It’s Wednesday, and all of the Totals markets are up at the TAB. Even after a decade at this caper, I feel certain I will never truly understand it.

After the announcement of the teams, MoSHPlay has lopped 8 points off MoSHBODS’ forecast victory margin for the Tigers, ending up with a Tigers by 7 forecast of its own.

Here’s what we have for … Wednesday’s and Thursday’s games (as if it wasn’t bad enough with a four day turnaround on all this stuff).

This week we’re back to low expected margins, with the nine-game average coming in at 15.4 points per game, which is roughly what we had for Round 3 and Round 4. We arrived at that figure of 15.4 via seven games with expected margins below 3 goals and two with expected margins of around 4 goals.

This week, it’s Collingwood’s turn, again, to fill top spot on the MoS Team Rating Systems, nudging GWS back into 2nd on both. Further down the table, Port Adelaide did enough on MoSSBODS to grab 3rd spot, but not quite enough to take 3rd from Geelong on MoSHBODS.

The Head-to-Head Tipsters averaged just over 50% between them this week, the best haul being MoSSBODS_Marg’s 6 from 9 and the worst Home Sweet Home’s 2 from 9.

We are, at last, close to convergence, as the bookmakers have finally conceded that lower scores are likely to be here for at least a while yet. This week, the MoS twins’ average expected total is only about half a goal lower than the bookmakers’.

Not a lot of movement from MoSHPlay away from MoSHBODS after the announcement of the Sydney and Melbourne teams. MoSHPlay is going Swans by 2.

Here’s what we have for Thursday’s and Friday’s games:

Taking the bookmakers’ estimated pre-game head-to-head probabilities as a guide, an average tipster should have predicted about 21 or 22 of the first 36 games, which comes out at a little over 5 per round. This week, making the same calculation, we should be expecting about 5.6 to 5.8 correct tips.

I was wrong: we were destined for another change of lead in the MoS Team Rating Systems, with both moving GWS back into top spot after their win over the Cats this weekend. Our previous leaders, the Cats, were shunted back to 3rd on MoSHBODS and 4th on MoSSBODS.

All up, a fairly difficult round in which to tip winners, but less so a difficult round to forecast margins.

The MoS twins’ opinions are again a little closer to the bookmakers’ this week, but they remain resolutely south in their totals forecasts.

Again, just Thursday’s and Friday’s games to consider so far, for which we have the following:

Not a lot of movement from MoSHPlay away from MoSHBODS after the announcement of the Sydney and Melbourne teams. MoSHPlay is going Swans by 2.

Last week we got to a bookmaker’s average expected margin of 15.2 points per game via eight contests with expected victory margins of roughly three goals or less and one of about five goals. This week we have four games with expected margins under nine points, three more with an expected margin of between roughly two and three goals, and the last two with expected margins around five to five-and-a-half goals - but the average is almost identical at 15.4 points per game.

It’s now three weeks and three different leaders for the MoS twins, though you get the feeling that this week’s leader, Geelong, might be there for a while.

Had you, on Thursday morning, offered me a best of six from nine in head-to-head tipping, a 20ish lowest MAE, and only mildly negative log probability scores for the head-to-head probability predictors, I’d almost certainly have accepted fairly rapidly.

The MoS twins’ opinions are a little closer to the bookmakers’ this week, but remain, for most games, more pessimistic about the prospects for high-scoring games.

The TAB has, again, only framed Total markets for Thursday’s and Friday’s games so far.