MAFL 2010 : Round 1 Results

It's hard to make money when you're betting solely on favourites.

The Heuristic-Based Fund landed 3 bets from 4 this weekend but the one it lost was the longest-priced and therefore most vital one from a profitability viewpoint, so it finished down 0.6% on the weekend. This leaves those with the Recommended Portfolio down 0.06% for the season - a mere flesh wound at most.

That means strike one for the Shadow Fund. Two more consecutive losses will see it hand over control of the Heuristic-Based Fund to whichever heuristic is best performed at the end of Round 3.

The fate of the Heuristic Fund notwithstanding, favourites generally fared well this weekend, winning six of eight games though covering the spread in only four.

Here are the details of the round:

(Three of this weekend's games were won by 56 points, which surely must be some sort of record, albeit a boring one.)

On the tipping front there's not much to report. The surfeit of victories by favourites resulted in most tipsters bagging 6 from 8 for the round, the only exceptions being Chi, who managed 5, and Home Sweet Home, who managed just 4.

Next we turn our attention to the performance of our margin-tipping heuristics where we find that BKB has started the season exceptionally well, producing the round's lowest mean and median absolute prediction errors.

Chi fared next best on mean APE, registering 27.63, and LAMP finished 2nd on median APE, recording a very respectable 19.5, its mean APE suffering significantly at the hands of the Dogs' and the Crows' losses.

Finally, let's take a look at the performance of the HELP algorithm this weekend.

It recorded 5 wins from 8 on line betting, which is barely better than chance.

As well as measuring HELP's win-loss record this season, I'm also going to assess how well it assigns probabilities to its predictions by using using what are called probability scoring metrics. There are three such metrics that are commonly used to measure accuracy of a forecaster's probability assessments in light of actual results:

• The logarithmic score, which assigns a forecaster a score of 2+log(p) where p is the probability that he or she assigned to the winning team.
• The quadratic score, which assigns a forecaster a score of 1-(1-p)^2 where p is again the probability that he or she assigned to the winning team.
• The spherical score, which assigns a forecaster a score of p/sqrt(p^2 + (1-p)^2), where p is yet again the probability that he or she assigned to the winning team.

In a future blog I'll talk a bit more about the relative merits of each of these scoring approaches, but for now I'll just note that a naive forecaster, assigning a probability of 50% to every forecast, will return a score of 1 if the logarithmic measure is used, a score of 0.75 if the quadratic measure is used, and a score of about 0.71 if the spherical measure is used. These scores can be considered the minimum acceptable if we're to say that the HELP model is providing any guidance superior to coin-tossing.

Looking then at the scores for HELP in the last three columns of the table above, we can see that it performed across the weekend slightly worse than a naive forecaster would have, regardless of the scoring approach adopted. What hindered HELP this weekend was its assignment of an 87% probability to St Kilda winning on line betting and of a 90% probability to Adelaide doing the same. Its other incorrect forecast was that the Dogs would win on line betting, but it assigned a probability of just 59% to this outcome and so was not as severely punished for this error.

MAFL 2010 : Round 1

We're on.

From a wagering viewpoint, this season has started like most others, with the TAB Sportsbet bookie posting head-to-head odds more than a week before the first game and then leaving them unchanged for over a week. It's as if punters haven't yet realised the season's about to start. Indeed, as I type this, the odds are still what they were Monday a week ago.

MAFL, for its part, has also followed the early season script, wagering lightly, unwilling to risk much until the season's patterns have been established and calibrated. Only one Fund is active and only four bets have been made.

And so the cycle begins again for another season.

This year I've decided to do away with the need for readers of this blog to download PDFs to find out the details on wagers and results, so here instead are this week's wagering details, in-blog as it were:

As foreshadowed on the MAFL Online Twitter feed last week, we've four bets each of 5% of the Heuristic-Based Fund, tying most Investor's fates to the success of the Cats, the Lions, Port and the Dogs. The Cats are the shortest-priced at $1.18 and the Dogs are the longest-priced at $1.60, so there can be no suggestion that the Heuristic-Based Fund has subjected Investors to any substantial risk.

Amongst the remaining Funds, Hope will be released to wager commencing in Round 5 and all other Funds will be allowed off-leash one round later. Since all the Investors who've assembled their own portfolios this year have decided to weight the Heuristic-Based Fund zero, this week's Ready Reckoner is a simple one:

Clearly, no-one's going to be quaffing Moet on the strength of this weekend's results, but nor will anyone be stripping the lounge chairs to find loose change for food.

Investor profitability requires that at least 3 of the 4 wagered upon teams are successful and the Bulldogs must be among them.

Turning next to tips, you'll notice that HAMP and LAMP have been added to last year's cavalcade of heuristic tipsters.

As you can see, it's pretty much wall-to-wall consensus (the most common variety, of course), with almost every tip a nod to the favourite. The exceptions are Home Sweet Home, which has gone all contrarian in half of the games, and Chi, who's tipped the Roos to topple Port by a point, making it his Game of the Round.

HAMP and LAMP agree with Chi's game choice for Game of the Round but not with his tip for the winner. Bravely, ELO has plumped for the Hawks v Dees clash as its Game of the Round, oblivious to the fact that the TAB Sportsbet bookie has installed the Hawks as almost 5-goal favourites. That same bookie - and hence BKB - has opted for the Fremantle v Adelaide game as his Game of the Round (assuming that, when the line market posts, it's with one team or the other receiving 6.5 points start or fewer).

That leaves only one more set of predictions to reveal - those of the new HELP model.

I've decided to include the probability estimates alongside HELP's tips as I hope that tracking the calibration of HELP's tips will provide an interesting subject for discussion during the season ahead. To ensure that I can't be accused of blinding hindsight I'll put it on record now that I don't expect HELP to do well this year; on balance, I think it's probably been overfitted to previous data.

Well that's it for this blog. Remember that the first game of the season starts Thursday, not Friday, night. Investors can enjoy watching this game unfettered by financial considerations. Enjoy.

Now Open: This Year's Blog Readers' Competition

Last season a few of you took part in a competition in which participants had to predict the finishing order for all 16 teams and the winner, Dan, was the person whose finishing order was mathematically closest to the actual finishing order at the end of the home and away season. Not only were Dan's selections, overall, closest to the final ladder, but for 3 teams his selections were perfect: he had Geelong finishing 1st, St Kilda 2nd and Melbourne 16th.

So, how remarkable was Dan's getting 3 teams exactly correct? One way of answering that is to note that someone guessing completely at random would be expected to exactly match the ranking for 3 or more teams only 8% of the time. On that basis then there's some statistical evidence to reject the hypothesis that Dan tipped at random (which for those readers who know Dan and the depth of his footy knowledge will come as no surprise at all).

How many teams do you think a person selecting at random could expect to match exactly? For our 16 team competition, the answer is exactly 1. What if, instead, there were 1,000 teams in the competition - how many then might such a person expect to guess exactly? Remarkably the answer is again exactly 1.

In fact, whether there was 1 team or 1 million teams the expected number of exactly matched teams is 1. There's a nice proof of this, if you're feeling game, in this document where it's called the hat-check problem.

Anyway, this year I'll be running what I think is a more strategic variation of the competition I ran last year.

Here are the details:

• Each participant must select between 1 and 16 teams.
• For each selected team, he or she must predict where that team will rank on the competition ladder at the end of Round 22.
• It is permissible that more than one team is predicted to finish in the same ladder position.
• Participants will be assigned points for each team whose finishing position they've predicted. These points will be based on the absolute difference between the predicted and actual final rank of the team according to the following table.

So, for example, if a participant predicted that a team would finish 4th and they actually finish 7th, the absolute difference between the actual and predicted finish is 3 ladder positions, so the score for that team would be +1.

