First, some good news.
Back in Round 14, Investors in the Recommended Portfolio had a line bet on the Saints, who played Melbourne at Dockland. In the Bet Summary for the week I had the Saints giving the Dees 35.5 points start, which meant that their eventual 100-65 victory was a half-point short of covering the spread, a fact that I seem to recall lamenting at some length, certainly in the conversations that I had in the following week, and probably in the blog too (which I'm not of a mind to review at the moment).
Well every couple of weeks I reconcile the TAB's view of our finances with the view that I maintain via a spreadsheet and in performing this reconciliation I discovered that the Saints were actually giving 32.5 rather than 35.5 points start. So, our line bet was a winner and I can report that this skyrockets the Recommended Portfolio price up by 1c. It now stands at 91.3c.
Recommended Portfolio holders would do well to bear in mind that they're a little wealthier than they thought they were when they started reading this blog, as they review this week's assortment of wagers.
In total, there are 27 of them representing over one-quarter of Total Initial Funds. New Heritage owns seven of them, which together represent about 60% of that Fund and which have been wagered at a weighted average price of $1.29. This relatively low weighted average is due partly to the fact that the two largest New Heritage wagers are at prices of $1.10 or lower.
Including this week's 60% contribution, every dollar in the Heritage Fund has now been wagered 5.6 times. Unfortunately, so far it's only come back a little over 5 times.
The Heuristic-Based Fund has made 5 bets totalling 25% of the Fund with a weighted average price of $1.35. The average price is boosted by its largest wager, which is on the Eagles at $1.90 who are narrow underdogs in their game with the Blues.
ELO-Line also has 5 wagers representing 25% of the Fund. Four of these wagers are on favourites giving start, and one is on an underdog receiving start.
Prudence has made 4 selections totalling 21% of the Fund and, true to its name, has secured a weighted average price of $1.17, due largely to the fact that its 2 largest wagers are, like the New Heritage Fund, on teams priced at $1.10 or below.
Shadow is the next most active Fund with 3 wagers totalling 15% of the Fund. These are at a weighted average price of $1.18, only fractionally higher than Prudence's and this only because Shadow's largest wager is on the Roos at $1.40.
That leaves only the Hope Fund, which has ventured just 3 wagers for 11% of the Fund this week though these have been placed at a weighted average price of $2, the highest of all the Funds due largely to a wager on the Dees at $2.25.
These Hope bets are also the wagers for MIN#002, and those of the New Heritage Fund are the wagers of MIN#017.
Here's the detail:
Key matches this weekend for those with the Recommended Portfolio are the St Kilda v Hawthorn game (which offers a round-high 1.9% upside), the Geelong v Lions game (which carries a round-high 6.0% downside and a near round-high 6.8% swing), and the Collingwood v Richmond game (which carries a round-high 6.9% swing).
MIN#002 cares most about the Roos v Essendon game as it represents for him both the largest possible gain (+2.0%) and the largest swing between potential win and potential loss (-7.0%).
MIN#017 faces five games for which the potential swing is 14% or more. The St Kilda v Hawthorn game offers the greatest upside of just under 6%, the Cats v Lions game threatens the largest loss at just over 13%, and the swing between the best and worst possible outcomes is greatest for the Roos v Dons clash where the difference is almost 15% (though this is only a tad higher than the swing for the Dogs v Freo game).
So the week's Ready Reckoner, as Russian Roulette, is startlingly unbalanced with respect to upside and downside risk for all Investors:
What better way to emphasise for Recommended Portfolio holders the disparity between potential profit and possible loss for most of this week's games than to construct a visual representation (aka a chart) of the Ready Reckoner?
(Games where there are two bars of equal length are those in which Investors have either no head-to-head bet or no line bet. As such Investors' return is unchanged by the result on whichever market they have no stake in.)
MAFL Tipsters are unanimous or near to it for five of this week's games and almost 50-50 split on the remaining three contests.
Here are the details:
Here's a chart that might help you decide whether or not to take heed of any of that. It shows the cumulative tipping performance of the MAFL Tipsters as at the end of Rounds 11 and 16.
You'll recall that I'm field-testing two new algorithms for next season: a Bookie Probability Model (BPM) that will bet head-to-head on home teams only, and a Super Smart Model (SSM) that will bet on the line market.
