE honours. LAMP has narrowed the gap between it and BKB on the Mean APE measure, knocking more than 0.6 points from its average this week while BKB knocked only 0.5 points from its average; LAMP is now just over 1 point per game behind BKB.

HELP did nothing much this weekend, correctly tipping just 3 of 8 line results and generally performing much as you'd expect a naive tipster to perform.

MAFL 2010 : Round 10

At some point earlier today, for reasons I expect we'll never know, TAB Sportsbet felt comfortable in reopening the Saints v Crows markets, pricing them exactly where they'd been a couple of days previously when the allegations broke and attracting wagers from four of the five head-to-head wagering MAFL Funds. Among them only Hope abstained, as in fact it has on all eight games this round.

The ELO-Based Fund also chose not to bet on this game, deeming the 27.5 points start that the Saints were required to give just 1 point too many.

All told, the MAFL Funds have made 26 wagers this week, representing around 30% of the initial Funds placed in the Recommended Portfolio. All the head-to-head wagers are on favourites, at prices from $1.03 (yes - Geelong again) to $1.30.

The only wagers we have on underdogs are line bets - one on Essendon +19.5 versus the Dogs, and the other on the Lions +21.5 versus Collingwood.

Here's the detail:

This week Geelong carry the largest proportion of Recommended Portfolio funds though their ridiculously low price makes the upside from the head-to-head portion of those wagers fairly insignificant. As a consequence, it's the Port v Tigers and not the Cats v Dees game that represents the greatest difference between the best and worst possible outcomes.

Five matches have swings of around 5.8% or more riding on their outcome. None of them have upside greater than 1.4%. Such is the price of backing favourites. It's going to be a tough week to make a profit if you're in the Recommended Portfolio.

Here's the week's Ready Reckoner:

On the tipping front it's wholesale harmony this week. On three of the matches there's unanimity and in two more there's only a single dissenting tipster.

• The Dogs are 14-1 favourites over Essendon. Only Home Sweet Home is duty-bound to opt for the Dons. Notwithstanding the overwhelming support for the Dogs, both BKB and LAMP have this as their Game of the Round (though neither is tipping a single digit victory margin)
• Geelong are unanimous favourites over the Dees. Predicted margins range from 26 points to 50.5 points, so this could be a game that gets boring pretty quickly.
• Port Adelaide are unanimous favourites over the Tigers. For this game too the margin predictions are quite high - none is below 17 points.
• Collingwood are 13-2 favourites over the Lions. Tipped margins for the Lions start at 13 points and work their way up to 34 points.
• St Kilda are 14-1 favourites over the Crows, with all but one of the margin tippers predicting Saints victories by between 27 and 32 points.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over Sydney. This is the Game of the Round for ELO (tipping a Hawks victory by 4 points) and HAMP (tipping a Hawks victory by 23 points, which makes something of a mockery of the notion of a Game of the Round).
• Carlton are 12-3 favourites over the Eagles. Chi is one of the three dissenting votes. He has the Eagles winning by a point, making this his Game of the Round.
• Fremantle are unanimous favourites over the Roos. Predicted victory margins are from 14 points to 40 points.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is only 1.13 this week, a long way from last week's 3.25. So, the surprisals forecast for this week would be very low.

HELP's continues on its eccentric way, this week tipping all eight away teams, six of them receiving start, with probability estimates from 62% to 81%.

Here's to an exceptionally good weekend for BKB tipping ...

MAFL 2010 : Round 10 (Coming Soon to a Browser Near You)

Well normally I'd be posting this week's pre-round blog, but, as I type this, the Saints' alleged player sex scandal is still unresolved, at least to the satisfaction of the TAB Sportsbet bookie. As a consequence all St Kilda v Adelaide markets are suspended.

So, we've no ability to back the Saints, which we probably will both on the head-to-head and line markets once we're able. I'll wait 24 hours and see what happens.

MAFL 2010 : Round 9 Results

For the third week in succession, those with the Recommended Portfolio were let down by the Saints' performance in the last game of the round. In Rounds 7 and 8 it was the Saints' ineptitude that caused the disappointment; in Round 9 that ineptitude was nowhere to be seen when Investors most needed it.

Not that the weekend's losses can be entirely attributed to the Saints' victory on Sunday evening. Collingwood, the Roos, Sydney and Carlton all did their bits too, offset only - and not completely - by Essendon, Melbourne and Adelaide victories.

This week I'm trialling a new way of presenting the various pieces of information about wagers, tips, team ratings and margin prediction. I call it the MAFL Dashboard.

In the first part of the MAFL Wagering section you can see that only one of the six Funds is currently priced above its buy-in price of $1, and you see that three Funds made money this round (Prudence, Shadow and Heuristic-Based) and the other three Funds lost money. You can also see each Fund's season long performance statistics and price history.

Below this you'll find the same information for the various portfolios. You'll see that the Recommended Portfolio dropped 1.3c this week, the MIN#002 Portfolio rose by 1.9c, and the MIN#017 Portfolio dropped 2.6c. This leaves all portfolios in varying states of unprofitability.

Next is the MAFL Tipping section, which holds all the regular information about the performance of the 13 MAFL tipsters. Short-Term Memory I and Easily Impressed I currently head our tipping competition on 52 from 72 (72%). BKB continues to struggle, scoring just four this week (the Tipping Performance - Last 5 Rounds section has this information), leaving it now six tips behind the leaders.

The column headed Return (Home) records the profit or loss that would have accrued to someone level-stake betting on the tips of the relevant tipster whenever that tipster predicted a home team victory. So far this season, following that strategy with the predictions emanating from Short-Term Memory I would have been the most lucrative, yielding a profit of 9.63 units. Adopting the same strategy with Shadow, as the Recommended Portfolio has been via Shadow's own Fund and via its control of the Heuristic Fund, has yielded a profit of 6.18 units. Incidentally, Shadow made money this weekend and so will retain control of the Heuristic Fund for at least another three rounds.