• The winning participant will be the one whose aggregate score is highest.
• Entries must be received by me prior to the centre-bounce for the first game of the season. Entries can be e-mailed to me at the usual address or can be posted as a comment to this blog.

In keeping with the tradition established last year, the winner will receive no monetary reward but will be feted in an end-of-season blog. Priceless.

A full example of how the scoring works might be helpful and is provided in the table below. The upper section of the table provides the final ladder for some imagined season (actually, it's last year's) and the lower section shows how the scoring would work for the alphabetically privileged Person A who decided at the start of the season to predict the finishing positions of just 3 teams. For his troubles he scored +31 points, this score bolstered by his correctly predicting that St Kilda would finish 1st.

The scoring mechanism for the competition this year encourages participants to provide predictions for all those teams that they feel they can peg to within 3 ladder positions since doing so will add to their final score.

This final table demonstrates that making more predictions won't always be better than making fewer, especially if one of the extra predictions winds up being significantly erroneous.

The competition is free to enter and you don't need to be a Fund Investor to participate. So, if you're thinking about putting in an entry, you might as well have a go.

Tips for Tipping

You've been forced to enter a tipping competition for a sport you know nothing about and, frankly, have no interest in adding to the list of sports you know something about. The competition is standard in that it rewards you with 1 point for a correct tip and no points for an incorrect tip. Your 15 minutes of research, which represents the entirety of the time you're willing to spend on the endeavour, reveals that the home team consistently wins about 58% of games season after season.

Given that knowledge, which if any of these three strategies is superior:

1. Match the expected home team/away team mix in your tips, that is, tip the home team 58% of the time
2. Recognise that you have no basis on which to favour one team over another so tip the home team about 50% of the time
3. Be lazy and always tip the home team

Make a mental commitment to your answer and try to come up with at least an intuitively appealling logic for it.

Option 1 has much to recommend it. If nothing else it means that you'll tip home teams about as often as they tend to win (and, consequently, also tip away teams about as often as they tend to win). Following this strategy you can expect to be right 0.58 x 0.58 + 0.42 x 0.42 = 51.3% of the time. Well that is better than chance.

Option 2 is now looking a little sick. Using it, you can expect to be right 0.58 x 0.5 + 0.42 x 0.5 = 50% of the time. That's worse than option 1, so scrub this strategy from the list.

Option 3, as it turns out, reigns supreme amongst this set of options since it will make you right, on average, 58% of the time. Surely that'll be enough to convince some people to believe that you know quite a bit about the sport.

Bear this analysis in mind when you're reviewing the tipping performances of the experts in the papers during the season ahead. The figure of 58% is about right for the proportion of home teams that have won recently in the AFL (if you count draws as one-half a correct tip - it's a trifle lower if you count them as losses). The figures for the past four seasons are:

• 2006 - 58.4%
• 2007 - 58.1%
• 2008 - 57.3%
• 2009 - 57.8%

Actually, even if the expert you're looking at is tipping at better than 60%, that performance still isn't particularly impressive because, in the AFL, there's an even better strategy than reflexively tipping the home team, though its historical performance has been more variable. That strategy is to pick the favourite. Overall, they've won about 65% of the time since the start of 2006. The individual figures for each season are:

• 2006 - 64.3%
• 2007 - 64.6%
• 2008 - 72.0%
• 2009 - 65.9%

This pick-the-favourite strategy has another endearing feature to go with its sterling performance: it works well from round 1 of the season. For the first four rounds of seasons 2006 to 2009 the strategy has tipped at 68%, and for the first eight it's tipped at 66%. In contrast, a pick-the-home-team strategy has fared badly in the first four rounds of these same seasons, landing only 52% of winners.

So this year, if you insist on trying to out-tip the guys whose salaries depend on their tipping prowess, whenever you're unsure about a tip just plump for the favourite.

Fund Profiles and Recommended Weightings for 2010

A few blogs ago (and isn't that a distinctly 21st-century measure of time?) I revealed some details about the six Funds that will be operating this season. Three Funds are backing up from last season on the strength of double-digit returns, while three more are embarking on their rookie wagering seasons.

Two Funds from 2009 have been delisted, the Chi-Squared Fund and the Line Redux Fund, both due to performances that, analysis suggests, were more likely due to intrinsic incompetence than to transient misfortune.

Here's a summary of the six Funds:

Only the new, Heuristic-based Fund will operate from the start of the season, as all other Funds, experience suggests, need four or five rounds of observation before they become sufficiently learned to be entrusted with money.

The Hope Fund will, as it did last year, sit out the first four rounds of the season, and Prudence, New Heritage, Hope, Shadow and ELO-Line will all refrain from betting until Round 6.

All the heuristics we use for tipping - and now for wagering - assume that teams play every week, so they only produce tips for the home-and-away season. As such, the Shadow and Heuristic-based Funds will stop wagering once the finals roll around. All other Funds will continue to wager through to the end of the season.

This year, a pinch of sophistication - though I guess sophistication should really come in soupcons, not pinches - has gone into the determination of Recommended weightings for some of the Funds. Portfolio analysts use a measure called the Sharpe ratio to rate assets. The Sharpe ratio divides an asset's expected return by a measure of the variability of that return. Variability of return represents risk and additional risk needs to be offset by additional expected return. Put another way, assets with larger Sharpe ratios are to be preferred.

The optimal weightings for the New Heritage, Hope and Prudence Funds were derived by calculating (a simplified version of) the Sharpe ratio for portfolios comprising different mixes of these three Funds, using the wagering and game results data for seasons 2006 to 2009. As it turned out, a one-third / one-third / one-third mix was very close to optimal for these three Funds.

Shadow's, ELO-Line's and the Heuristic-based Fund's weightings were determined with, how do I put this, less scientific rigour. I felt happy giving Shadow the same 20% weighting as New Heritage, Hope and Prudence, largely because ... well, because 15% seemed too little and 25% too much (and we did actually identify Shadow as a potential basis for wagering and tracked its performance last season, so it's existence is not purely a manifestation of glorious hindsight).

That left 20% to be shared between the ELO-based and Heuristic-based Funds and, heck, they're both new and they're both speculative, so I assigned them 10% each. (In this respect, MAFL is a bit like most of the disciplines and systems of beliefs I know: thrillingly deep and cogent in its best parts, but discomfitingly shallow in the gaps.)

Anyway, as ever, please feel free to mix your own brew of Funds for your own portfolio. As you now know, your portfolio choices are unlikely to be any less defensible than mine.

Now let's look at each Fund a little more closely.

The New Heritage Fund

The New Heritage Fund, you might recall, was conceived as an ironic anti-Fund, the yin to the Heritage Fund's yang.

Last season the Fund performed admirably returning around 30%, a performance that it would have matched or nearly matched in each of the previous 3 seasons had it been in operation. What's more, but for a nasty final four weeks of the regular season last year, the Fund could have produced better than a 70% return.

This Fund has cranked out profits due to a relatively high level of wagering activity - it bets on about 70% of games after Round 5 - and large average bet size allied with a solid ability to pick more than two winners for every loser.

Definitely a keeper, I'd contend.

The Prudence Fund

If Prudence played cards it'd look at its hand 4 or 5 times each time before betting and then just bet the minimum. While it'd not make the most of its cards, it'd still grind out a return.

Prudence, on average, bets on about 5 games per round and wagers only about one-half the amount that, on average, New Heritage does. Its win rate is similar to that of New Heritage, so the smaller and fewer wagers it makes translates into consistently lower Fund returns.

Still, an average return of 10% per annum with minimal risk per bet and a four-year unbroken run of profits surely warrants inclusion in anyone's portfolio.

The Hope Fund

The Hope Fund's average wager is about the same size as Prudence's but that's about the extent of the similarities between these two Funds other than that their names are both nouns.