BPM this week recommends only one bet: 1.2% on Adelaide, which it sees as value at $3.75. (Actually it also recommends a second bet on St Kilda, but the recommended size is 0.02%, which means that you'd need a bank of $5,000 in order for this recommendation to equate to the minimum allowed $1 wager. I think it's fair to deem a 0.02% recommended bet as somewhat below the level of 'who cares'.)
Here's what SSM makes of the round:
SSM agrees with only one of ELO's five bets, that on the Dogs, and disagrees with those on the Saints, Pies, Cats and Port. SSM would also have wagered on the Roos, the Dees and the Eagles, all of which selections would meet ELO's home-team-only wagering constraint. Well with that level of disagreement we certainly won't be running both ELO-Line and SSM next season.
HELP has come up with a more sensible set of probability assessments this week and has also gone with a balanced 4 home and 4 away team split:
If ever you wanted evidence to support the aphorism that it's unwise to pre-emptorily enumerate your poultry, Sunday afternoon's Fremantle v Melbourne game is it.
At the first change Freo had already covered the spread, up 31 points facing just a 26.5 point handicap (which, of course, we'd conceded). By half time, Freo had extended its lead to 39 points and I was mentally adding the value of a Fremantle head-to-head and line win to the weekly tally. But then the Dees rallied, kicking the first 6 goals of the third term before heading into the sheds at three-quarter time just 8 points down, then closing within a kick for large portions of the final term, only to fall short by 11 points.
So, the Recommended Portfolio chalked up a small profit on this game, adding to the small profit accrued across the seven earlier games, to leave it up 1.7% for the weekend and now down just 9.7% for the season.
It'd all started so much more positively for the Recommend Portfolio, however, with the first three contests producing the required results, including underdog wins by the Crows and the Pies. Essendon started the nonsense after starting promisingly to lead 26 to 9 mid way through the first term of their game, before allowing 6 goals in each of the next two terms and eventually going down by over 5 goals to the bottom-of-the-table Eagles.
The Dogs then narrowly did what was asked of them, winning and covering the spread by just 3.5 points, before Richmond nodded off in the third term of their game, kicking just one behind to the Roos' 5.3, triggering a 50-point loss that was as expensive to Investors as it was to the Tigers' finals aspirations (if they had any).
Still, at least the Recommended Portfolio moved a mite closer to season-long profitability, which is something that can't be said of MIN#002's portfolio, which dropped 1.9%, and MIN#017's portfolio, which dropped 5.4%.
Here's the latest Dashboard with all the details.
The Heuristic-Based and ELO-Line Funds both ventured further into profitable territory this week and these Funds remain the only two that have been profitable across the season. Hope and Prudence are though within just a few cents of that same exalted status. Amongst the other Funds, Shadow probably needs a few weeks of solid profitably to reach the magic $1 price point, and New Heritage requires - well, let's just call it an extended run of favourable outcomes (sorry MIN#017).
On tipping, Easily Impressed II and Ride Your Luck produced the weekend's best performances, each bagging 6 from 8, which was enough to drag Easily Impressed II into joint leadership of the MAFL Tipping Competition alongside Easily Impressed I on 85.5/128 or about 67%. BKB had a terrible round, scoring just 3 from 8, consigning it to equal third-last.
Positions on the MARS Ratings table were swapped like guernseys at a Grand Final this week, as every team but Geelong and St Kilda found themselves in a different ladder position to that which they occupied at the commencement of the round.
Hawthorn and West Coast were the week's biggest climbers, jumping two places to 5th and 14th respectively, while Carlton were easily the week's biggest fallers, dropping three places to 9th as a result of losing to the Swans by 39 points.
Other climbers were Collingwood, Sydney, Adelaide, the Roos and Melbourne, and other fallers were the Dogs, Lions, Freo, Essendon, Port and Richmond.
Nine teams are still rated over 1,000, and the gap between 9th and 10th is a little over 16 Ratings points.
With so many upset and sizeable wins this weekend, all Margin Tippers suffered. Every Margin Tipper's Mean APE declined, by amounts ranging from 0.4 to 0.7 points, leaving BKB remaining in 1st position on this metric and LAMP and HAMP in 2nd and 3rd, HAMP nudging ELO into 4th.
With the exception of HAMP, Margin Tippers' Median APEs also rose this week. This left LAMP leading on this metric and ELO and HAMP in joint 2nd.
