2025 - Team Ratings After Round 4

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With every team now having played at least three games, it feels an appropriate time to look at how the various MoS Team Rating Systems view the teams.

One thing to bear in mind this season is that MoSSBODS has been optimised to produce better game total forecasts, which will, in my experience, necessarily lessen its ability to forecast game margins well. It will also lead, as we’ll see, to quite different assessments of the 18 teams. In short, don’t expect the extremely high levels of correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS that we’ve grown used to in recent years.

That difference can be seen immediately when we look at the two System’s team ratings at the end of Round 4.

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2025 - Round 5 : Checkpoint 1

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We have only our second nine-game round this week, and it feels as though it signals the end of the first portion of the season, after which we’ll have some reasonable ideas about the most likely and most unlikely Finalists.

Two-thirds of the nine games are expected to be won by less than three goals, one by four goals, another by about five goals, and the remaining game by about five-and-a-half goals. All of which you might expect to make head-to-head tipping quite challenging.

Let’s see what the models make of the new nine.

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2025 - Round 4 Results - Not Perfect, But It's Fine

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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%).

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2025 - Round 4 : MoSHPlay

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UPDATE FRIDAY 7PM

MoSHPlay is staying with the Cats by just over 6 goals, and has some slightly altered ideas about some of the Sunday games.

UPDATE THURSDAY 7PM

MoSHPlay is staying with the Pies by a goal for tonight and now has preliminary views about the remaining games in the round.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 7:15PM

MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game has the Pies winning by 6 points.

2025 - Round 3 Results - Basking in the Glow

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Almost 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.

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2025 - Round 3 : MoSHPlay

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UPDATE SUNDAY 5:30PM

MoSHPlay has finished at Dockers by 25 points.

UPDATE SATURDAY 7PM

MoSHPlay has finished at Hawks by 6 points and Lions by 9 points.

UPDATE FRIDAY 11:45PM

MoSHPlay has a couple of small adjustments to its still-preliminary views about the remaining games in the round.

UPDATE THURSDAY 7PM

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.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 7PM

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.

2025 - Round 2 Results - We Recalibrate, And Move On

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If 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.

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2025 - Round 2 : MoSHPlay

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UPDATE SUNDAY 12:30PM

MoSHPlay ends at Lions by 69 points.

UPDATE SATURDAY 6:45PM

MoSHPlay ends at Cats by 13 points.

UPDATE FRIDAY 11:45PM

Some very small changes to MoSHPlay’s Sunday forecasts.

UPDATE THURSDAY 7PM

MoSHPlay still has the Hawks by two goals tonight, and its preliminary thoughts about the remaining games in the round appear below.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 7:15PM

MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game is Hawthorn by 2 goals.

2025 - Round 2 : Overs/Unders

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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.

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2025 - Round 1 Results - Also, Continue As You Mean To Continue

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Tipping 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.

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2025 - Round 1 : MoSHPlay

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UPDATE SUNDAY 2:30PM

MoSHPlay finishes at GWS by 5 points.

UPDATE FRIDAY 7PM

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.

UPDATE FRIDAY 12:15AM

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.

UPDATE WEDNESDAY 6:45PM

Here are MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game.

It has the Blues winning by 5 points more than does MoSHBODS.

2025 - Round 1 : Overs/Unders

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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.

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2025 - Round 1 : Some Differences of Opinion

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This 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.

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