In the right-hand portion of this section there is information about the recent tipping form of each tipster, as evidenced by its accuracy in each of the last five rounds. The two tipsters currently leading the overall tipping competition also have the (equal) best performances of all tipsters across rounds 4 to 9. In these five rounds they've tipped 28 winners.

Underneath the MAFL Tipping section is the MARS Ratings section. This week, seven teams moved up or down the MARS Ratings ladder. Largest amongst these moves was the two-rung climb recorded by the Hawks based on their 60-point victory over the Blues, which earned them 5.6 ratings points. Currently, the seven highest-ranted teams are also the top seven from the competition ladder, albeit in a different order. The eighth-highest rated team is Brisbane, who sit eleventh on the competition table. Port are eighth on the ladder, but are rated twelfth.

In the chart on the right of this section you track the ratings trajectories of each team.

The final section is the Margin Predictors section and it records the performance of the five MAFL Margin Predictors. BKB still has the season's best margin predictions, whether you rank based on Mean Absolute Prediction Error or on Median Absolute Prediction Error. LAMP is now second on Mean APE while ELO is second on Median APE. The chart on the right shows each Margin Predictor's Mean APE as at the end of every round of the season.

I've not included HELP's data in the dashboard since its unspectacular performance seems unworthy of considered attention.

This week HELP correctly predicted 5 of the 8 line results and moved to a 50% win-loss record for the season. Its very high levels of confidence in all of its predictions meant that its probability scores ended up sub-naive for the second successive week.

In the next day or so I'll be posting another blog in which I'll introduce one more dashboard, this one providing information about team performances.

MAFL 2010 : Round 9

Just when you get into a routine, someone has to go and change something.

This week the TAB Sportsbet bookie decided to post the line markets a day early, leaving me with the dilemma of deciding whether to follow the time-honoured strategy of placing bets around noon on Wednesday or, instead, to follow the other time-honoured strategy of placing bets just after the line markets go up. In the past, save for those weeks where there's been a Thursday game, these two events have coincided.

Worse was the fact that only half the line markets were posted, so I couldn't make all the bets I wanted to anyway.

Well the bets have been placed though we're still waiting for four more line markets to be posted, three of which we'll be wagering on. (I've included these wagers in the MAFL Wagers summary and in the Ready Reckoner, though the latter might need to change if we don't secure a price of $1.90 for the three line market bets we want to make.)

(Update: It's now Thursday evening and we've placed the three remaining line bets. On two of the bets we've secured more favourable terms than I expected: backing Adelaide we wound up getting 7.5 points start rather than 6.5, and backing Sydney we received a price of $1.95 rather than $1.90. In the other bet we took West Coast +6.5 points but only received a price of $1.80. The Ready Reckoner below now reflects these wagers.)

Investors holding the Recommended Portfolio have 23 wagers this weekend - including the three wagers-in-waiting - just one fewer than they had last weekend. New Heritage has six of those wagers, Prudence and Hope have two each, Shadow and the Heuristic-Based Funds have three each, and ELO-Based will have the remaining seven.

In total, Investors with the Recommended Portfolio will have about 19% of their funds at risk this week, again only a tad less than they risked - and significantly lost - last weekend.

In aggregate, Essendon carries the majority of the week's wagers. They're priced at $1.28 and are playing Richmond, a team that appear to have decided to act as this year's quasi-bye, thereby allowing other teams to become accustomed to what they'll face next year when the Gold Coast joins the competition. Hawks fans might have a somewhat different view, of course, as their team went perilously close last weekend to dropping points to the bye.

Other bets are at prices ranging from $1.36 to $2.25, so none of the funds at risk can reasonably be tagged "best forgotten".

Here's the detail:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, the Essendon v Richmond clash, by virtue of the shedload of cash on the Dons, represents the largest swing between best and worst outcomes. It also represents by some considerable margin the largest downside risk.

The Adelaide v Lions game carries the second largest swing between best and worst outcomes, which it does because it promises the largest upside should the Crows win and cover the spread but because it also threatens the second largest downside should the Crows lose.

Here's the Ready Reckoner in full (subject to amendment [Update: now duly amended] once the three remaining line bets are placed):

For the tipsters it's a weekend of moderate agreement, with unanimity in just one of the games.

• The Pies are 11-4 favourites over Geelong. The Cats can count BKB, Chi and the Easily Impressed brothers amongst their supporters, though BKB looks likely to have this game as one of its four - yes, four - Games of the Round, and no margin-tipper is predicting a victory margin in excess of 8 points.
• The Dogs are 14-1 favourites over the Roos, with only Home Sweet Home tipping the upset. All five margin-tippers are on the Dogs with margins ranging from 13 to 24.5 points.
• Fremantle are 9-6 favourites over the Swans, though all the margin-tippers are predicting a Swans victory. BKB will have this as another Game of the Round.
• Essendon are the week's only unanimous favourite. They face Richmond and are tipped to win by margins from 16 to 34 points.
• Port Adelaide are 12-3 favourites over the Dees. Three of the five margin-tippers - LAMP and BKB being the exceptions - are tipping Port victories, including ELO, who is tipping Melbourne by just 1 point, making this its Game of the Round.
• Adelaide are 10-5 favourites over the Lions. This is the Game of the Round for Chi (tipping a Crows victory by 2 points), LAMP (tipping a Lions victory by 1 point) and BKB (tipping a Lions victory by 6.5 points)
• Carlton are 11-4 favourites over the Hawks and are tipped by all five margin-tippers with margins ranging from 10 to 27 points.
• St Kilda are 9-6 favourites over the Eagles. This is the final Game of the Round for BKB. None of the margin-tippers are suggesting that either team will win by a sizeable margin - the largest tipped victory margin for St Kilda is 13 points and for the Eagles is 6 points.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is, therefore, about 3.5. This fact, coupled with the bookie's generally miserly points start offerings, suggests that this will be a difficult round to tip. Only the Dons and the Dogs might reasonably be considered 'bankers' and four, maybe five of the remaining six contests have a coin-tossy feel to them.