In a typical season Hope will only bet on about one-quarter of the games available to it and these bets will tend to be on teams priced around $3.50 to $4.00. Its average success rate of around 60% is enough to drive its average return to just over 40%, comfortably the highest amongst the three Funds returning from last year.

Last year the Fund's win rate was well below average; a return to trend would be most welcome.

The Shadow Fund

The Shadow Fund can be expected to wager on just over one-half of the games that are available to it and should collect on about 70% of these bets.

Historically it has made returns for entire seasons ranging in size from around 15% to 50% and averaging a little under 40%, partly because its fixed bet size of 5% allows it to convert its win rate into profits.

It is, though, a Fund untested in the wild, so caution should be exercised before approaching it with cash. I suggest you try it on small morsels to begin with.

The Heuristic-based Fund

This is a Fund with an ugly, utilitarian name and a complex wagering strategy, so it starts life with a weighty list in the "cons" column. Foremost amongst the "pros", however, is a string of impressive returns and, on this basis alone, it deserves a run this year.

The Fund has a win rate to rival Prudence's, but bets a little more often and a lot more heavily than Pru does, which has resulted in returns of between about 8% and 80% over the past four seasons.

I did explain the Fund's wagering strategy in an earlier blog and I refer you to that posting for more detail and an example, but I'll summarise the philosophy here. The Heuristic-based Fund chooses an heuristic to follow and wagers on that heuristic's tips when it tips the home team until such time as this strategy has caused it to lose money in two successive rounds.

At that point the Fund looks to see which heuristic would have provided the greatest return from wagering on its home team only tips since the start of the season. It then swaps its allegiance to that heuristic, although a swap might actually be a continuation of supporting the current heuristic if that heuristic has the best season-long record despite having lost money in the two most recent rounds. This new heuristic is then followed until such time as it loses for two consecutive rounds, and so on.

To start off proceedings, the Heuristic-based Fund follows Shadow in Rounds 1 and 2.

(Hmmm ... three paras for a description of a Fund's underlying philosophy. No wonder the Fund has a Recommended weighting of just 10%.)

The ELO-based Fund

Another uninspiringly named Fund, though this time without the attraction of an unblemished record of achievement.

The ELO-based Fund uses as its basis the margins of victory derived from my MARS team ratings.

This Fund, when run using data for the past four seasons, bets about as often as the New Heritage Fund, but has a lower win rate, a smaller average bet size but a higher average price per bet. All up this has produced an average Fund return about the same as that of New Heritage but with much more variability, so variable in fact that this Fund would actually have lost money in 2006 had we been using it.

Doubtless, and probably illogically, I'd have felt differently about allowing this Fund to operate this year had that losing season been more recent, but I now profoundly understand how difficult it is to win money wagering on handicap, so I'm willing to overlook this Fund's juvenile record and focus on its more recent successes. (Psychologists have a name for this bias: it's called the Recency Effect and it is said to afflict anyone who puts too much emphasis on recent events or data. Come to think of it, if the best they can come up with as a name for this phenomenon is "Recency Effect" then I don't feel so bad about "Heuristic-based" and "ELO-based".)

*~*~*~*~~*~*~*~*

That the full skinny on all the Funds.

As always, please remember that past performance is no indicator of future returns.

MAFL 2010 - The Tradition Continues

Welcome to MAFL 2010.

This year MAFL celebrates its 5th season of faithfully frustrating and sporadically enriching Investors. As I trust you've now come to expect, MAFL changes every year and, indeed, this year's MAFL is a little different from last year's.

E-mail Subscription
MAFL Online now offers an e-mail subscription facility. To subscribe, click on the link in the "Subscribe via email" section at top right then follow the prompts and provide your e-mail address. Sometime after you've done that an e-mail will arrive in your Inbox containing a link that you'll need to click to confirm your subscription.

Thereafter on those days where there's something new on the MAFL Online site (and only on those days) you'll be sent an e-mail containing the first few hundred characters of the new posting and a link to the MAFL Online site so you can, if you want, come and read the entire posting.

Delisting of MAFL Stats
Another change this year is the retirement of the MAFL Stats site. I'm not sure whether it was the mention of "Stats", the turgid nature of the postings, or the misfortune of being the junior and lesser-updated MAFL site, but whatever it was, by season's end MAFL Stats was generating less web traffic than you'd see for a site offering weight-loss tips to Sumo wrestlers.

All of the static content that was on MAFL Stats has been transferred to MAFL Online (so clearly I'm not buying the "turgid" content angle) and I'll selectively move some of the dynamic content across to MAFL Online - such as the weekly ladder, Alternative Premierships and MARS Ratings - as the season progresses.

Fund Changes
MAFL will offer six Funds this year, five wagering on the head-to-head and one wagering on the handicap market.

Head-to-Head Funds
Three of the head-to-head Funds - New Heritage, Prudence and Hope - will be repeat-offenders from 2009, and two will be new Funds. One of the new Funds, The Shadow Fund, will be based on the tips of the Shadow heuristic and will level-stake wager commencing in Round 6. Each wager will be 5% of the Fund and bets will only be made on a game if Shadow is tipping the home team, actual or notional.

The other new head-to-head Fund, which for now I'll call the Heuristic Fund since I'm lacking in inspiration this early in the new year and so have nothing better to offer, will also be heuristic-based. It will promiscuously bound from heuristic to heuristic, remaining faithful to a single heuristic only until such time as wagering on that heuristic's (home team only) tips has cost the Fund money for 2 successive rounds after which time the Fund will transfer its affection to the heuristic with the season's best home-team wagering performance at that point. It too will level-stake wager, risking 5% of the Fund in each bet, and will wager on the Shadow Fund's home team tips in Round 1.

To more fully explain the Heuristic Fund, let me walk through a hypothetical few rounds of wagering:
Round 1: The Heuristic Fund wagers 5% on the home team, true or notional, in any game where the Shadow Fund has tipped the home team to win.

Round 2: The Heuristic Fund again wagers 5% on the home team, true or notional, in any game where the Shadow Fund has tipped the home team to win.
(In short, the Heuristic Fund wagers will mirror those of the Shadow Fund for, at least, Rounds 1 and 2.)

Round 3: Assume that the Heuristic Fund lost money in Rounds 1 and 2 by following Shadow's tips. In that case the Heuristic Fund would switch allegiances to whichever heuristic had the best (notional) wagering performance at the end of Round 2 assuming that level-stake wagers had been placed on all of the heuristic's home team tips during the season. For Round 3 the Heuristic Fund would wager on the home team tips of this, the currently most successful, heuristic. (If two or more Funds happen to be equal on performance to date I'll break the tie by selecting the heuristic with the stronger overall tipping performance amongst the 13 tipsters we followed in 2009.)
Let's assume that the Ride Your Luck heuristic had started the season very well and so the Heuristic Fund switched to it for Round 3.

Round 4: The Heuristic Fund would again wager on the home team tips of the Ride Your Luck heuristic.

The Fund would continue to wager on the home team tips of Ride Your Luck until such time as this caused the Fund to lose money for two successive rounds at which point the Fund would again switch heuristics to whichever heuristic was at that point most successful to that point in the season. Simple really. (Don't worry too much as this Fund will have a low weighting in the Recommended Portfolio. I just wanted to make sure we had a bit more happening in the first few weeks of the season than we did in the last few seasons.)

Following this strategy would have made money in each of the seasons 2006 to 2009 with profits ranging from 1.5 to 16 units. That said, of course, our 2010 mileage may vary.

The one head-to-head Fund that has not made the list for 2010 is the Chi-squared Fund. No matter how generous I was in adjusting its 2009 performance to allow for the effects of Dame Misfortune, the Chi-squared Fund reminded me of the Heritage Funds of 2007 and 2008 but without the profit. So, this year, the MAFL Mascot will revert to being merely a tipster unless his tipping performance is so outstanding that it gets him a run for The Heuristic Fund at some point in the season.

