2014 - Round 23 : Same As Last Week?

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The Head-to-Head Fund has again this week, as it did in Round 21, reacted to an increase in a team's Head-to-Head price by opting out of a wager. This week the team was Carlton, on whom the Head-to-Head Fund fancied a lash when it made its first assessments for the week as the Blues were being offered at $2.90. But, come Tuesday when the Blues had drifted to $3.15, the Head-to-Head Fund decided to look elsewhere.

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2014 - Round 21 Results : A Welcome Return to Form

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After two successive weeks of losses, both the Head-to-Head and Line Funds returned to profitability this week, the Head-to-Head Fund landing its sole bet on Freo to record a 6c profit and the Line Fund guessing correctly on four of five occasions to record a profit of about the same size.

Those two profits, paired with the Margin Fund's now-customary loss - this week of 6.5c despite a successful call in the Dons v Eagles game - lifted the Recommended Portfolio by 3.7c for the week, leaving it now up by 7.7c on the season.

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2014 - Round 20 Results : Five Back but Four Left

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When we've a wager on the last game of a round, the result of that wager has a disproportionate impact, I acknowledge, on my assessment of the entire round. So, I find myself tonight while not exactly happy with our 4.7c loss - our fourth loss in five rounds by the way - but instead with a glass half-full mentality. It could have been worse and we're still up by 4c on the season.

Actually, it could have been better too, but for a late behind in the Hawks game that tipped their victory margin out of the 40 to 49 and into the 50 to 59 point bucket. That behind cost Investors about 1.4c. Port Adelaide as well, despite eventually losing by 26 points to the Swans thanks to a late goal, could easily have lost by a couple of goals fewer and salvaged another couple of percent for Investors.

But none of that happened and so the Head-to-Head Fund, with its 3 and 3 performance, wound up losing almost 4c on the week, leaving it up now by just over 2c on the season. Also, the Line Fund recorded its second-straight worse-than-chance performance, bagging 1 from 5 wagers to drop by almost 8c on the round. It's still up by over 34c on the season though, so it's entitled to a little leeway on the run home.

That left the Margin Fund to record the week's only profit, its 1 from 6 performance enough to lift its price by 1.5c though still leave it down by almost 70c on the season.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

It was a good round for head-to-head tipping, with seven of nine favourites doing as they were expected. This helped lift the all-Tipster average for the week to 6.6 from 9, the best results belonging to Bookie_9 and the three Win-based Tipsters, who all snared 8.

That result allowed Bookie_9 to draw a further tip clear at the head of the MoS Leaderboard, extending its lead now to three tips. Combo_7 remains in second, a tip clear of Bookie_3 and Combo_NN_1.

The average Margin Predictor recorded a Mean Absolute Prediction Error (MAPE) of 34.7 points per game this week, which nudged the all-Predictor full season average MAPE marginally back over 30 points per game.

Best this week was Bookie_3 with a 30.6 points MAPE ahead of Bookie_LPSO (31.0) and Combo_7 (32.0). Bookie_LPSO's performance dragged it back into the top 3 Predictors after having dropped as low as fifth at the end of Round 19.

Combo_7 and Win_3 have been consistently strong Predictors all season and never out of the Top 3 since Round 10. They're now separated at the head of the MoS Leaderboard by just over 32 points.

Eleven of the Margin Predictors currently have Line betting records good enough for profitability in that market and seven of those same eleven also have profitable SuperMargin wagering performances when we take notice only if they select home team wins or draws.

ProPred_7 is the only Predictor with a profitable SuperMargin record but a loss-making Line betting record, while Combo_7, C_Marg and the two RSMP Predictors are the only ones with profitable Line betting records and loss-making SuperMargin records.

WinPred registered the round's best probability score amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors this week, though its score was practically identical to C_Prob's. That result for C_Prob shored up its second-placing on the MoS Leaderboard where it continues to trail Bookie-OE.

The Line Fund algorithm produced yet another negative probability score for the round, its fifth in a row and its sixth in seven rounds.

ChIPS registered a very small profit on its wagering for the week, its collects on Richmond, Geelong and West Coast narrowly more than offsetting its losses on the Lions and the Saints. It remains, however, down 21% on the season with an ROI of -17% and a Turn of 125%.

2014 - Team Ratings After Round 19

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In a season such as this where Ratings towards the top of the table are quite compressed - at the end of last round, for example, six teams were separated by only a little more than 3.5 Rating Points -  unexpectedly large or small wins or losses can lead to significant team reorderings. So it was then that 10 teams changed their ChiPS Ranking this week, three of them by more than a single place.

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