Whilst seasoned judges might be expressing high degrees of uncertainty about the head-to-head results, HELP's expressing near-certainty about the result of all eight games when adjusted for points start.

Remarkably, all eight HELP predictions are for the away teams. In contrast, the ELO-Based Fund will be making seven wagers on home teams. I think we all know which tipster we want to be incorrect more often.

This week I'll finish by providing my short version of the competition ladder, from which I'd like to highlight the Saints' performance. Despite losing three of their last four games they remain in the top eight. The table shows that this is not because of their points-scoring ability (for which they're ranked equal fourth last) but is instead attributable to their defensive skills: they've allowed only 583 points in their eight games, including only 10.5 goals per game.

MAFL 2010 : Round 8 Results

Wow. It feels like I'm about to compose a eulogy.

Silly of me really, in hindsight, to hope that the Saints - who, I remind you, should probably be the reigning premiers - could add a mildly cheery note to an otherwise gloomy weekend's wagering. Instead, their failure merely compounded the misery that saw those with the Recommended Portfolio turn a profit in just three of the eight contests, wiping 11.2% off the value of their Investment.

Investors with other portfolios fared no better, MIN#002 dropping 11.8% and MIN#017 dropping 23.2%, leaving them, as those with the Recommended Portfolio, solidly in the red.

Still, it's only Round 8, so there's plenty of time to forgive and forget.

Here's the summary of each portfolio's performance this week and for the season as a whole:

So far this season I've not provided a graph of Fund performance, but with every Fund now having been active for at least three rounds, now seems like a good time to produce one, so here it is.

I do wish that those lines looked a little less cygnine, but they are what they are, I suppose.

Here are the game-by-game details of the weekend's wagering:

For the third week in succession just five favourites took the competition points - a phrase that's at least still synonymous with victory in the AFL if not the NRL - leaving BKB now five games behind our tipping leaders on 47 from 64 (63%): Easily Impressed I, which bagged seven this weekend, and Short Term Memory I, which bagged six.

Easily Impressed II is in clear third, on 45 from 64 (70%), and Follow the Streak is in fourth, on 44 from 64 (69%).

Home teams had yet another poor showing this week, causing Home Sweet Home to register just a single correct tip. It might have been two from eight but, there being no true home team in the Dogs v Swans game, the Home Sweet Home heuristic goes with the team higher on the ladder, which in this case was the losing Swans and not the notionally at-home Dogs.

The Heuristic-Based Fund lost money this week, so Shadow is now just two loss-making rounds away from surrendering control of the Fund to another heuristic. Based on current performance, the heuristic taking over the Fund would be Short Term Memory I.

Though losing this week, the Heuristic-Based Fund has recorded a 29% increase for the season to date. As the tables below demonstrate, much of this return has been due to Melbourne, Carlton and Fremantle, and only four teams have been loss-making for this Fund (Hawthorn, Port, St Kilda (barely) and the Dogs).

The New Heritage Fund has suffered from untimely losses perpetrated by seven of the teams, most painfully from those of St Kilda, Brisbane and Melbourne. Prudence has lost money on six teams, and most of all on St Kilda, Fremantle and Melbourne.

Melbourne, Port, St Kilda and the Dogs have been the sole value destroyers for the Shadow Fund, while the Lions, Fremantle and Melbourne have provided a similar service to the Hope Fund. ELO-Line has lost money on six teams, with the Saints inflicting the greatest net loss.

You might have noticed the names Melbourne and St Kilda cropping up regularly in the last few paragraphs discussing Fund losses. Small wonder then that they're prominent when we look at team performance by portfolio.

Investors with the Recommended Portfolio can thank Sydney, the Roos, Collingwood and Geelong for generating the greatest increments to their wealth, and can blame a slew of teams including the Saints, Lions, Dees and Freo for underperforming at inopportune times.

The MARS Ratings are particularly interesting this week, as five teams - Geelong, Collingwood, the Dogs, St Kilda and Carlton - have now established a sizeable ratings point lead on the rest of the field.

Over the course of the weekend, six teams changed position on MARS ratings, three recording rises and three recording falls. Essendon and West Coast enjoyed the weekend's only 2-spot rises, and Port Adelaide and Melbourne suffered the weekend's only 2-spot falls.

The Saints have dropped almost nine ratings points in two weeks and now find themselves in fourth spot and in danger of dropping to fifth should they have another poor showing against West Coast and should the Blues perform well against Hawthorn.

On margin predicting, BKB has retained its sub-30 MAPE and its preeminent position on MAPE and on Median APE rankings.

LAMP is in second spot on MAPE, though it's last on Median APE, a full point behind Chi. ELO holds second spot on Median APE, but trails BKB by 1.5 points and needs four games of sub-28 point performance to drag its Median APE down to BKB's current level.

HELP had a horrible week on line tipping and probability estimation, picking just two line-winning teams and scoring at a sub-naive level on all three probability scores, mostly because three of its four most confident tips proved to be incorrect.

This week I'll finish what's already been a long blog with a review of teams' quarter-by-quarter performances.

No team has won all eight of any single quarter. The best performance in a quarter has been the Dogs in second quarters where they've won seven of eight and registered a 176.6 percentage.

Two teams, however, have lost eight from eight for a particular quarter: Richmond have lost all eight third terms, and Hawthorn have lost all eight final terms.