Line Fund
The Line Redux Fund of 2009 is another casualty for this season, replaced by a Fund based on the margin predictions of ELO, which for now I'll call the ELO Line Fund (I told you before, right now I'm not doing inspired).

This Fund will level-stake wager at 5% and only when the tipped margin is such that the home team, actual or notional, is predicted to win on handicap.

*****

And that, for now, is that.

More to come in the weeks ahead ...

Second-Placed Cats Spoil the Symmetry (Not That They Care)

Ah well, the better side on the day and all that. Congrats to the Cats but they can count themselves very lucky indeed as a gracious coach admitted in his post-game address.

The Saints' lack of finish in front of goal cost Investors dearly this weekend, the undefended goal-after-the-siren merely making their frustration complete as it consigned their line bet to the same fate as their multitudinous head-to-head bets.

Those with the Recommended Portfolio wound up losing 6.1% on the GF to finish the season up by about 1.4%. MIN#001 lost 6.3% to finish up 5.9% for the season, MIN#015 lost 5.9% to finish up 5.2% on the season, and MIN#017 lost just 4% to finish up 33.4% on the season. So, as we knew before the Granny started, profit for everybody. Just not as much as I'd hoped.

Investors: please advise me by e-mail what you'd like done with your Funds.

We now enter the chart and table section of this blog. Prepare to scroll.

Here's a chart showing the game-by-game performance of every Investor's Portfolio:

As you can see by those dips on the far right, Investors lost money over the course of the Finals this year, in stark contrast with years past.

Next, here's a chart giving the round-by-round summary:

Turning our attention to the individual Funds, we start with a table showing each Fund's performance with every team across the entire season:

And we follow this with a table summarising this data by team:

Lastly, we finish with a round-by-round summary:

On tipping BKB finishes the year with 125 from 185 (68%), ELO with 124 from 185 (67%), and Chi with 118 from 185 (64%). If offered these stats at the start of the season I'd have accepted Chi's and leapt at ELO's.

On line betting, ELO and Chi both finish with a loss, leaving Chi on 85 from 185 for the season (and 1 from 9 in the finals), and ELO on 103 from 185. Level-stake wagering on ELO's line bets would have yielded 9.49 units of profit across the season. Level-stake wagering on Chi's line bets would have yielded a peptic ulcer.

Chi's final Mean APE is 30.6 points per game, beaten by ELO's 28.7 points per game, in turn edged out by BKB's 28.0 points per game. On Median APE ELO is the best of the three. Its 23 points beats BKB's 23.5 points. Chi's 26 points places him third.

This Week We're All Saints

After 341 wagers across 184 games Investors with the Recommended Portfolio have effectively offered the TAB Sportsbet bookie a double-or-quits proposition.

If the Saints win on Saturday, their profit will lift from about 7.5% of Initial Funds to about 15.1%; if the Saints lose the entire year's effort will amount to a profit of about 1.4%.

The story for other Investors is different but they too are now all guaranteed a profit for season 2009 ranging in size from 5% to 33%.

Head-to-head bets on the Saints range from Chi-squared's 14.1% to Prudence's 3.2%, and Line Redux has its customary 5% on the Saints +8.5 points.

The bookies' re-estimation of the relative chances of the Saints and the Cats on the basis of just one game each has been quite dramatic and, in my view, excessive. This time last week I calculated that we should expect a Saints price of $1.80 to $1.95 if they were to take on the Cats in the GF. We got them at $2.30.

Our Ready Reckoner is as follows:

Those are fairly dramatic swings for just a single game. Still, it is the Granny ...

On tipping this week, a little explanation is required.

Not for Chi, who's on the Saints by 3, nor for BKB, who's on the Cats, but for ELO, who's on the Saints by 31 despite the fact that Geelong have a marginally better MARS rating (1,043.3 to the Saints' 1,043.1) and there's no true home team this week.

All year I've been selecting ELO's tips using a model, fitted to the results for seasons 2000 to 2008, that converts MARS ratings into predicted margins and takes into account true and notional home team status. This model, in the finals especially, places a great deal of weight on the home team even if that team is only the notional home team. The logic behind this is that, in the absence of a true home team, the notional home team - such as the Saints this week - finished higher on the competition ladder.

So, for ELO, the Saints by 31 points it is.

On Line Betting this means that Chi and ELO are also both on the Saints.

(Incidentally Chi's Mean APE is 30.7 points per game and his Median APE is 26.5 points. Any hopes of a sub-30 point Mean APE are long-gone, but around 30.5 points per game - which is possible if the Saints do win by around 3 points - is still a respectable outcome, unlike say his wagering performance.

ELO's Mean APE is 28.6 points per game and its Median APE is 23.0 points, respectable results both. With a Saints victory of the optimum magnitude - 31 points - the Mean APE could even finish below 28.5 points per game.

BKB's Mean APE is 28.1 points per game and its Median APE is 23.5 points, remarkably still trailing ELO's.)

Cold Pies Disappoint Investors

The neatness of the 2009 AFL Finals series continues, as the teams finishing 3rd and 4th on the home and away season ladder depart in the Prelims as scripted, leaving 1st to play 2nd in the GF.

A shame then that we wagered against such a tidy outcome.

St Kilda's head-to-head win and line betting loss, coupled with head-to-head and line betting losses for the Pies, left most Funds and Portfolios in red ink for the weekend.

New Heritage was the only Fund to increase in value, rising about 3.5% on 1 successful wager from 2. It's now made 99 bets during the season, 74% of which have been winners. Prudence was the only other Fund to land a winning wager, notching 1 from 2, but nonetheless shed a little under 2% in value. It's made 93 bets this season, winning 73% of them.

Chi-squared dropped furthest this weekend, frittering almost 16% on the Pies. It's made 42 bets this season, winning just 48%. Hope, another Pie-eyed Fund (gotta get these puns out now - time's running out this season), dropped a little over 5%. It's made 34 bets this season, winning exactly half.

Line Redux contrived to finish on the wrong side of both line markets this weekend (as did Chi and ELO), causing it to drop 10% of its initial value. It's made 73 bets this season and won 52% of them.

So, the Recommended Portfolio drops a little under 6%, leaving it up about 7.5% for the season. In other Portfolio news, MIN#001 and MIN#015 both dropped around 5-6% leaving them up about 11-12% on the season, and MIN#017 recorded the weekend's only Portfolio increase, rising about 3.5% to be up 37% on the season.

On tipping, Chi and ELO scored 1 from 2 and BKB scored 2 from 2. BKB and ELO are now tied on 124 from 184 (67%), 6 tips ahead of Chi on 118 (64%).

Pies To Spring the Upset?

It's that time of year when I wonder whether or not to ignore home ground advantage.

This week's Geelong v Pies clash is, as you probably know, being played at the MCG. Geelong, as the team finishing higher on the ladder, are the AFL's notional home team. But the G is Collingwood's home ground, not Geelong's (although it must be beginning to feel like a second home for the Cats and their supporters).

In the end, I've stuck with tradition and coded for this as a home game for the purposes of the MAFL models.

As a consequence of this coding, all the Funds, New Heritage excluded, can consider only Pies wagers. As it turns out, all of them, including New Heritage if only barely, have accepted the invitation to punt on a Pie.

Across the two games, New Heritage has 2 wagers totalling around 11.5% of the Fund, though only the one on St Kilda is of any consequence. Prudence also has two wagers, totalling almost 8.5% of the Fund in its case and biased slightly towards the Saints in size if not in risk.

Hope has a single wager of around 5% on the Pies, Chi-squared also has just a single wager on the Pies, though his is for 15.5% of the Fund (the phrase "death or glory" springs immediately, unbidden, to mind).

