Sydney's loss to the Dogs this past round saw it shed Rating Points (RPs) on both ChiPS and MARS, relegating it to 4th place on ChiPS and 3rd on MARS. Fremantle and West Coast both moved up a single ladder position on both Ranking Systems, filling 2nd and 3rd places respectively on ChiPS, and 2nd and 4th on MARS. Hawthorn remains in 1st position under both Systems, its lead over Fremantle almost 8 RPs on ChiPS and over 10 RPs on MARS.

The Eagles victory over GWS provided the week's only collect for Investors, the 1.4c return from that game been much more than offset by 4.7c losses from the three other Head-to-Head wagers that were in play over the course of the round. Combined, the four bets snipped another 3.3c off the Head-to-Head Fund's price, which now stands at 92.3c, down 7.7c.

No better was the story for the Line Fund, its sole wager on the Roos falling more than 5 goals shy of troubling the TAB Bookmaker, stripping another 1.3c off the Line Fund's price as a consequence. That Fund is now down by almost 11c on the season and the Overall Portfolio down by 9.6c.

The Line Fund remains circumspect this week, venturing just a single wager on the Roos with 19.5 points start against the Hawks, but the Head-to-Head Fund sees value to varying degrees in four of the home teams, one favourite and three underdogs.

Hawthorn and Sydney both shed Rating Points (RPs) on the ChiPS and MARS Rating Systems this past weekend but remain in 1st and 2nd positions, respectively, on both Systems

It's an odd weekend's football when the three predicting progeny of the ChiPS System wind up as the best Head-to-Head, Margin and Probability predictors.

Today, not a post about football, but one about the history of one of MoS’ Margin Predictors, Shadow.

Neither the Head-to-Head nor the Line Fund algorithm think much of the TAB prices on offer this week with the result that they've put only 2.6% of the entire Portfolio at risk across the nine games

Hawthorn wrested back from Sydney its Number 1 ChiPS Ranking this weekend, bringing the ChiPS and MARS Rankings for the top two places back into alignment. Hawthorn are now, according to ChiPS, about a half-goal better side than Sydney at a neutral venue.

All nine favourites won this week, but only five of them were home teams, and only two of those five covered their respective spreads, so whilst it was a week of solid result tipping and margin predicting it was a not a week of profitable MoS wagering.

The relatively late withdrawal of Gary Ablett from the Suns team to play the Cats on Sunday provided a fascinating case study in how bookmakers value such pivotal players.

Many teams' latent abilities and inabilities were revealed this past weekend, reflected by the changes in their ChiPS and MARS Ratings and Rankings.

If you've had a poor round's wagering and tipping, I think you're due an appalling pun in your blog post title.

No sooner, it seems, at this time of year, does one round finish before the next one starts.

I have reason to be suspicious about seasons where MoS has been startling in Round 1, so I feel much more satisfied that the results for Round 1 of 2015 are pleasingly positive without being yell-from-the-rooftops amazing.

With the Essendon situation now resolved, at least for the time being, and the TAB consequently willing to field complete Head-to-Head and Line markets, MoS is now locked in for the first week of the season.

It's March already and I've not written a thing here about my plans for MoS for the upcoming season.

After Saturday's demolition of the Swans by the Hawks it's fitting that both ChiPS and MARS Rate the Hawks at season's-end as the Number 1 team - though, to be fair to ChiPS, it thought that was the case before the GF too.