Summing across all four quarters, Collingwood now have the best record of all teams, having won 22 of 32 quarters and drawn 1. Geelong are next best (on 22 from 32) and then Carlton (on 20 from 32).

Richmond, by some distance, have the worst performance. They're averaging less than a single winning quarter per game.

MAFL 2010 : Round 8

Some weeks there's a period where I'm 5 years old again and I hold my breath and close my eyes while I run the Fund scripts and partly fear, partly hope for the worst. This week that apprehension was tied to just how much we'd have riding on the Tigers who were being offered by TAB Sportsbet at $4.50 and taking on the Hawks at the G.

When I peeked and exhaled I found that the Funds commanded ... no head-to-head bet on the Tigers. We did have a 5% line bet though, but with 30.5 points start, I'll take that as a reasonable proposition.

In total, those with the Recommended Portfolio have an even two-dozen wagers this week, five of them struck by Prudence and representing about 15% of that Fund, four from each of Shadow (20%), Heuristic-Based (20%), New Heritage (38%) and ELO-Line (20%), and three from the Hope Fund and representing about 11% of that Fund.

In total, Investors with the Recommended Portfolio have about 21% of their total funds at risk. I tell you, money in that portfolio just turns its little tail off.

Only one of the week's bets is at a price in excess of $2, and that's Hope's 5.5% wager on the Lions at $3 facing the Cats but playing at home at the Gabba. Frankly, I like those odds. The remaining wagers are at prices from $1.36 - on Melbourne, of all teams, head-to-head facing the Eagles - up to $1.90, on Fremantle, head-to-head playing the Pies, and on all four line bets.

Here's the detail:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, the round's last game, which is the Saints v Dons clash, is the game that represents the largest swing between best and worst outcomes. It also represents the largest downside risk as a loss would set 4.8% of the Portfolio ablaze. At the other end of the spectrum, the Lions v Cats game offers the greatest upside. If the underdog Lions win, the Recommended Portfolio will leap by 2.65%.

So then, what other threats and promises does this week's Ready Reckoner enfold?

For those holding the Recommended Portfolio it's another weekend where the outcome of most games carries a wealth swing of 2.5% or more. In consequence it's another weekend of baldly partisan viewing.

The tipsters are broadly in agreement for yet another week, although in none of the games is there unanimity amongst them.

• The Pies are 13-2 favourites over Freo, with only Home Sweet Home, HAMP and LAMP separate from the herd. LAMP is by no means overwhelmingly committed to the home team Freo, however, and has them winning by just 5 points, making this its Game of the Round. The bookies too are only weak supporters, though they're on the Pies, and look set to have this as one of their two Games of the Round.
• The Dogs are 12-3 favourites over the Swans. All five margin-tippers are on the Dogs with margins ranging from 8.5 to 25 points.
• Melbourne are 12-3 favourites over the Eagles. In this game, predicted Eagles victory margins range from 11 to 23 points.
• Geelong are 13-2 favourites over the Lions. HAMP has the Cats winning by just 6 points, making this its Game of the Round.
• Adelaide are 8-7 favourites over the Roos. All the margin-tippers are on the Roos, however, including ELO, who is tipping the Roos by 2, making this its Game of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over the Tigers. Chi is one of the two tipsters predicting a Tigers win and he has them winning by just 2 points.
• Port Adelaide are 11-4 favourites over the Blues. Chi's on the Blues but tips just a 1-point win, so this is his Game of the Round. It also looks likely to be the bookie's other Game of the Round, with Port set to be offering just 6.5 points start.
• St Kilda are 13-2 favourites over the Dons, though heaven knows why after the way they played on Monday night. The margin tipsters are particularly confident and are prophesying margins ranging from 17.5 to 31 points. Let's hope they're right.

Average starts this week are again quite low. All but one of them are 18.5 points or fewer, the highest being the 30.5 points start that the Tigers enjoy.

Finally, to HELP, who's looking to consolidate last weekend's improved showing (whatever that oft-quoted sporting reference really means).

There's some pluck in them there predictions, with Melbourne, the Roos, Hawthorn and St Kilda all confidently predicted to cover their respective spreads. Pluck comes, as ever, stapled to risk and reward, however, so HELP faces a roller-coaster weekend of probability scoring.

MAFL 2010 : Round 7 Results (Final)

Well at least we weren't left hanging until the end.

There are games that you witness where history's page is rendered inaccurate by the word "loss". When teams play as the Saints did tonight another column is required on the competition ladder, to sit alongside "W" and "L", let's call it "F", for "Failed to Compete" (although other designations also spring to mind).

About the only positive I can extract from the game is that, being played on a Monday, it's just four days distant from the next, hopefully memory-erasing wagering opportunity.

Here's what it all means for Investors:

In the end, despite the disappointment of Monday night, Shadow - and hence the Heuristic-Based Fund - made a small profit for the round, so Shadow will retain control of the Heuristic-Based Fund for at least another three rounds.

Here are the full details of the weekend's wagering:

On tipping, just five favourites were again victorious this week, which leaves BKB now an astonishing 4 games off the pace being set by Short Term Memory I on 41 from 56 (73%). Second and third spots are now filled by the Easily Impressed duo, both on 40 (71%), who've demonstrated, along with Short Term Memory I, that, for this season at least, about all you need take notice of is what happened last weekend.

Shadow and Silhouette are, however, lurking near the top and appear set to add another year of consistent tipping to their already-impressive historical record.

(I note that, at this point in the season, every one of the "unsophisticated" non margin-tipping heuristics is in the black on level-stake wagering.)

MARS ratings saw an extraordinary number of position swaps this week, including the replacement of the Saints by the Pies in the top 2, single-rung ladder climbs by Carlton, Fremantle, Adelaide, Port Adelaide and Melbourne, and falls by Sydney, the Lions, Hawthorn and the Roos.