Line Redux has a 5% wager on each of the Saints, giving 17.5 start, and the Pies, receiving 15.5.

Here's what the Ready Reckoner resembles:

On tipping, we've unanimity in support of the Saints, but a 2-1 split for the Pies in the other game.

For line betting, Chi and ELO are both on the Saints and the Pies.

To Which Teams Do Investors Owe Thanks?

For the next in our series of season-in-review pieces, I thought we'd take a look at how each of the Funds and the Recommended Portfolio has fared wagering on each of the teams.

On the left, I've shown the performance as bar charts, each with a range of -55% to +55% (the blue line is at 0); on the right, I've shown the equivalent numbers.

Adelaide

Most Funds and the Recommended Portfolio made a small profit on Crows-wagering this season, though Chi-squared did manage to time its wagers to produce a smallish loss.

Brisbane Lions

New Heritage read the Lions' performances best of all and rose by nearly 8c on the strength of Lions-based wagering. Prudence eked out a small gain, but Hope, Chi-squared and Line Redux all made losses, which meant that the Recommended Portfolio made an overall small loss.

Carlton

Carlton were one of only two teams that brought pestilence to all who wagered upon her. Hope and Line Redux were smart enough to completely ignore the Blues, but Prudence and, especially, New Heritage and Chi-squared foundered upon the Blues' rocky form. Consequently, the Recommended Portfolio registered a loss from Blues betting - only one of three losses that it registered on teams making the final 8.

Collingwood

So far, only Prudence has failed to profit from the Pies' successful season. For New Heritage, the Pies have generated the largest return of any team, and for the Recommended Portfolio they're currently the fifth most profitable team.

Essendon

Wagering on the Dons this year has been all about timing, and Hope's really had it, Line Redux has had it a little, and the rest - Chi-squared especially - haven't had it at all. For the Recommended Portfolio, Essendon has been one of only six unprofitable teams.

Fremantle

Though they've not pleased their fans much this year, the Dockers have certainly pleased Investors. Every Fund has cranked out a profit wagering on them, Hope most of all, making Freo the third most profitable team for those with the Recommended Portfolio.

Geelong

Geelong is another team that has been bounteous for all who've had faith, which for MAFL has been every Fund except Hope. New Heritage has been particularly astute in pouncing on the Cats, generating almost 12c of incremental value from their victories.

Hawthorn

For New Heritage, Prudence and Hope, the Hawks have been a source of modest profit, but for Chi-squared and (very much) for Line Redux, the opposite has been true. In fact, Line Redux has destroyed almost one-half of its initial value on the shoals of Hawks' line results. As a consequence, the Hawks have produced the worst performance of any team for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio, destroying almost 11c worth of initial value.

Kangaroos

The Roos have generally been a team of little import as far as MAFL wagering has been concerned. New Heritage and Line Redux have squandered a little on them, but Prudence, Hope and Chi-squared have profited a little, resulting in a small gain from the Roos for the Recommended Portfolio.

Melbourne

Traditionally, MAFL Investors have revelled in those teams that have managed to produce the occasional, lucrative, at-home victory, which is exactly what the Dees have done this year. Only Hope missed out on the party, while, in contrast, Chi-squared benefited to the tune of over 27c. Overall, Melbourne generated the largest value of any team for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio, contributing almost 9c of incremental value.

Port Adelaide

Port are another team that have disappointed fans but thrilled Investors. Every Fund made money wagering on them, Chi-squared and Line Redux most of all, making them the second most profitable of all the teams for the Recommended Portfolio.

Richmond

As far as Investors are concerned the Tigers couldn't even time their wins advantageously this season. Every Fund lost money wagering on them bar the Hope Fund, which avoided loss by avoiding wagering on them. With a net loss of almost 8c, the Tigers were the second greatest value destroyers for the Recommended Portfolio of any team. Chi-squared, in particular, found them to be an unprofitable addiction.

St Kilda

Aside from a brief period late in the home-and-away season it's been hard to place losing wagers on the Saints, as every Fund but Hope has discovered. The Recommended Portfolio owes 5c worth of its gain to the performances of the Saints.

Sydney

Only Prudence and Line Redux escaped the cash vortex that was Swan-betting this season. Consequently, the Recommended Portfolio dropped over 7c thanks to the Swans, the third-highest loss amongst all the teams.

West Coast

Hope and Line Redux timed their investments in the Eagles far better than any other of the Funds, so well in fact that they were able to cover the losses from New Heritage, Prudence and Chi-squared and so create a small net profit for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio.

Western Bulldogs

The Dogs have been one of only three teams on which every Fund has wagered and returned a profit, though in Chi-squared's case the profit is so minuscule that it must be measured with a microscope. Overall, the Recommended Portfolio owes almost 4c of its incremental to the efforts of the Dogs.

Another Week Goes to Script

It's taken two weeks, six games and two remarkable comebacks to give Investors a perfect finals record and recoup all of the losses they suffered in Round 22.

This weekend, the respectively comfortable and miraculous wins of the Dogs and the Pies cranked New Heritage up 9%, Prudence up 1.5%, and Line Redux up 4.5%, elevating the Recommended Portfolio by 3% and the other Portfolios by between 3% and 9%.

That leaves the Recommended Portfolio up a tick over 13% on the season, and the other Portfolios up by amounts ranging from 16% to 34%, which surely means that only a suicidal wagering flurry from New Heritage or Chi-squared could drag any of the Portfolios back into loss over the remainder of the season.

Since we're nearing the end of the season it's time to start reviewing some of the broader trends we've witnessed this year, starting with a look at how the Funds have performed relative to the expectations I set in the Fund Profiles document I issued pre-season.

First, consider New Heritage, which is up almost 34% on the season. It's bet on 53% of games, a little less than I expected, won 74% of those bets, which is at the upper end of my expectations, made bets averaging 8.7% of the Fund, slightly higher than I predicted, and recorded an ROI of 4%, which is at the upper limit of my predictions. Gotta be happy about all that.

Next, Prudence. It's also showing a profit for the season - almost 16% - and its activity and performance levels are all within the advertised ranges. Two votes for happiness.

Then, Hope. It's up a whopping 54% even though its win rate is slightly lower than I'd expected. Bet frequency and average bet size have both been within forecast ranges, but ROI has been a massive 40.5%, shattering the upper limit of my most optimistic forecasts. I'll forgive a Fund that outlays less than I expect if it can generate returns like that from what it does outlay. Happiness 3-0.

Line Redux has overcome a mid-season slump that saw it drop briefly below 79c at the end of Round 12 before rebounding to reach its current value of just under $1.15, its highest value for the season so far. The Fund has wagered a little less often, won a little less frequently and wagered slightly more on average than I anticipated, all of which has produced an ROI below the minimum of my indicated range. Still, a double-digit profit is unsneezeworthy, so add one more to the happiness tally.

Lastly, and undoubtedly leastly, we come to the Chi-squared Fund. As I type this, Chi has only moments ago quietly vacated the space at the left of my feet, clipping his way down the wooden floorboards of our hallway to find a bed somewhere else. I suppose if any living thing's going to sense negative energy it'd be something named Chi wouldn't it?

This year he bet about as often and about as much per bet as I'd foreseen, but won considerably less often than I'd budgeted for, leaving him down over 43% on the season and, consequently, with an ROI on the red side of bad.

Essendon, Sydney and Richmond were all significant contributors to Chi's demise. The Dons cost him almost 25c in winning just 1 of 3 wagers; Richmond cost him another 23c by winning just 1 of 4 wagers; and the Swans lopped off about another 27c by also winning just 1 of 4 wagers.

A consolation point then for unhappiness but still an overwhelming victory for the punting pleasure of all Investors.

