Round 4 was another entirely acceptable round, with seven of the early-week favourites getting up, leading to MoSHPlay, Bookie Knows Best, the RSMP twins, and ENS_Linear all registering that score on the Head-to-Head Tipsters Leaderboard.
That left MoSHPlay a tip clear of the field on 29 from 35 (83%).
The all-Tipster score came in at 6.4 from 8, which took the season-long all-Tipster performance to 25.3 from 35 (72%).
Read MoreMoSHPlay is staying with the Cats by just over 6 goals, and has some slightly altered ideas about some of the Sunday games.
MoSHPlay is staying with the Pies by a goal for tonight and now has preliminary views about the remaining games in the round.
MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game has the Pies winning by 6 points.
MoSSBODS this week again disagrees with MoSHBODS on the Total for most games and by amounts ranging from 1 point to 7 points. On average, across all eight games, MoSSBODS is one point higher than MoSHBODS.
The two bookmakers are, on average, a couple of points higher.
Read MoreYet another eight game round this week, which includes five games expected to be decided by two goals or less, one that’s expected to be decided by 4-and-a-half goals, and two more that are expected to be won by about seven-and-a-half to eight goals.
Let’s see what the models make of them.
Read MoreAlmost as if Lady Stochastos reads this blog, in response to my lamentations last week, she went out of her way to smile on me this week.
The first sign of this is that MoSHPlay tipped all 8 winners this week, and was the only Head-to-Head Tipster to do so, although seven successes for Bookie Knows Best and a relatively low incidence of contrarianism meant that another of the MoS trio, as well as the RSMP twins, all scored seven from eight.
Most others scored six, with the exception of Home Sweet Home, who scored only five.
All of that left MoSHPlay one tip ahead of Bookie Knows Best and RSMP_Weighted at the head of the Leaderboard.
Read MoreMoSHPlay has finished at Dockers by 25 points.
MoSHPlay has finished at Hawks by 6 points and Lions by 9 points.
MoSHPlay has a couple of small adjustments to its still-preliminary views about the remaining games in the round.
MoSHPlay’s final thoughts about tonight’s game are now locked in (still the Dons by 3 points), and here are its thoughts about the remaining games in the round.
Its largest difference from MoSHBODS is currently 10 points in the Hawks v Giants game.
MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game has the Dons winning by 3 points, and represents only the fourth time this season that MoSHPlay has tipped a different winner to MoSHBODS. It’s 3 and 0 for the previous examples, which is why it’s three tips ahead on the Leaderboard.
MoSSBODS this week disagrees with MoSHBODS on the Total for each game by amounts ranging from 1 point to 6 points but, on average, has the same expected Total of 171 points per game.
That exactly matches the all-game average for the two bookmakers, even with a 20-point difference in the Lions v Cats game.
Read MoreWe’ve yet another eight-ninths of a full round coming up this week in this the Year of Making the Ladder Impossible to Interpret. Three of those eight games are currently forecasted to be settled by about a goal or less, two more by about two goals, two more by about four goals, and only one by about seven goals.
Let’s see what the models make of it all.
Read MoreIf ever you feel the need to learn a little more about yourself, spend time each week for a l-o-n-g time documenting the public performance of some activity you perform, and notice just how much less enjoyable it is when that performance has been less than what you’d hoped for. I’ve been doing this now for over 20 years, but the difference remains chasm-like.
Anyway, tipping winners was fairly challenging this week, with only 5 of 8 early-week favourites taking the points, which resulted in Bookie Knows Best, RSMP_Weighted, and ENS_Linear turning in the week’s best Head-to-Head Predictor results of just that 5 from 8.
The remaining Predictors scored only 3 or 4, which left the Leaderboard showing Bookie Knows Best, MoSHPlay_Marg, and RSMP_Weighted tied at the top on 14 from 19 (74%), just one tip ahead of ENS_Linear and RSMP_Simple.
Read MoreMoSHPlay ends at Lions by 69 points.