HELP recorded 4 from 8 on line betting - the same score that the Super Smart Model recorded - and generated probability scores of no particular note.
The Super Smart Model recorded a Mean APE for the round of just over 39 points per game, which is virtually identical to the MAPE recorded by BKB, so there's nothing much to write about there either.
The Bookie Probability Model's two home-team wagers on the Crows and the Pies would both have been successful.
To finish, I'll note that this season continues to be one in which the benefits of leading are manifest. In only 15 of the 127 games so far in which there has been a clear winner has that winner not been the team leading at 3-quarter time, and in only one more game has that winner been tied at three-quarter time. What's more, no team has been rundown after leading by 3 goals or more at three-quarter time, and only 3 teams have been rundown after leading by 3 goals or more at half-time, and only 2 after leading by 3 or more goals at quarter-time.
Faced with six home team favourites Investors could easily have been facing another dose of high risk, low potential return wagering this weekend, but a combination of moderate wagers on the two at-home underdogs and larger wagers on some of the more attractively priced at-home favourites has resulted in a far more balanced portfolio of wagers, at least for those with the Recommended Portfolio.
New Heritage is back to its profligate ways, finding six teams sufficiently to its liking to risk 60% of the Fund on them. Its four largest wagers are on teams priced in the $1.15 to $1.40 range, however, so it'd be fairer to call it brave rather than suicidal.
The Heuristic-Based Fund, currently entrusted to the Short-Term Memory I heuristic, is the next-most active Fund, making five wagers totalling 25% of the Fund. Four of these wagers are on favourites and one is on an underdog. Prudence has also made five bets but its five represent a marginally smaller 24% of its Fund. In keeping with its name, Prudence has outlaid money only on favourites.
Shadow has made four wagers totalling 20% of the Fund, all on favourites also, and ELO's made three wagers totalling 15%, two on teams giving start and one on a team receiving it.
Hope is this week's, and indeed this season's, least active Fund. It's made just two bets totalling 9% of the Fund, though one of these is a weekend-defining 5.9% on Adelaide at $3.75 facing the Cats at Football Park on Friday night.
Hope's two bets represent the entirety of MIN#002's wagering activity this week, while New Heritage's six represent MIN#017's weekend pleasure and pain.
For those with the Recommended Portfolio the 25 wagers represent about 27% of the entire Fund.
Here's the detail:
For Investors with the Recommended Portfolio the weekend's key matches are Adelaide v Geelong, which is the matchup offering the largest potential gain, and the Dogs v Port game, which represents both the largest possible loss and the largest swing between potential win and potential loss. In truth though, all the games except Collingwood v St Kilda and Carlton v Sydney matter to those with the Recommended Portfolio this weekend as all of them carry potential swings of 5.5% or more.
MIN#002 cares most about the Essendon v West Coast game, as it represents for him both the largest possible gain and the largest swing between potential win and potential loss.
MIN#017 faces six games for which the potential swing is 12% or more. Only the Adelaide v Geelong and Carlton v Sydney games don't meet this description. The Collingwood v St Kilda and Richmond v Roos games offer about a 6% upside, the Dogs v Port game threatens a potential 12.5% loss, and the swing between the best and worst possible outcomes is greatest for the Dons v Eagles clash where the difference is almost 15%.
Here's the Ready Reckoner:
For those with the Recommended Portfolio, the profitability equation is a simple one this week: the results in at least five of the seven games need to go their way.
Tipsters, if those in MAFL can be considered a reliable guide, face a difficult time with three of the weekend's games. Two more of the games wold appear to require some thought, and the remaining three are the proverbial no-brainers.
Here are the details:
Something seems to be deeply, deeply wrong with HELP. This week it's served up eight line tips all on the away team and all carrying an identical probability forecast. Weird.
For most Investors it was another weekend of nibbling away at the season's deficit.
Carlton's loss on Sunday evening meant that, for those with the Recommended Portfolio, the nibble was only a nip, but a couple of percent is undeniably better than an ocular prod with a dulled wooden implement.
Over the eight games of the round the Recommended Portfolio jumped about 2.1% leaving it down about 11.4% on the season, while the Portfolio of MIN#002 dropped 1.4% to leave it down 13.7%, and the MIN#017 Portfolio climbed 7.3% leaving it down 47% on the season.
Here's the latest Dashboard.
With this week's 3c gain Prudence is now virtually at break-even for the season. It might well achieve profitability next week, a status currently enjoyed only by the ELO and Heuristic-Based Funds.
