We've another short round this week comprising only seven games and Investors have a financial interest in just five of them, skipping the Friday night Roos v Blues matchup and the Saturday Suns and Saints fixture.

There was no change at all on MARS Rankings this week, though the gap between the teams ranked 4th and 14th grew to a season-high 57.8 Ratings Points and that between 4th and 8th to a near season-high 24.5 Ratings Points, just 0.07 Ratings Points less than the record.

When all eight favourites win and only four of them are home teams it's probably too much to ask that Investors will make a killing in the round, especially through the efforts of the Head-to-Head Fund. Fortunately, the Head-to-Head Fund's four from seven performance, which resulted in a 4.3% loss for that Fund was more than compensated for by the Line Fund's 4 from 4, which lifted that Fund by 11.3% and, consequently, Investor Portfolios by 3.5c on the round. That's the fourth straight week of profit during which the Portfolio price has risen by over 20c to now stand at 95.8c. Breakeven, thy shall be mine.

How much start would I need to offer to tempt you to take the Suns with that start facing Collingwood on Saturday? Would 3 goals a quarter be enough? Well it's not enough for the Line Fund, which this week has passed on the opportunity to take the Suns with a record-breaking - well, in the context of my records, anyway - 80.5 points start. That's 15 points more than any other home team has received since at least 2006, and 5 points more than any other team has received in that time, period.

It was another one of those weeks where the only changes on the MARS Ratings ladder occurred mid-table, with three of the teams now ranked between 5th and 10th registering climbs, and three more now ranked between 6th and 11th registering falls.

Sometimes I catch myself harbouring a sense of entitlement about our football wagering, a belief that the universe somehow "owes" me and all other Investors a result to make up for what was clearly an earlier injustice. It's a nonsense notion, of course, but one I'd be willing to wager is not uncommon amongst regular gamblers.

With just 8 rounds to go in the home-and-away season, it's time to start thinking about each team's run to the finals. To help with this, I've taken the latest Colley, Massey and MARS Ratings and calculated for each team the average Ratings of the teams they've still to face.

Investors this week need not trouble themselves with the progress of any football game until Saturday evening, such is the lack of interest - or respect for the TAB Sportsbet bookmaker pricing - shown by the Head-to-Head and Line Funds this round.

Only four teams changed places on the MARS Ratings ladder this week, with the Swans and the Eagles swapping 5th and 8th, and the Dons and Freo swapping 10th and 11th.

Sufficiently sizeable wins by the Hawks, Dons and Pies, and an upset victory by the Eagles, lifted the Recommended Portfolio by over 11c this week, leaving it now under 10c short of breakeven. Only the Gold Coast's inability to topple the Swans - an admittedly unlikely prospect, especially with the unfailingly-illuminating benefit of hindsight - prevented Investors from enjoying a blemish-free round of wagers. The financial cost of that result was just 0.3%, which can I think be legitimately labelled as the price of a small speculative wager gone wrong.

Three teams have the bye this week leaving us with just seven contests to consider for wagering worthiness. The Head-to-Head Fund likes five of them and the Line Fund four, though neither fancy the last two games, so our financial fortunes will be sealed by the middle of Sunday afternoon.

In the MARS Ratings review at the end of Round 14 I compared the MARS Ratings and Rankings of all teams with those of the Colley and Massey Systems at the same point in the season. It turned out that, except for a few teams, the rankings across the three Systems were similar. In this blog I'll be extending the comparison to look at other points in the season, specifically post Round 6, post Round 12 and post the most recent round, Round 15.

Nine movers this week on the MARS Ratings ladder, three of them multi-rung movers. The Dogs climbed most, jumping 3 spots to 6th and falling just 0.4 Ratings Points short of claiming 5th. West Coast, by virtue of not playing, and Fremantle, Essendon and Adelaide, by virtue of victories, all climbed 1 ladder position. Sydney, meantime, fell 3 spots to 8th, while Melbourne fell 2 spots and the Roos and Richmond fell 1 spot each.

The Line Fund dragged itself back into profitability this week, thanks mostly to the Pies' effort in the 1st half of their game and Freo's effort in the 2nd half of theirs. Collingwood also ensured that the Head-to-Head Fund landed the more important of its restrained duo of wagers, thus inching (centimetring?) the Fund a fraction closer to black ink.

Continuing Sunday's theme, this week I'm choosing to be unattached to the results that the round's football provides (we'll see how long that lasts ... I give it until about 8pm Friday night). This weekend there's less to be attached to anyway since we've no bet in three of the eight games and only a perfunctory 0.4% line bet in another. All told, we've just 2 head-to-head bets totalling just under 10% of the Head-to-Head Fund, and 5 line bets totalling almost 15% of the Line Fund.

Not just the usual one but two more Ratings systems to review this week (three if you consider the competition ladder to be a Ratings system too).

It's a Zen thing. Winning by losing; succeeding by failing; being right by being wrong; profiting by making losses. Either that or football betting is subject to a version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle such that you can only understand the statistical characteristics of AFL or accurately estimate teams' true victory probabilities, but not both. In which case, five years of analysing and writing about the former has been irretrievably detrimental to the latter.

Eight bets this week, five from the Head-to-Head Fund and three from the Line Fund. Four of the Head-to-Head bets are on short-priced favourites and the fifth is for only about 2% of the Fund on Port Adelaide at $2.65 in the last game of the Round. The largest wager is for nearly 15% of the Fund and is on the Round's shortest-priced team, the Cats, at $1.04. In total the Head-to-Head Fund has wagered a little over one-third of the Fund, mostly on the wagering equivalent of blue chip stocks though with decidedly more of a post-GFC than a pre-GFC risk of default.

Almost all of this week's movement on the MARS Rating ladder took place amongst teams in the bottom half.

Carlton protected Investors from the horror round by recovering from a slow start against the Swans to eventually win by almost 6 goals, but the Saints and the Dons precluded Portfolio profitability this week by going down by 21 and 28 points respectively. As a result, Investor Portfolios dropped by about 1.5c across the round.