Richmond, at 955.4 ratings points, are now just half a dozen or so solid performances away from surpassing Melbourne's end-of-2008 rating of 944.7.

On margin predicting, BKB is still the only margin-tipper with a sub-30 mean APE (though it was also the only margin-tipper to record an increase in mean APE this weekend). As well, BKB and HAMP remain as the only margin-tippers with sub-30 median APEs.

Overall, BKB still leads on both mean and median APE, while LAMP remains second on mean MAPE and HAMP remains second on median APE.

HELP performed a little more creditably this weekend, correctly predicting 5 of the 8 line betting results and providing probability assessments sufficient to drag its season-long probability scoring a little closer to naivety.

Despite two of the teams we'd wagered on this weekend being rundown in the final term, this has not generally been a season for final term reversals. Only 10 of 56 (18%) teams have won after trailing at three-quarter time, and none of them trailed by 3 goals or more at the final change.

Further, only 18 of 56 (32%) teams have won after trailing at half-time, and just 17 of 55 (31%) have won after trailing at the first change (in the other game the teams were tied at quarter-time).

MAFL 2010 : Round 7 - Results So Far

The round's not yet over as most Investors still have a pecuniary interest in Monday night's Saints v Carlton clash, so this'll just be a short blog to update Investors.

Adelaide's final-term blitz on Sunday evening was welcome relief - apparently there's rarely any other sort if we're to believe TV news anchors - for all Investors, with the profit from the Crows' 50-point victory leaving those with the Recommended Portfolio up 0.64% on the round and 3.24% on the season. MIN#002 and MIN#017 also benefited. MIN#002's portfolio is up 2.25% on the round and now 0.05% on the season, and MIN#017's is down 4.43% on the round and 3.87% on the season.

MIN#002 is the only Investor with no stake in the St Kilda v Carlton game, so he at least can watch the game without the mood-altering effects of a wager. There'll be no such enjoyment though for those with the Recommended Portfolio or for MIN#017 as they all have significant stakes in the outcome.

If St Kilda wins and covers the 15.5 point start they're giving, the Recommended Portfolio will rise by a further 1.63%. If they win but fail to cover the spread then the increase is only 0.68%. And, finally, if the Saints lose, then the Recommended Portfolio will drop by 3.13%, virtually eliminating the season's profit to date. For MIN#017 all that matters is whether the Saints win or lose. A win will trigger a 4.66% increase in portfolio wealth and a loss will inflict a 10.36%-sized hole.

(By the way, I discovered a glitch in the Ready Reckoner calculations over the weekend, so the return for the Recommended Portfolio provided in this blog is slightly higher than what you'd get if you added up the relevant numbers from Friday's table. Errors are always so much more forgivable when they're beneficial, aren't they.)

MAFL 2010 : Round 7

I confess I didn't realise quite how active the six MAFL Funds would be this year once they were simultaneously let loose on the market. This week, their innate tendency to wager has been cunningly exploited by TAB Sportsbet in establishing seven of the home teams as favourites.

So, we have seven wagers from New Heritage (totalling almost 73% of the Fund), six from Prudence (for 25%), five from ELO-Based line (also for 25%), three from Hope (for about 10%), and two each from the currently joined-at-the hip Heuristic-Based and Shadow Funds (for 10% in both cases). In total, Investors with the Recommended Portfolio have about 27.5% of their total funds at risk.

The riskiest of the head-to-head bets is Hope's wager of 5.91% on the Dees, this week's only home team underdog. Other head-to-head bets include a slew on the Pies at $1.20 taking on the Roos, and significant amounts on both the Cats and the Crows, both at $1.25.

In four of the five line bets made by ELO-line we're receiving starts. In the fifth we're taking Melbourne with 24.5 points start.

Here's the detail:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, the Dees v Dogs game represents easily the greatest upside, and the Crows v Tigers game represents (narrowly) the greatest downside, but also the largest difference between upside and downside.

Herewith the week's Ready Reckoner:

It's an attention-grabbing weekend indeed for a Recommended Portfolio-holding Investor when the smallest swing between the best and worst results for any of the eight games is over 2% of his or her total funds.

This week there's broad agreement amongst the tipsters for four of the games, but considerable disparity amongst them for the other four:

• The Dogs are 14-1 favourites over the Dees, with the Home Sweet Home the lone dissenter. Chi, who tips the Dogs by 4 points, has this as his Game of the Round, and HAMP, who tips them by 10 points, has this as one of his two Games of the Round.
• Port Adelaide are 8-7 favourites over the Dons, though the margin-tippers are all on the Dons. Our top 5 tipsters, however, are all on Port. BKB, who I expect will offer the Dons at -6.5 points, will have this as one of its two Games of the Round.
• West Coast are 8-7 favourites over Hawthorn, and the margin-tippers have again voted as a bloc, in this game on the Eagles. This game would appear to be the uber Game of the Round as it represents ELO's and LAMP's Game of the Round and BKB's and HAMP's second Games of the Round.
• Collingwood are unanimous favourites over the Roos. Tipped margins range from 26.5 to 35 points..
• Fremantle are 9-6 favourites over the Lions. Again we have all margin-tippers selecting the same team, which here is Brisbane, and again we have all 5 top tipsters opting for the other team.
• Geelong are 8-7 favourites over the Swans. The margin-tippers all select the Cats, with predicted victory margins spanning the range from 18 to 28 points.
• Adelaide are unanimous favourites over the hapless Tigers. Predicted margins range from 24.5 to 33 points, which is about the deficit that the Tigers faced shortly after the centre-bounce last weekend.
• St Kilda are 12-3 favourites over the Blues, though the tipsters supporting the Blues are each tipping at around 70%, so the Blues are not without a chance.