With seven favourites winning this weekend, tipping proved to be relatively easy for most tipsters. Along with BKB, ELO, Silhouette and Chi also scored seven from eight, which in ELO's case was enough to catapult it to joint-leadership on 80.5 from 120 (72%). Three other tipsters are on the same total for the season: Easily Impressed I, Short-Term Memory II and Follow The Streak.
BKB's seven was enough to drag it into joint fifth, one tip back on 79.5, along with Easily Impressed II and Short-Term Memory I.
Six teams either climbed or fell a single position on MARS Ratings this week. The Western Bulldogs grabbed second position at Collingwood's expense, Freo snatched fifth from Carlton, and the Tigers finally surrender last position to the Eagles.
There's now a 14 Ratings-point differential between the Crows in ninth and the Lions in tenth, which seems about the right distance when you consider that the Crows have won six of their last nine games while the Lions have won just one of their last eleven. That must feel troubling like a developing habit to Lions fans.
Our Margin Tippers performed exceptionally well this weekend, all of them knocking at least one-third of a point off their season Mean APEs, and two of them knocking off three-quarters of a point or more, an extraordinary achievement when you consider that we're already 15 rounds into the season so you'd be expecting averages to respond to weekly performance spikes as the QEII responds to requests to turn to starboard. BKB continues to lead on the Mean APE metric, with LAMP second and ELO third.
LAMP reduced its Median APE by an astonishing one-and-a-half points this weekend to claim the lead outright from ELO. BKB, which reduced its Median APE by a point, lies third.
HELP had another poor round attempting to tip line winners, managing just 3 from 8, and its probability scores suffered markedly from its misplaced conviction.
(BTW The Super Smart Model performed very well this week on margin tipping, recording a Mean APE for the round of just 17.75 points per game, two points per game better than BKB. It managed only four from eight on line tipping however.)
After last week kicking a large proportion of all goals scored, winning teams this week recorded a remarkably low proportion of all scoring shots - a season low of just 53%. This was due to losing teams' ability to create ample scoring opportunities - they produced more scoring shots than their opponents in three games - but a chronic inability to convert them. Collectively, losing teams kicked 87.97 this weekend, which means they recorded only about 3 fewer scoring shots per game than did the victors collectively, but converted at a rate over 11 percentage points lower than did the games' winners.
Mark my words: poor kicking is going to see a team miss a finals spot or lose a final, and my money's on Collingwood or Hawthorn to be one of the teams involved.
Investors face a far less breathtaking set of wagers this weekend.
In fact, they can take a complete breather until Saturday since none of the Funds have any interest in Friday night's Port v Collingwood game, despite Port playing at home and being priced at $5.00 head-to-head and +32.5 points on line betting.
Across the seven other games the Funds have conspired to find 20 wagering opportunities amongst themselves, in aggregate these representing about one-sixth of Total Initial Funds in the Recommended Portfolio.
The ELO-Line Fund is the busiest, with five wagers totalling 25% of the Fund. Prudence, with 4 four wagers totalling about 12% of that Fund, is next busiest, followed by New Heritage, Shadow and Hope, each with three wagers. Such is the New Heritage penchant for large wagers, however, its three bets total just under one-quarter of the Fund; Shadow's and Hope's three bets total around 15%.
The Heuristic-Based Fund is the week's quietest. It has just two wagers totalling 10% of the Fund.
Investors MIN#002 and MIN#017 have just three wagers each in total.
Here's the detail:
(Note I've updated this table, the Ready Reckoner, and the blog in general to reflect the fact that we've no line bet on Melbourne. Six and a half points start is just too much.
Friday edit: I've also updated them both now to reflect the fact that I'd reversed the prices for the Lions v Saints and Richmond v Freo games in these outputs - though fortunately not in the model inputs. Regretably the bookies hadn't reversed their prices, so I didn't get the Tigers at $4)
For Investors with the Recommended Portfolio the weekend's key matches are Carlton v the Dogs, which represents the largest potential win and the largest swing between the best and worst possible outcomes, and the Geelong v Hawthorn game, which represents the largest possible loss.
MIN#002 has the most to gain from the Carlton v Western Bulldogs game, and MIN#017 has the most to gain from the Sydney v Roos game and the most to lose from the Geelong v Hawthorn clash.
