The Cats' and Giants' victories on the weekend mean that 30 of the last 36 Preliminary Finalists will have been teams that have had the double-chance, and also that we'll have 1st v 2nd in one of the Prelims, and 3rd v 4th in the other.

And then there were six ...

With the end of the home and away season we now confine ourselves to simulating only the remaining 9 games that make up the Finals series by applying the methodology as described in this blog.

In this week's 50,000 simulations of the remaining round of the 2017 AFL season, four teams saw material changes in their Top 8 chances, and four more saw their Top 4 chances change by more than 5% points.

Nine teams saw material changes to their Top 4 and/or Top 8 chances this week as the likely final ladder became just a little clearer, at least in parts.

This week saw some large changes in teams' chances for Top 4 and Top 8 spots as the number of rounds remaining shrank to three.

This week was an especially bad one for the finals hopes of Sydney, Melbourne, and Essendon, and a good one for those of Richmond, Geelong, the Western Bulldogs, and West Coast.

We've again seen some dramatic shifts in teams' estimated chances of finishing in the critical regions of the ladder.

With the 2017 season being such an open one, many teams' chances fluctuate significantly after every game.

With the 2017 season being such an open one, many teams' chances fluctuate significantly after every game.

This week's 50,000 simulations of the remainder of the 2017 AFL season again see eight teams' Finals chances move by more than 5% points.

The latest set of 50,000 simulations of the remainder of the 2017 AFL season saw 8 teams' Finals chances move by more than 5% points.

The latest set of 50,000 simulations of the remainder of the 2017 AFL season suggest that Round 13 provided relatively little fresh evidence for most teams to help answer the question "will they play finals?".

Every year I try to delay running ladder simulations until later in the season, and every year I wind up starting them earlier and earlier.

It seems a bit grandiose to dub the work summarised in this blog as a "simulation" since, with just three games to go, all that's been required to assemble it has been six probability assumptions: two for the Preliminary Finals and four for the possible Grand Final matchups.

Geelong are narrow favourites for the Flag according to the latest set of 100,000 simulation replicates based on MoSSBODS' Team Ratings and on its assessments of the remaining teams' abilities at the venues they might inhabit over the remainder of the Finals series.

You could argue - and I'd probably not have a strong rebuttal for you - that MoSSBODS has been overestimating the Crows' Flag chances for a while now, but whether or not that's true I think it's objectively apparent their unexpected loss last weekend caused those chances to reduce dramatically.

The outputs of this week's simulation run starkly highlight the differences between MoSSBODS' and the TAB Bookmaker's opinions about a number of teams that will play in the Finals.

Perhaps more than in any recent season, there's still of lot of "conditionality" in the final home-and-away season ladder, by which I mean that knowing where Team A finishes tells us a lot about the likely finishes of other teams.

A loss by GWS and a lacklustre performance by Geelong saw both teams' chances of the Minor Premiership decline significantly this weekend, in GWS' case into near non-existence.