This week the starts on offer suggest that the matchups aren't as even as last week's - the Cats v Tigers game aside - but we can still look forward this weekend to a round where four of the games have starts of fewer than 16 points, and the remainder all have starts of fewer than 27 points. (Fewer or less? I always find this hard to decide for line betting. Points are undoubtedly countable, so that's one vote for 'fewer', but the bookies offer half point starts, so does that make points a mass noun?)

Anyway, to the HELP predictions.

Again nothing brave this weekend from HELP, especially in relation to the Lions and Saints tips, the probabilities for which I've had to show with a decimal to differentiate them from sheer naivety.

MAFL 2010 : Round 6 Results

Regression to the mean is a bit like unprompted advice from a friend: not always welcome.

But a weekend of regression it ultimately was for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio, as their last-chance Eagles failed to capitalise on their early-game form and eventually went down to the Dockers by over six goals.

With MIN#002 losing also, the only Investor to show a profit on the weekend was MIN#017 who made a 0.55% gain.

Here are the details for all Investors:

Overall, Investors with the Recommended Portfolio profited from four games and made losses in the other four. The most disappointing loss, I felt, was the one on the Dogs, who looked set to take the competition points before a scrappy final term in which they kicked 0.2 to the Saints' 3.4 saw them fall just 3 points short.

Geelong, mercifully, fully justified their $1.01 price by obliterating the Tigers at Kardinia. So comprehensive was their victory, in fact, that they broke the scoring worm on the www.afl.com.au site:

(Apart from the Cats' escaping worm-orbit in that screen capture above, there's also something going on with the axis scaling, which seems to suggest that the Cats are in front by more than 150 points when their lead is actually 'only' 108. I think this is an example of what programmers would refer to as an 'edge case', basically a rare but pernicious eventuality that a programmer must recognise and code for.)

Here are the full details of the weekend's wagering:

On tipping, just five favourites were victorious, leaving a little room for other tipsters to outperform BKB, which Short Term Memory I, Silhouette and Consult The Ladder duly did in each bagging six.

That leaves Short Term Memory I in the outright lead on 35 (73%), and four tipsters - Silhouette, Consult The Ladder, Easily Impressed I and Follow The Streak - just one tip behind on 34 (71%).

It's a bizarre season indeed when members of the Easily Impressed and Short Term Memory heuristic families are vying for tipping supremacy.

Chi continues to deliver the sort of tipping performances that leave me glad that I retired the Chi Fund.

This week the Heuristic Fund dropped 2.2%, so Shadow is now just two further weeks of losses away from losing control of this Fund which, as things currently stand, would be handed over to Short Term Memory I. That'd be fun - having our money entrusted to an algorithm that is the statistical equivalent of a goldfish.

On MARS ratings, Geelong did enough, and the Saints didn't do quite enough, such that positions 1 and 2 have been reversed, with the Cats taking a 1.6 rating point lead. The only other changes were amongst the teams in the bottom third of the ratings ladder, the most dramatic of which were the Dons' rise from 15th to 12th, and the Dees' fall from 11th to 14th.

On margin predicting, BKB is now the only margin-tipper with a sub-30 mean APE, and is one of only two margin-tippers - HAMP being the other - to have a sub-30 median APE.

Consequently, BKB leads on both mean and median APE, with LAMP second on mean MAPE and HAMP second on median APE.

At this point in the season I'll confess to being surprised at the strong performances of HAMP and LAMP but, each being based solely on bookie prices, I guess they should be doing reasonably well given the even stronger performance of BKB.

I'm far less surprised with the performance of HELP, which managed just three correct line tips this weekend and essentially stood still in terms of the three probability score metrics. Richmond's failure to win on line betting despite a ten-goal start was particularly damaging to HELP's probability scores as it had attached an 80% probability to Richmond's preventing such an embarrassment.

The Eagles' poor showing in the final term that doomed many Investors to an unprofitable weekend was their sixth losing final term of the season. They now have an appalling 44.3 percentage in final terms but, amazingly, this is only the second-worst performance in the competition, eclipsed by the Crows' 40.7 percentage.

Only two teams now have a term that they've failed to lose all season. They are the Swans and the Dogs, who've each won all six of their second terms.

MAFL 2010 : Round 6

It's as if someone flicked a switch, which in a fashion someone did.

All six Funds have taken up their option to participate in the weekend's wagering, many of them with an alacrity that can only be exhibited by something inanimate that has no sense of the terror that can be induced by a large wager on a team at $1.01.

Hope is the only Fund to show any restraint, chancing just a single wager - its first for the season - of around 1.6% on Sydney at $1.55 facing the Lions at the SCG. New Heritage has waded in like an adrenalin junkie coming home from an enforced 6-week stay at a Buddhist retreat. It's found 6 wagers to its liking, these totalling almost 41% of the Fund and including a 13.5% tilt at the Cats paying $1.01, an almost equally futile 0.1% wager on the Pies at $1.55, and a 3.1% bet on the Crows at $2.35.

The ELO-Line Fund has been almost as profligate, dropping 30% on 6 wagers (one of which - 5% on the Roos - I've yet to make as the market isn't currently available). Mercifully, it's avoided taking the Cats giving 60.5 (yes, over 10 goals) start to the Tigers.

Prudence, Shadow (and hence the Heuristic-Based Fund) have all outlayed about 15% of their respective Funds, in Prudence's case on four wagers, and in Shadow's and the Heuristic-Based Fund's, on three.

Here's the detail (in a slightly larger font this week):

Unsurprisingly, this cacophany of wagers puts a considerable chunk of total Funds in play this weekend, including those of MIN#002 and MIN#017, whose money is at risk for the first time this season. Welcome.