Whilst there are no unanimous favourites amongst the MAFL tipsters, in six of the eight contests there are no more than three dissenters and in the other two contests the split is only 9-6.
Here are the details:
To finish then, the HELP line predictions, which are all for the away team and all with associated probabilities of 75% or higher.
Well that was a good weekend's wagering no matter how you dissect it.
What prevented it from attaining 'fantastic' status was the mercy shown by the teams occupying 1st and 2nd on the table, each of which slacked off in the latter parts of their respective games leading to our losing one line bet (on the Cats) by 4.5 points and the other (on the Saints) by just half a point.
This leniency cost those Investors with the Recommended Portfolio about 2% but still left them up 7.4% on the round and, as a result, now down just 13.5c on the season. MIN#002 also made money - about 6.4% - as did MIN#017, who made 11.5%. They're now down 12.3% and 54.3% respectively.
All up then, less than perfect but directionally encouraging.
Here's the details, as recorded in this week's MAFL Dashboard.
So as well as every Portfolio, every Fund increased in value this week, though only ELO and Heuristic-Based have recorded a net profit across the entire season.
On tipping, we have three joint leaders - Follow The Streak plus Short Term Memory I and II - all on 75.5 from 112 (67.4%). They lead Easily Impressed I and II by just one tip. The week's best round was recorded by Home Sweet Home, which bagged 8 from 8 as a result of victories by the seven home teams and by the team higher on the ladder in the one contest for which there was no home team (the Collingwood v West Coast game). Tipsters generally performed well this week, with the average score being 6.2 from 8.
Collingwood leapt two places on MARS Ratings this week, jumping into 2nd ahead of the Dogs and the Saints, who each slipped by one position. In other moves, Hawthorn and Sydney swapped places, with the Hawks taking 7th, and the Roos and Essendon also swapped places, with the Roos snatching the coveted 11th position.
Four Margin Tipsters now have sub-30 Mean Absolute Prediction Errors, Chi being the odd one out, and with BKB leading the pack with a MAPE of 28.3 points per game. All five Margin Tipsters now also have sub-30 median APEs, with ELO and LAMP responsible for the lowest median APEs of 26.0 points. HAMP has joined BKB in third on this metric, each of them with median APEs of 27.5 points.
HELP had a poor round attempting to tip line winners, managing just 2 from 8. Its probability scores suffered commensurately.
This week, winning teams kicked 64.8% of all the goals registered. That's the greatest proportion that winning teams have snared in any round this season, and takes the season-long proportion to 60.6%, which is a couple of percent higher than the historical average for this metric. Winning teams also kicked quite straight this week, none of them converting at a rate under 50% and most converting at a significantly higher rate, Richmond foremost amongst them in kicking 14.5. Their accuracy was the main reason they edged out the Swans who managed to convert just 48% of their 25 scoring shots.
If you're an Investor this is probably a blog best read seated.
In six of the weekend's eight games the home team is the favourite, and in five of them it's the short-priced favourite. The reaction from the MAFL Funds to this circumstance - especially from the New Heritage Fund - has been akin to the response you get if you open a packet that sounds even vaguely like a chip packet within earshot of Chi: immediate and overwhelming interest, palpable desire and a fixation on securing a piece of whatever's on offer.
Here's what the result of all that interest looks like.
(I feel as though I should have triggered a warning when you clicked the "Read more" button just then ...)
If your maths is exceptionally good, you'll have noted that Investors with the Recommended Portfolio find themselves with 33 wagers across 8 games this week, totalling over one-third of Total Initial Funds - the greatest level of activity and the highest outlay in a single round in the history of MAFL.
A hefty slice of that total outlay has been wagered head-to-head on teams at prices of $1.33 and below, which means that the total upside in all of that activity falls some considerable distance short of the downside, as illustrated in the week's Ready Reckoner.
Only the Hawks v Bulldogs and Tigers v Swans games are of little consequence this weekend for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio. The Adelaide v Essendon game offers the greatest upside and is also the game with the largest difference between the best and worst results.
A Pies loss to the Eagles would be the single most painful result for the weekend for these Investors, although losses by either the Cats or the Saints would be less painful only in a strictly mathematical sense.
For MIN#002, as ever all losses are equally costly, while Crows and Blues wins would be most welcomed.
