When the bookmakers go low, the MoS twins go lower ...

In the context of a typical, recent Round 6, this week offers a set of relatively close games with an average expected margin of under 20 points per game, but in the context of this season, that's slightly less the case. 

MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, like reality show judges, continued their brutal ways this week, re-ranking teams by as many as six places. .

When C_Marg produces the round's lowest mean absolute error (MAE), you know it's been a slightly unusual week.

This week marks the first round of the season where both the TAB and Centrebet bookmakers estimate that the nine games will average under 180 points.

As I opined at the end of the previous blog on team ratings, last week felt like a clear inflexion point in the season, underscored perhaps most dramatically by the Crows' loss to the Pies, but with contributions from the significant victory margins in many other of the games.

Both MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS are unforgiving about hefty losses in the early parts of seasons (it's how they prevent themselves from hanging on too long to their memories of teams' form in the previous season), which has led to some significant team rating and ranking changes this week.

In a week where six victory margins were over 40 points and the average margin was almost nine goals, it's not at all surprising that the mean Margin Predictor MAE was a season-high 42.5 points per game.

This week, the bookmakers are thinking even more like MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS, and are forecasting total scores of about 180 points per game, just 1 point per game more than the MoS twins.

As fans, we've had a very good run this season, with expected margins averaging under 15 points per game across the 27 games so far, and actual margins averaging just 27.4 points per game. (It's not hard, by the way, to show that the actual average will usually exceed the expected average - I'll do a post on this if there's any interest.)

As far as MoSSBODS is concerned, GWS' 27 scoring shots to 23 "victory" over Sydney on Saturday was good enough for them to retain the #1 ranking. MoSHBODS, which had a sneaky look at the final score as well, feels differently, and has instead moved Adelaide ahead of GWS, making it now three different teams that have held its #1 ranking over the course of the season so far.

As we expected, there was quite a spread in the forecaster performances this week, especially amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters.

Turns out I was wrong to question MoSSBODS' judgement last weekend. Its suggestion that totals would prove to be generally lower than the bookmakers thought was proven right, although the actual average game total fell about halfway between the bookmakers' overly optimistic views and MoSSBODS' overly pessimistic ones. Details on this are at the end of this blog.

The tipping carnage in Round 2 was always a possibility this week given the general slightness of favouritism in each of the nine contests.

It's a short week this week (and my non-footy, pays-the-bills working life is about to get a little busy), so I'm providing the updated team ratings tonight.

Only three TAB mid-week favourites finished in front this week so BKB, just like all but one of the Head-to-Head Tipsters, registered 3 from 9 for the round.

Whenever MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS have opinions so significantly different from the bookmakers', my prior, I admit, tends always towards MoS being in error, but if I always acted based on that prior I'd never have the admittedly occasional windfall rounds.

According to the bookmakers - and the empirical data strongly supports the hypothesis that they know a bit - no team is more than about a 3-goal favourite this week, which should make for an interesting if difficult-to-tip round.

For the first time since the end of the 1980 season, Richmond has top rating on MoSHBODS after jumping two places to overtake Adelaide and Sydney this week.

With seven favourites and one equal-favourite emerging victorious from the embers of Round 1, it was fairly predictable that we'd see strong performances across the board from a number of MoS forecasters.