Moving on to tipping, ELO maintained its perfect finals tipping record with 2 from 2 this weekend, taking it to 123 from 182 (68%) for the season. BKB and Chi managed only 1 from 2, which leaves BKB at 122 (67%) and Chi at 117 (64%), still creditable performances in each case.

On Line Betting, ELO also sports a perfect 6 from 6 finals record, putting it now up by 12.89 units for the season on level-stake wagering. Chi registered a blank this week and is now just 1 from 6 for the finals. It's not been a happy year for those following a line betting strategy based on Chi's margin tips (unless such a strategy had a strong contrarian element).

Dogs on Friday; Pies on Saturday; Rest on Sunday

Oh what a fickle bunch we Investors are forced to be. This week we'll cheer if the Dogs and the Pies are victorious; last week the cheers were on the other ... well, lips I guess.

Just three Funds are active this week, New Heritage, Prudence and Line Redux.

New Heritage has an 11.8% wager on the Dogs at $1.25 and a 5.2% wager on the Pies at $2.15. I'm sure there's a good reason why the Pies are underdogs, but I'm yet to discover it. Prudence has 5.9% on the Dogs, and Line Redux has 5% on the Dogs giving 26.5 points start.

All of which yields the following Ready Reckoner:

On tipping there's contention in only one of the two contests. In the Dogs v Crows game, BKB, Chi and ELO are all tipping a Dogs win, whereas in the Pies v Lions game, BKB and Chi are tipping the Crows, but ELO's tipping the Pies.

Finally, on line betting, Chi's tipping Brisbane and Adelaide, ELO the Dogs and Collingwood.

A Welcome Regression

Entitlement's a dangerous feeling to harbour as a punter, as sporting events will always unfold as they wish, oblivious to how earlier outcomes might have treated your finances.

So, I'll not claim for a moment that I felt we were entitled to a series of favourable outcomes this weekend to redress the tragicomedy that was last weekend's wagering. Instead, I'll draw upon the nomenclature of the statistician and suggest that what we saw this weekend was an example of "regression to the mean", which, broadly, is the label attached to the phenomenon of witnessing a 'more normal' outcome directly after having witnessed a more extreme one.

It's a phenomenon with a proud history and one that we're all exposed to regularly.

For example, a shambolic experience at a restaurant is more likely to be followed by a more pleasurable one - if only you can bring yourself to return to the same restaurant. And, in a sporting context, it's how you explain the inevitable decline in performance of the previous year's Rookie of the Year.

The logic of regression to the mean is very straightforward. Each time you experience some repeatable event you experience just one of a number of possible "outcomes" for that event. If you could array the set of these possible outcomes you'd find that they tended to follow a vaguely bell-shaped distribution - that is, there'd be a few very bad (or very good outcomes), a few more less bad outcomes, and a far greater number clustered around "average". So, if you suffer a diabolical outcome this time, next time there are a far larger number of better outcomes for you to experience than there are worse outcomes, so you tend to experience one of the better ones.

Our win-every-bet-and-jump-12% performance this weekend was then potentially a particularly gratifying example of regression to the mean. Or, of course, it was just an example of extraordinarily good fortune to which we were completely unentitled.

Anyway, the summary is that the New Heritage Fund landed 3 from 3 to jump by over 13%; Prudence bagged 4 from 4 to jump by 4%; Chi-squared notched 3 from 3 to jump by 22%; and Line Redux landed 2 from 2 to jump by 23%.

Together, these results lifted the value of the Recommended Portfolio by about 12%, moving it back into profit by about 10% on the season. Other Portfolios rose by similar percentages on the weekend, leaving them up by between 13% and 25% for the entire season.

Here's the game-by-game picture for each Portfolio for the season so far:

MAFL Tipping was as accurate as MAFL Wagering, with BKB, Chi and ELO all tipping 4 from 4. ELO also tipped all 4 line betting results and is now at +11.09 units on level-stake line betting based on its tips, which is about a 6.2% ROI.

Week 2 of the Finals looks like this:

Once More With Feeling

(Update at 3:00pm Saturday : Brisbane's giving 6.5 start to the Blues, so no bet)

Stakes at Stake

September's here at last and a few hundred players and at least a few hundred more coaches and support staff will need to find other things to do with their weekends for a while.

Our Funds though remain firmly focussed on this season and they, generally, like what's on offer from TAB Sportsbet this weekend.

The keenest Fund is Chi-squared which has - apparently oblivious to recent performance - waded in with 3 wagers totalling about 28% of the Fund, the largest and riskiest being 10.4% on the Lions at $1.85 at home to the Blues.

Almost as keen is New Heritage, which has also found 3 teams that it's willing to support financially. Its largest wager is 12.9% on Adelaide at $1.10 at home facing the Dons and its riskiest is, like Chi-squared's, on the Lions and is sized at 6.9%.

For the second week running, Line Redux has found reason to depart from its usual 5%-per-game wagering strategy, this time dropping 15.9% on Geelong who are giving the Dogs 6.5 points start in their clash at the G. Its other wager is the more customary 5%, on the Saints giving the Pies 7.5 start in their clash, also at the G.

What Prudence lacks this week in terms of strength of conviction it makes up for in breadth. It has wagers, totalling only about 10.5% of the Fund, but spread over all 4 favourites. (In fact, 1 was an equal favourite as at Wednesday but is now an underdog on the TAB). These wagers include 6% on Adelaide and 1.3% on the Lions.

Hope, for only the third time this season and for the first time in 9 rounds, has chosen to abstain for the duration of the weekend. When you're up by over 54% on the season, I guess you get to choose your moments.

Ready Reckoner

Combined, these wagers produce this Ready Reckoner, which has a disturbing resemblance to last weekend's:

Far from retreating into hiding, taking a breather, taking stock, or getting their collective wind back - choose your own favourite cliche - the MAFL Funds have made 12 wagers this weekend, an average of 3 a game. For all Investors except MIN#017, this round represents the highest outlay per game for any round this season.

The line bet on the Cats makes their game the one of most interest to most Investors, but all matches hold some level of financial interest for all Investors exceot MIN#017.

Tipping

Most of the MAFL tipsters retire at the end of the home and away season; only BKB, Chi and ELO continue to tip throughout the Finals.

These remaining tipsters are unanimous on all games this weekend. (Note that I've recorded BKB as tipping the Lions this weekend, consistent with the principle that it follows the CTL strategy when the TAB Sportsbet prices are the same for each team.)

Chi this week has 2 Games of the Round - Lions v Carlton and St Kilda v Collingwood - for both of which he is predicting a 5 point margin of victory.

ELO has just a single Game of the Round and it is the Lions v Carlton clash, though it foresees no close games this weekend and predicts a 22 point winning margin even for its Game of the Round.

Line Betting

On Line Betting:

• Chi's on Essendon, Geelong, Carlton, Collingwood
• ELO's on Adelaide, Geelong, Brisbane, St Kilda

The GFC (Galling Football Crisis)

Ouch.

Perhaps that was the "Saturday we had to have".

As you know by now, I don't do excuses. So, instead, allow me to, completely impartially, present you with the details of what I'm now calling "Sobering Saturday". (Yes, there were other, less G-rated alternatives that I considered.)

Game 1: Geelong v Fremantle

The Cats dominate Freo and build steadily to lead by 55 points, 70-15, at the 5-and-a-half minute mark of the 3rd term, already covering the 47.5 points start we'd given.

They score only 24 more points in the game's remainder and concede 39, eventually winning by only 40 points, securing our head-to-head bet but surrendering our line bet in the process.

The Recommended Portfolio drops 0.9% - a mocking portent of what was to come.

Game 2: Hawthorn v Essendon

The Hawks complete two solid quarters of football and lead by 28 points late in the 2nd term before conceding the term's final goal to usher the Dons into the half-time break with just a sniff, trailing by 22 points.