For MIN#017 the weekend holds the greatest terror of all. A worst-case set of outcomes would reduce this Portfolio to zero, while a best-case set of outcomes would restore only about 15% of its initial value. Over one-half of any increase would come from Adelaide and Carlton wins, and any of six separate outcomes could knock about 10% off the value of the portfolio.
The confidence displayed by the Funds is, for the most part, reflected in the tips of the MAFL Tipsters where we find four games with unanimous support for the favourite and three more games where at least 11 of the 15 tipsters foresee an Investor-pleasing outcome.
Here are the details:
That leaves me with only the HELP line predictions to report.
This'll be brief.
When scanning the week's Ready Reckoner, never do I consider the "Best Possible" or "Worst Possible" results as lying within the feasible set of actual wagering outcomes. How wrong I've been.
Three games, three losses. Waiter, may I have the menu for Round 14 please?
Here's the week's MAFL Dashboard.
In deference to the dollars that sacrificed themselves in providing the data that now lies in the MAFL Wagering section of the Dashboard, I'll not be further commenting on it.
On tipping, Short-Term Memory now leads outright on 69.5 from 104 (67%), 1 tip ahead of Easily Impressed I and II, Short Term Memory II, Ride Your Luck and Follow the Streak, the latter tipster bagging the round's best performance, tipping 6 from 8.
Home Sweet Home recorded the round's worst tipping performance, managing just 3 from 8, to leave it with a season-long 53.4% record. As MAFL is currently constructed, it's never going to be a good year for wagering when Home teams aren't performing.
St Kilda's dominant second half over the Cats, which led to its 24-point victory, was enough to leap it over the Pies on MARS Ratings, despite Collingwood's 25-point win over the Swans. There were two other ratings moves further down the ladder, which saw the Crows and the Roos swap places with the Lions and the Dees respectively. The Crows now lie 9th on the MARS ladder, almost 8 Ratings points behind the Hawks.
All Margin Tippers except LAMP saw their Mean APEs fall over the round. BKB still leads, but LAMP's decline has allowed ELO to slip into second place. All three tipsters still have sub-30 MAPE's.
As we've seen a few times already this season, it's quite possible for a tipster's Mean and Median APEs to move in different directions over the course of the same round. We saw that again this round, which meant that LAMP took outright leadership on the Median APE metric, relegating ELO to second-place. BKB remains third.
HELP correctly predicted five of the round's eight line results and did a little to restore its overall probability scoring record to something a mite less embarrassing. I'll provide more details in future weeks if the upward trend continues.
Even with two attractive-looking matchups in the Cats v Saints and Swans v Pies games, this weekend can't help but seem like the stale bit of the loaf that is Round 13. (Apologies if you're a Melbourne or Adelaide fan, but I'm finding it hard to get enthused about 13th v 15th.)
The weekend's status might be elevated though if the Cats, Swans and Dees all wins, the Cats doing so by 21 points or more, since then the Recommended Portfolio will rise by about 3.9% more than offsetting, if barely, the losses suffered last weekend.
Rooting for an away team victory, which all Investors except MIN#002 will be doing this weekend in the Crows v Dees game, is a relative rarity for Investors since all but the New Heritage Fund are permitted to wager only on home teams. This week, New Heritage's splurge on the Dees is sufficiently bold to induce broad Investor support for the travellers.
The Cats, by the way, as far as MAFL is concerned are the home team in their game, since it's being played at the MCG, one of the Cats' MAFL-designated home grounds this season and not one of the Saints'.
All told, Investors holding the Recommended Portfolio have 10 wagers totalling about 9% of Total Funds this week.
MIN#002's happiness rests solely in the hands of the Crows, who need only to win to produce a profit for his portfolio, and MIN#017 shares the hopes and dreams of Recommended Portfolio holders in that he wants the Cats, Swans and Dees to win. In his case though, the size of the Cats' victory is immaterial.
Here's the detail:
For the Recommended Portfolio, the Cats v St Kilda game represents the greatest potential profit and the greatest potential loss.
For MIN#017 the Adelaide v Melbourne game is the one filled with equal parts promise and pain, while MIN#002, as already noted, has a stake in only one contest.
Here's the Ready Reckoner detail:
On tipping this week, no team has the support of more than 80% of tipsters.
Here are the details:
HELP produced a 3 from 5 performance last weekend, reviving some hope that publishing its forecasts won't continue to feel so futile. Here are its remaining predictions for the round:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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 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).
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.
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 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 ...
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