MoSHPlay ends at Cats by 13 points.
Some very small changes to MoSHPlay’s Sunday forecasts.
MoSHPlay still has the Hawks by two goals tonight, and its preliminary thoughts about the remaining games in the round appear below.
MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game is Hawthorn by 2 goals.
A clear feature of 2025 is, I think, going to be the different opinions that MoSHBODS and MoSSBODS will have on occasion now that they’re optimised for two different metrics - game margin MAE for MoSHBODS, and game total MAE for MoSSBODS.
This week, for example, they disagree by more than half a goal in three of the eight games, although their overall means differ by only a point.
The bookmakers, for their part, are very much in agreement, while MoSHBODS differs from them most of all in the Power v Tigers, Roos v Dees, and Dockers v Swans games and MoSSBODS in the Saints v Cats, and the Roos v Dees, and Dockers v Swans games as well.
Read MoreWe’ve eight-ninths of a full meal this coming weekend and three of those eight games are currently forecasted to be settled by about a goal or less. Three more have lines between 16.5 and 20.5, leaving just the Power v Tigers, and Lions v Eagles games as potential blowouts.
Let’s see what the models make of the eight this week.
Read MoreTipping winners wasn’t all that hard this week, with eight of the nine early week favourites taking the points. The moderate levels of contrarianism meant that no Tipster did better than eight, but none also did worse than six.
MoSHPlay_Marg was one of the four Tipsters scoring eight from nine and now leads Bookie Knows Best and the RSMP twins by a single tip.
Read MoreMoSHPlay finishes at GWS by 5 points.
MoSHPlay’s opinions about the Friday and Saturday games hasn’t changed, but it’s made some slight alterations to its thinking about the Sunday games with the emergencies now named.
Here are MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about the remainder of Round 1.
It seems that MoSHPlay might not stray too far from MoSHBODS this season.
Here are MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game.
It has the Blues winning by 5 points more than does MoSHBODS.
There’s certainly some divergence of opinion at the level of the individual game about the likely total score it will produce but, overall, only a couple of points difference in the all-game averages for the four forecasters.
One particularly interesting feature for me is how different are the MoS twins’ forecasts in a number of games, bearing in mind that, this season, MoSSBODS has been optimised to predict Game Totals and MoSHBODS to predict Game Margins.
Read MoreThis week we move from less than a half of a half of a round to a full round of nine games, and we get to see just how differently the models and the bookmakers are viewing the 18 teams at this point in the season.
Those bookmakers see seven of the nine games this week as being won by under three goals, an eighth game being won by just under three-and-a-half goals, and only a single game being won by just over eight goals. The nine-game average is just 15.3 points per game.
The MoS models have very different views about two of the games. Let’s take a look at which.
Read MoreA sample of two is no basis on which to make projections, but on a scale from terrible to terrific (both of which etymologically derive from terrere in Latin, meaning frighten) this week’s results were somewhere closer to the latter.
MoSHPlay_Marg was the only Head-to-Head Predictor to tip both winners, while the remaining Predictors tipped only one.
Read MoreHere are MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about the two games in Round 0.
It’s flipped on MoSHBODS in the Swans’ game, but supported its now market-opposite view on the Giants.
There’s not a lot to talk about in the Overs/Unders space this week with just the two games now scheduled and limited disagreement amongst the forecasters on the likely Totals in both.
Read MoreAs we all watch on and hope that Cyclone Alfred, like the good butler that is its namesake, makes itself similarly scarce and unobtrusive, many football forecasters are presented with the challenge of deciding what, if any, adjustments to make to their forecasts to cater for the possibility that the games in Brisbane and the Gold Coast go ahead but are severely rain-affected.
The bookmakers, of course, are some who face this challenge, but appear to be currently framing markets assuming very much the best. Those markets have the two Queensland teams as about 2 goal favourites, Sydney as narrow favourites, and the Giants v Pies game as a pick ‘em.
The MoS models, weather-blind as they are, are also forecasting as if nothing with happen.
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