Essendon pile on 21 unanswered points from the 7 minute to the 16 minute mark of the 3rd term before the Hawks briefly steady and limp into the 3-quarter-time break still up by 5 points.

But the signs are already there, and the Dons swamp the Hawks in the final term, scoring 6.7 to 3.3 to win by 17 points.

The Recommended Portfolio drops another 5.1% and a trend is established.

Game 3: Carlton v Adelaide

Carlton impress early to lead the Crows by 30-8 at the 17 minute mark of the 1st term but muster just 2 more goals in the 1st term while conceding 6 to finish the term with a 5 point lead.

They then kick just 9 more goals in the game while the Crows kick 21.

The Recommended Portfolio drops another 3.4% and we have what a stockmarket analysis might call a bear run.

Game 4: Sydney v Brisbane Lions

The Swans lead early - hmmm, there's a familiar theme - but never by much, and proceed to leak goals from the middle of the 2nd term to the early part of the 3rd, finding themselves down by 39 points at the 8 minute mark of the 3rd term.

Cruelly, over the course of the next 17 minutes they kick 5.1 to 0.0 to close within 8 points of a faltering Lions, before the Lions kick a confidence-restoring goal just before the final break.

Next, the Swans register the opening 13 points of the final term to trail by just a point. At the 15 minute mark of the term the Lions kick their first goal, to which the Swans reply some 10 minutes later to restore the deficit to 1 point. But the Lions scramble and cling on to win by 8 points.

The Recommended Portfolio drops another 4.3% and optimism excuses itself and leaves by the nearest exit.

Game 5: Port Adelaide v Kangaroos

Port are scratchy - they need to win by over 100 points to have a chance of making the finals, but you'd never guess it - but eke out a 20-point lead by the 10-and-a-half minute mark of the 3rd term.

What follows has, by now, a hint of inevitability.

Port enter stage left and concede 19 points in 5 minutes before snagging briefly on a ledge on the way down, registering a couple of late behinds to face the final term with a lead of just 3 points.

The Roos kick the opening 7 points of the final term to lead by 4, before Port scrambles three behinds to fool the audience and trail by 1. The suspense is deftly built as a handful of behinds are traded - though both teams are ostensibly in the market for goals - before Port secures a 6-pointer 30 seconds into time-on to lead by 4.

Port glances to the stage wings and whispers "prompt" and then, remembering its lines, concedes 1.2 - the goal coming from a debatable 50m penalty - while eschewing further point-scoring itself and goes on to lose by 4 points. Right on cue.

The Recommended Portfolio drops another 3.4% and the day's destruction is over.

In summary, for those with the Recommended Portfolio: the New Heritage Fund recorded 3 winning wagers from 6 bets, dropping 19.4%; Prudence snagged 2 from 3 but still dropped 3.6%; Hope lost its only bet and dropped 6.7%; Chi-squared lost 3 of 3 and plummeted 26.9%; and Line Redux landed just 1 of 4 and fell by 21.4%.

So, the Recommended Portfolio fell by 15.4%, leaving it down about 2.5% on the season. Other portfolios fell by between 15% and 20%, leaving them narrowly to moderately up on the season. The best portfolio is MIN#017's, which is up by a tick under 12%.

Anyway, on to tipping.

Astonishingly, BKB has finished out of the MAFL Tipster medals this year. Silhouette - who registered 6 from 8 this week, equal-best with Shadow - finished 1st, with an incredible 124 from 176 (71%). Second went to CTL with 120 (68%), and 3rd went to Shadow with 119 (68%).

ELO and BKB finished joint-4th on 117 (67%).

Four tipsters finished the home-and-away season in the black on level-stake, start in Round 6, Home Team only wagering: Silhouette, CTL, Shadow, and STM II. This is the fourth consecutive season in which these tipsters have finished in profit using such a strategy.

On line betting, ELO recorded a modest 4 from 8, but is still up on level-stake wagering, now by just under 7 units. Chi managed just 3 from 8 to drop further into deficit for the season.

ELO's MAPE now stands at 28.6 points per game and its Median Absolute Prediction Error at 23 points per game, leaving it narrowly behind BKB's MAPE (28.3 points) and narrowly ahead of BKB's Median APE (23.5 points). Chi languishes on both measures, with a 30.7 points per game MAPE and a 27 point Median APE, though neither of those results are of a "go to your kennel" level of incompetence.

So, on to the Finals ...

(Congratulations go to Dan on winning the Pick the Finishing Order Competition. Plaudits too go to Tim and Rohan who finished 2nd and 3rd.)

Just How Much Do the Dees Want the Priority Pick?

Stakes at Stake

(** See updates on the Hawthorn v Essendon line wager, below.)

If my knowledge of Catholicism serves me well, St Jude is (or was) the Hope of the Hopeless. How apt then that it's the Hope Fund that has chosen to lavish its final attention for the Home and Away season on last-placed Melbourne at $11, taking on the first-placed and joint flag favourites, St Kilda.

The Hope Fund is risking just 6.7% on the Dees, making this bet a relatively lucrative proposition for many Investors with fairly limited downside. Basically, it's a Heritage Fund wolf-style wager dressed up in sheepish Hope clothing.

In other news, the New Heritage Fund has 6 wagers totalling a tick under 60% of the Fund, the largest a 13.3% wager on the Cats at $1.03 taking on Fremantle at the Cats' cradle, and the riskiest a 4.8% wager on the Dogs at $2.15 sparring with the Pies for a 3rd-place finish.

Prudence, meantime, has just 3 wagers for about 15% of the Fund, its largest being 5.9%, also on Geelong, and its riskiest 4.6% on Port Adelaide at $1.33, who face the Roos.

Chi-squared also has 3 wagers, though they're a little larger on average than those of Prudence and total 27% of the Fund. The largest and riskiest is 9.8% on the Hawks at $1.80 in their spot-in-the-finals and earn-a-chance-to-defend-the-Premiership clash with the Dons.

Line Redux has, at this point, just 3 wagers too, totalling 15% of the Fund, though this is likely to change once the Hawks/Dons line market is posted on TAB Sportsbet anytime soon now. I'm expecting a wager on the Hawks, but the size of it will depend on the price offered.

(** Update at 2:45pm on Friday: Hawthorn opened on Line betting at $2.15 giving 6.5 points start. Line Redux really likes that deal and has plonked 15.9% of the Fund on the Hawks - comfortably its largest wager of the season.)

In total, the Round's wagering represents somewhere bewteen the 4th- and 6th-largest outlay for Investors this season.

(** Now 2nd to 5th.)

Ready Reckoner

This outlay provides the following risk-reward tradeoff:

For most then it's the Melbourne v St Kilda, (and now Hawthorn v Essendon), Sydney v Brisbane Lions, and Geelong v Fremantle matchups that represent the widest gap between potential profit and possible loss.

Tipping

This week's tipping features an absence of unanimous favourites (assuming the lack of something can legitimately be called a feature). In fact, no team has fewer than 3 supporters this week, though not all of the minority support comes from particularly convincing sources.

We have:

• West Coast as 10-3 favourites over the Tigers. None of the Top 5 MAFL tipsters are siding with the Tigers.
• Geelong as 8-5 favourites over Fremantle. Again, the underdog support is bereft of high-profile MAFL tipsters.
• Hawthorn as 10-3 favourites over Essendon. Essendon can count CTL and Silhoutte amongst its more comforting backers.
• Carlton as 9-4 favourites over Adelaide. Both Silhouette and Shadow are tipping the upset.
• The Lions are 10-3 favourites over Sydney. BKB is the only credentialled MAFL tipster predicting a Swans victory. ELO, though tipping with the majority, has the Lions winning by just a point, making this its Game of the Round.
• Port Adelaide are 8-6 favourites over the Roos. Shadow is the only elite tipster with a contrarian view.
• St Kilda are 10-3 favourites over Melbourne. Shadow, once again, finds itself as the lone dissenting voice amongst the tipsters that matter. Chi though is tipping the Saints by just 1 point, making this his Game of the Round.
• Collingwood are 10-3 favourites over the Dogs. ELO and Shadow are both tipping a Dogs victory.

