Final Ladder Positions: Simulations After Round 20

As I type this late on Sunday evening all ladder-related markets are suspended on TAB Sportsbet, so I'll necessarily be excluding any discussion of value bets in these markets. I'll post subsequently on this once the markets are up.

In the meantime, here's what my simulations now make of each team's chances.

Minor Premiership Market

As conclusions go, this one's now about as foregone as you can get.

Simulations suggest that the Pies' chances for the minor premiership are now greater than 98%, up about 0.7% on last week, making their fair-value price $1.02.

The Cats remain the only other team with any hope of the minor premiership, and their fair- value price is now over $63.

Top 4 Market

Geelong and St Kilda joined Collingwood this week as the teams with assured Top 4 spots, leaving the Bulldogs and Freo to duel for the remaining spot.

In reality though Fremantle having only the slightest chance to grab 4th since to do so, given their inferior percentage, they'd probably need to beat both Hawthorn and Carlton, and hope the Dogs lost to Sydney and Essendon. This scenario has a probability of less than 1% according to the simulations.

Fair-value prices for the Dogs and Fremantle are $1.01 and $117 respectively.

Finals Market

Carlton and Sydney this week cemented their finals berths and Hawthorn just about did the same. The Hawks are now 92% chances, making their fair-value price $1.09.

The Roos' loss to the Saints lopped over 20% from their finals chances, leaving them with a probability of just under 6% of playing in 3 weeks time. Melbourne also ran a scythe through their finals aspirations in going down to the Hawks and now sport only a 2% chance of playing in September.

Fair-value for the Roos in this market is now $17.30 and for the Dees it's $51.20.

The Spoon Market

As the Pies have one hand on the minor premiership, so the Eagles have a mortgage on the Spoon. They're now 99% chances to take home the cutlery.

Both the Lions and Richmond have mathematical chances to grab the Spoon for themselves, but those chances both start with a zero before the decimal point.

Fair-value for the Eagles is $1.01, for Richmond it's $150, and for the Lions it's $603.

Here are the full results of the new simulations.

With just two rounds to go, the range of possible ladder finishes for each team has narrowed dramatically, as you can see from the table below.

Most teams now have realistic chances of finishing in one of two or three spots. Only Carlton, Melbourne and Port Adelaide have four different potential finishes each with a probability of around 10% or more.

(Update @ 2pm on Monday:

Only one ladder-related market remains available on TAB Sportsbet, the Finals market, and it has Hawthorn at $1.02, the Roos at $11, and Melbourne at $51. At those prices there's no value on offer.)

Final Ladder Positions: Simulations After Round 19

Two of the markets for final ladder positions are no longer being offered by TAB Sportsbet. Collingwood's victory over the Cats has, it seems, all but determined the destination of the minor premiership, and the Lions' last-gasp win over the Eagles has done something similar for the Spoon.

Minor Premiership Market

Across the 100,000 simulations run this week, four teams finish in 1st place in at least one simulation. However, in 98% on those simulations, it's the Pies that take the minor premiership. That's why there's no longer a market being offered on this result.

The Cats finish 1st in about 2% of the simulations, while St Kilda and Freo each take out the minor premiership in so small a fraction of the simulations that we might as well call it none.

Top 4 Market

Collingwood is assured of a Top 4 spot - in none of the simulations could my script create a scenario that dumped the Pies out of the first four spots - and Geelong is virtually assured of another.

The Saints' and the Dogs' chances are also very good. In the simulations they missed the top 4 only about 3 or 4% of the time. When one of them did miss it was Fremantle that grabbed the spot. The simulations suggest Fremantle is about a 6% chance of finishing in the top 4.

Based on the simulation results there's a tiny edge in backing the Saints at $1.03, which is the price that the TAB's currently offering. I wouldn't be rushing though as the fair price is only about $1.02.

Finals Market

Hawthorn's loss to Sydney significantly reduced their chances of making the finals, knocking 18% points from their probability, which dropped it to 73%. Losses by Port Adelaide and Adelaide all but eliminated their already-slim chances of participating in September.

The probability surrendered by Hawthorn, Port and the Crows was transferred to the Swans, whose probability rose 10% to 86%, to the Blues, whose probability rose 7% to 94%, and to the Roos, whose probability rose 9% to 26%.

Amongst the five teams on which TAB Sportsbet is willing to field bets for a top 8 finish there's only value for three of team - Carlton, Sydney and Hawthorn - and the edge on each is again small.

The Spoon Market

West Coast took out the Spoon in about 94% of the simulations, Richmond in about 5%, and the Lions in a bit less than 1%. The TAB Sportsbet bookie doesn't feel inclined to frame a market based on these lopsided chances so the market no longer exists.

Here are the full results of the new simulations.

Next, a summary of the same 100,000 simulations showing each team's most likely ladder finish, other relatively high-probability potential finishes for that team, and the best and worst ladder positions that the team occupied in at least one of the 100,000 simulations.

Notice how much more compact are the distributions of final ladder positions for the teams currently towards the top or the bottom of the ladder than they are for the teams mid-ladder such as the Roos, Melbourne, Adelaide, the Dons and Port. Melbourne, for example, finished as high as 6th in about 3% of the simulations and as low as 14th in a very small fraction of them.

To help you with your own prognostications about the makeup of the final 8, here's a table showing which teams meet in the remaining 3 rounds and the most likely result as determined by the MARS-Rating based model I've used for the simulations:

Final Ladder Positions: Simulations After Round 18

The weekend results for St Kilda, Fremantle, Melbourne, Richmond and West Coast were the ones that most reshaped the various ladder position markets.

Click to read more ...

Final Ladder Positions: Simulations After Round 17

If you're a Pies, Dogs or Carlton supporter - or, I guess, an Eagles supporter with a contrarian nature and a willingness to profit from adversity - you've much to be happy about following last weekend's results and their effect on your team's chances of participating come September.

Click to read more ...

Finding Value in the Markets for Final Ladder Positions

In an earlier blog I used a simple method to create one view of the season's final home-and-away ladder. Those projections had Collingwood finishing third because it lost narrowly to the Cats in Round 19 while the Cats and the Saints were projected to win all their remaining games. Three of the Cats' wins and two of the Saints' were by only a handful of points, however, so it was easy to imagine scenarios in which the ordering at the top was quite different and where, for example, the Pies finish top of the ladder.

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