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, the Sydney v Brisbane game represents the largest gap between exaltation and despair, the difference being almost 7.5% of total Funds. The Geelong v Richmond game is next largest, but in that game the upside doesn't justify the label "exaltation" and the downside is the poster-child for "despair".

The remaining details of what result mean what profit and loss are in the Ready Reckoner, which appears below:

As it's been a while since you've had to worry about not just which team wins but also by how much they win, I'll just briefly go through how the Ready Reckoner works.

Consider the second row of the Recommended Portfolio part. It shows that if the Roos win, Investors' net MAFL worth increases by 1.64% (in this case the head-to-head and the line bets win).

If, instead the Roos lose head-to-head but Port fails to cover the spread, then the figure in the third column, representing the case where the home team (the Roos) win head-to-head but lose on handicap, pertains. It shows that Investors will lose 0.90% in that instance, the result of the head-to-head bets losing but the handicap bet winning.

The final column shows the result if the Roos lose head-to-head and also lose on handicap. In that case Investors will be down 1.8% for the game.

Next we look at the tipsters, who this week agree more often than not about the likely outcomes of each contest.

• The Dogs are 13-2 favourites over the Saints, Consult The Ladder and Silhouette being the only holdouts.
• Melbourne are 11-4 favourites over the Roos, though 3 of the 5 margin-tippers are on the Roos. All of the margin predictions are for a victory by either side of 9 points or fewer and this is one of BKB's two Games of the Round.
• Port Adelaide are 11-4 favourites over the Crows, and again 3 of the 5 margin-tippers are on the less-favoured team. Both BKB and LAMP have this game as one of their two Games of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 10-5 favourites over the Dons. Yet again the margin-tippers are split 3-2 in favour of the less-favoured team. ELO predicts that the Dons will win by just a point and therefore has this as its Game of the Round.
• Sydney are unanimous favourites over the Lions. Predicted margins range from 12.5 points to 17 points, so no tipster is foreseeing a blowout.
• Geelong are unanimous favourites over the Tigers. In this game, though, a blowout is seen as a distinct possibility. The bookies are giving the Tigers 60.5 start, which is one of the largest starts amongst my records. The only larger start was the 75.5 points that the Cats gave the Dees in Round 3 of 2008 (which, by the way, the Dees covered easily, going down by just 30 points).
• Collingwood are 11-4 favourites over the Blues. Once again the margin-tippers are 3-2 to the underdogs. Chi has the Blues winning by just 4 points and so has this as his Game of the Round. LAMP has the Pies winning by 1 point and has this as its second Game of the Round.
• Fremantle are 12-3 favourites over the Eagles. HAMP tips the Eagles to win by 1 point and has this as its Game of the Round.

The plethora of Games of the Round is a reflection of the overall narrowness of expected victory margins. Apart from the all-feline Cats v Tigers matchup where the Cats seem destined for a percentage-building massacre, no line market is offering a start greater than 15.5 points. That should make for a cardiovascularly taxing weekend.

Finally, to the HELP predictions.

HELP's predictions this week are just a little more risky than last week's. Two of the predictions are only barely non-naive - the first two - and five more have associated probabilities ranging from 58% to 63%. Only the 80% prediction for the Tigers to lose by less than 60.5 points will have any significant effect on HELP's average probability scores.

MAFL 2010 : Round 5 Results

That was a weekend that could easily the unwary into thinking there's something in this statistical modelling stuff.

Six wins from seven bets, with two of the wins coming from seriously unfancied teams, lifted the Heuristic Fund by almost 30% and left it up almost 41% on the season. Investors with the Recommended Portfolio are now, therefore, up over 4% on the season.

The only bet we lost was the one on the Hawks, who just couldn't quite do enough and went down by two straight goals to the Roos. In the only game in which we didn't have a starter, Port Adelaide, who were $3.75 shots mid-week and who were playing at home and so fair-game for the Heuristic Fund or the Hope Fund, outlasted the Saints at Footy Park.

But I'll take what we landed and just smile at what we might have missed.

Here are the details of the weekend's wagering:

Home Sweet Home and Short Term Memory I recorded the weekend's best tipping performances, each bagging 7 from 8, and five other tipsters, the Heuristic Fund's current guardian, Shadow, among them, scored 6.

That leaves three tipsters as joint-leaders of our tipping competition, Easily Impressed I, Short Term Memory I and Follow The Streak, all on 29 from 40 (72.5%). With only four favourites collection the competition points this round, BKB had another mediocre return and now sits two tips off the pace on 27 from 40.

Short Term Memory I now leads the race to be the next guardian of the Heuristic Fund, though with Shadow winning again this week it'll be at least Round 9 before that can happen.

With Round 6 upon us, Shadow will start trading as a Fund in its own right next weekend, as will New Heritage, Prudence and the ELO-Line Funds. So, Investors with the Recommended Portfolio will be doubly exposed to Shadow's prowess for the next 3 rounds at least - once via the Heuristic Fund and again via the Shadow Fund.

On MARS ratings, losses by St Kilda and Geelong cost both teams ratings points but left them in positions 1 and 2, albeit with a smaller lead over the pursuing duo of the Pies and the Dogs. Sydney and Carlton both pushed up a ranking spot, overtaking a plummeting Brisbane in the process.

Fremantle round out the top eight, and have now almost a 5-point lead over the ninth-placed Hawks. Melbourne are the weekend's biggest improvers. They leapt four spots into eleventh, a just reward for their 50-point victory over the Lions.

Margin prediction proved hazardous again this weekend. HAMP produced the round's best MAPE (32.4), a fraction ahead of ELO (33.3) and Chi (33.5). BKB, in a rare show of weakness, came last amongst our margin-tipsters with a MAPE of 35.6.

However, across the entire 5 rounds, BKB still leads both on mean and median APE. HAMP is now 2nd on both measures, with LAMP is 3rd on median APE and ELO 3rd on mean APE.