BKB aside, the best tipping performance of any heuristic tipster over the past 12 seasons is RYL's 124 last year. Silhouette needs 6 from 8 to equal this mark, and 6.5 or more to break it.

Line Betting

On Line Betting this week, Chi and ELO differ more often than they agree:

• Chi is on Richmond, Fremantle, Hawthorn, Carlton, Sydney, Kangaroos, Melbourne and Collingwood.
• ELO is on Richmond, Geelong, Hawthorn, Adelaide, Brisbane, Kangaroos, St Kilda and Western Bulldogs.

A Return To Profit For Most

This weekend, apparently the Lions and the Saints thought it'd make for more entertaining football viewing if they were to spot their opponents a bit of a start, 47 points in the case of the Lions and 32 points in the case of the Saints.

Many Investors had a financial interest in both these teams - in the case of the Lions, with the additional challenge of giving 33.5 points start - and no doubt found this fox-and-hound approach somewhat alarming. While the Lions did, indeed, metaphorically catch the fox, the Saints did not, an entirely unsatisfactory turn of events when you're wagering on short-priced hounds.

Still, in the end, all Investors except MIN#017 did make profits for the weekend, ranging from 3.1% to 3.9% and including 3.3% for those with the Recommended Portfolio. MIN#017 suffered a 3.8% loss.

For the season, the Recommended Portfolio is up about 13%, MIN#001 is up 18.5%, MIN#015 is up almost 16%, and MIN#017 is up over 31%, so you'd struggle at this point to be an unhappy Investor.

Atypically, Chi-squared recorded the weekend's best return amongst the Funds, up almost 9% on a solitary successful wager on Freo. Next best was Hope, also up almost 9% on 2 successful wagers from 2 outlays. Line Redux and Prudence also made profits, Line Redux up 4% on 2 wins from 3, and Prudence up a little under 1% on 5 successful wagers from 6.

New Heritage was the only Fund to make a loss. It dropped 3.8% on 5 successful wagers from 7, the two losses attributable to Essendon and the Saints.

With 5 favourites and an equal favourite saluting the judge this weekend, tipsters generally fared well, the best of them being Shadow, Chi and HSH, each of which scored 6 from 8.

Silhouette still leads, now on 118 from 168 (70%), three ahead of CTL on 115 (69%) and one more ahead of BKB on 114 (68%).

Five tipsters remain in positive territory on level-stake, Home Team only, start at Round 6 wagering.

On Line Betting, Chi managed just 3 from 8 and ELO just 4 from 8.

Just Say No to Surprisals

Stakes at Stake

This week, Investors are hoping for a round almost bereft of upsets, save for wishing for a minor upset on Friday night in the shape of the Dogs outbarking the Cats.

The New Heritage Fund has waited until Round 21 to record its highest level of aggregate Funds at risk for the season: about 70% at risk on 7 wagers, the largest being 13.2% on the Saints at $1.05, and the riskiest 4% on the Dogs at $2.25.

Prudence has also lashed out this week, dropping a little under one-third of the Fund on 6 wagers. Its largest is 6.1% on Carlton at $1.08 and its riskest is 2.8%, also on the Dogs. Hope has just 2 wagers for the round totalling about 8% of the Fund, the largest and riskiest being 4.6% on the Dogs, while Chi-Squared's sole wager - also, of necessity, its largest and riskiest - is 10.4% on Fremantle at $1.85.

Line Redux has 3 wagers for the week totalling 15% of the Fund. One wager is on a team receiving start (the Dogs) and the other two are on teams giving start (Adelaide and Brisbane).

Ready Reckoner

In total, for everyone except MIN#017, these wagers represent the second-largest aggregate wagering for a single round this season, trailing only the profligacy of Round 16. For MIN#007, this round's wagers are, in fact, the season's apogee (or, perhaps, the nadir, depending on your viewpoint). There's some comfort though in the fact that most of the week's wagers are on favourites.

Here's the week's Ready Reckoner:

For most Investors then, the weekend's key games are, in order, the Dogs versus the Cats, the Lions versus Port, and the Crows versus the Eagles.

Tipping

On tipping, we have:

• Geelong 9-4 favourites over the Dogs. Amongst the Top 5 MAFL tipsters only Shadow is siding with the Dogs. ELO and Chi are both tipping the Cats, though each only by 1 point, making this, for both, the Game of the Round.
• Carlton 12-1 favourites over Melbourne. Only EI I is tipping the upset.
• Adelaide 11-2 favourites over West Coast with, once again, the Top 5 tipsters unanimously on the favourite.
• Brisbane unanimous favourites over Port Adelaide.
• Hawthorn 9-4 favourites over Richmond. Again, the Top 5 tipsters are backing the favourite.
• St Kilda unanimous favourites over the Roos.
• Collingwood unanimous favourites over the Swans.
• Essendon 9-4 favourites over Fremantle. With the teams in this contest equal favourites as at noon on Wednesday, BKB sides with CTL for this game and therefore tips Essendon, again making all Top 5 tipsters unanimous for this game.

Line Betting

On Line Betting this week, Chi and ELO differ on 3 games:

• Chi is tipping the Dogs, Melbourne, Eagles, Port, Richmond, the Roos, Sydney and Essendon
• ELO is tipping the Dogs, Carlton, Eagles, Port, Richmond, St Kilda, Collingwood and Essendon

I Don't Like Saturdays

Well that hurt a bit.

Of the 20 bets that those with the Recommended Portfolio had in play just 8 were successful. Three of those winning bets came from New Heritage, but its 2 losing bets were enough to push it, like every other Fund, into the red for the weekend. It finished down a little over 2% on the weekend's indulgences. Prudence had 2 more of the winning bets, but also 2 more of the losers, which saw it drop by a touch under 2% for the weekend.

Amongst the other Funds, Hope had just 1 winner from 4 bets and dropped about 7%. Chi-squared registered an identical 1 from 4 performance, but Chi's proclivity for large wagers turned this into a 22% decline for the Fund.

Finally, Line Redux managed just 1 winner from 3 bets and dropped 5.5%.

All told, those with the Recommended Portfolio dropped about 7.5% on the weekend. MIN #001 and MIN # 015 lost similar amounts, and MIN #017 lost a tick over 2%.

These results could have been considerably worse but for a profitable Sunday's wagering. It struck me that Sundays had - or so I thought - often been kind to us this year. Which, inevitably, led to some analysis and the following table:

As you can see, Sundays have indeed been very lucrative for the Recommended Portfolio. It has made money on 12 of the 17 Sundays on which it's had wagers, producing a net profit across all those Sundays of almost 30%. In contrast, Saturdays have been unprofitable 11 times out of 19, and unprofitable in total, due entirely to the 15% losses that have been experienced over the previous 2 rounds.

In fact - as the table shows - the Saturday just gone was the worst single day's wagering the Recommended Portfolio has endured this season.

On tipping, CTL and ELO had the best rounds, scoring 6 from 8. This pushed CTL into outright 2nd for the season with 110 from 160 (69%), three tips behind Silhouette on 113 (71%) and 1 tip ahead of BKB on 109 (68%). Five tipsters remain profitable on level-stake home team only wagering commencing in Round 6. (A sixth, RYL, is virtually at breakeven.)

Finally, on Line Betting, Chi scored 3 from 8 and ELO 4 from 8, leaving ELO showing a profit and Chi a loss for the season.