HELP scored marginally better than a naive tipster this week, correctly selecting 5 of the 8 line winners to take its aggregate record to 21-19, and accruing probability scores a fraction higher than would have been accrued by a tipster assigning a 50% probability to every tip.

Its season-long performance is still sub-naive.

This week the 16 teams combined to register as many goals as they did behinds, 187 of each, which makes the season's conversion rate now just 50.3%. This is, as those of you who've read my three earlier blogs on Modelling AFL Scoring (Part I, Part II, and Part III will know, significantly below the long-term average of 53.64%.

Adelaide and Essendon are doing most to drag the average conversion rate down. The Crows have kicked 41.59 to be at 41%, and the Dons 54.67 to be at 44.6%. St Kilda, with 70.40 (63.6%), and the Swans, with 78.64 (54.9%), are doing most to raise the level.

Round 6 is next, and that's when all the Funds are in play.

MAFL 2010 : Round 5

Well I did expect the level of wagering activity to ratchet up this weekend compared to last, but I thought Hope would be contributing to at least some of that increase.

That's not the case though. Hope has reviewed the market offerings and decided to return to slumber for at least another week; Shadow has looked at the same market and taken out its metaphorical knife and fork, rediscovering its Round 3-style appetite for the punt.

While Hope has passed on all eight contests, Shadow has plunged on the home team in seven, rating only Port Adelaide as home team no-hopers for the weekend. Here's the detail:

So, for the first time this season - possibly ever - Investors find themselves with an interest in the outcome of games across four consecutive days. Shadow's wagers across these four days traverse the landscape from a why-bother bet on Fremantle at $1.03 facing Richmond to a why-the-heck bet on Carlton at $4.60 taking on the Cats.

In between there are four more bets at should-win prices ranging from $1.10 to $1.28, and one more at an probably-won't-win price of $3.75. If you're looking for words to characterise the weekend's portfolio of wagers then, "diverse", "interesting" and "bold" would be among the more positive, while "motley", "perplexing" and "unfathomable" would be among the less favourable and, arguably, more accurate.

With level-stake betting, which is the Heuristic Fund's wagering strategy of record, return and risk correlate directly with market price, so Investors' fortunes are largely in the hands of the high-priced Dees and Blues this weekend. Here are the Ready Reckoner details:

Again this week with the bakers' half-dozen wagers, Investors might find a graphic a helpful way to understand what's required to return a profit.

Some conclusions that I draw from this graphic are that:

• If Melbourne and Carlton win, a profit is assured
• If neither Melbourne nor Carlton win, a profit is impossible
• If Melbourne doesn't win on Saturday, a profit requires at least one win on Sunday and on Monday. On Sunday, a Collingwood or a Hawthorn win will be sufficient if Sydney's won on Saturday and the Dogs have lost on Friday, and a Fremantle win will be sufficient if both the Dogs and Sydney have won in their respective clashes.
• If we've no winners at the end of Saturday, only Collingwood, Hawthorn and Carlton wins can save us.

Next a look at our tipsters, which shows that we've an unusually high level of agreement this round.

• The Dogs are unanimous favourites in their contest with the Crows on Friday. Margin predictions range from 17 to 41.5 points.
• Sydney are unanimous favourites taking on the Eagles, and in this game margin predictions range from 22 to 35 points, again foreshadowing a fairly substantial victory margin.
• Melbourne are 8-7 favourites over the Lions in yet another game that sees the margin tipsters on one team, in this base Brisbane, and the non-margin tipsters on the other, the only exception being Consult The Ladder who's also tipping the Lions.
• St Kilda are 14-1 favourites over Port Adelaide, despite Port's home ground advantage, a fact that has been deemed sufficient to warrant tipping Port only be Home Sweet Home. HAMP tips St Kilda to win by just 5 points and LAMP tip them to win by 'just' 23 points, which makes this game HAMP's and LAMP's Game of the Round (to the extent that it makes sense to label a game you're predicting as a four-goal win to the favourites as sufficiently close to justify the GoTR designation).
• Collingwood are unanimous favourites over the Dons, with tipped margins for the Pies ranging from 18 to 28 points.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over the Roos. Only Easily Impressed I and Short-Term Memory I are on the Roos. Predictions of Hawthorn's victory margin start at 15 points and run as high as 26 points, with BKB's prediction of a 21.5-point victory making this its Game of the Round - again only meaningful if you consider a 3-and-a-half-goal victory as "close".
• Fremantle are unanimous favourites over Richmond. Predicted victory margins run from a low of 23 points to a high of 48.5 points. This game, which is being played at Subi, could get very ugly for the Tigers, and a sporting declaration at three-quarter or even half time by the Dockers, should not be discounted.
• Geelong are 9-6 favourites over the Blues. Three of the five margin tipsters, all of which have selected the Cats to win, have done so by 7 points or fewer. That makes this game Chi's and ELO's Game of the Round. The remaining margin tipsters - LAMP and BKB - predict much more comfortable wins by the Cats of the order of 4.5 goals or so.

The high levels of agreement in this week's tips mean that there'll be little opportunity for significant changes to our tipster rankings by weekend's end. For example, the two leading tipsters - Consult The Ladder and Follow The Streak - differ only on one tip. It's for the Melbourne v Brisbane game, and Follow The Streak's on Melbourne, while Consult The Ladder's on the Lions.

Lastly, let's have a look at HELP's line betting tips for the week.

HELP has again been very conservative this week. No prediction has been made with an associated probability greater than 58%, which means that even the most disastrous round imaginable won't do too much damage to HELP's various probability scores. It also means that a perfect round won't repair much of previous weeks' damage either. Such is the price of timidity, the virtue of which can only be determined with certainty in retrospect.