2013 : Round 4 - Wagers & Tips

There are six home-team favourites this week, which is as many as we've had in a single round so far this season, so I suppose it's no real surprise that the Margin Fund features prominently in the week's wagers. What is a little unusual is that the Margin Fund has elected to wager in all six of these contests where you might reasonably expect it to consider a flutter. The last time we had six home-team favourites in a single round this season was in Round 2, and on that occasion the Margin Fund was marginally more restrained, wagering in just five.

To go with our six - well 12 really - SuperMargin wagers, we've also three head-to-head and three line bets.

One of the head-to-head wagers - the smallest, on the Saints - is on the underdog in the contest, but the two other wagers are on favourites in the form of the Swans and the Dees. The Line Fund has the same mix of wagers, one underdog and two favourites, and shares the Head-to-Head Fund's attraction to the Saints and the Dees as wagering prospects. Its third wager is on the Roos, however, giving almost 4 goals start.

With all three Funds (and all four related Predictors) opting to wager on the Dees, it's the first time this season that Investors have found themselves so comprehensively exposed to the fortunes of a single team, the implications of which are depicted and summarised in the Ready Reckoner.

A Dees win by 10-19 points represents the best possible outcome for Investors this week and would add 1.4c to the value of the Recommended Portfolio. A victory of larger proportions is the next best result for Investors, at least as far at this game is concerned.

In other games, favourable Sydney or Roos results could add as much 1c to Recommended Portfolios, while St Kilda and West Coast could each chip in just a little less than 1c themselves to the Portfolio value should they do the right thing by Investors.

Melbourne, St Kilda and the Roos also represent the greatest risk to Investors' net wealth, threatening to shave between 0.9c and 1.5c off Recommended Portfolios should they be responsible for maximally unfavourable results.

TIPSTERS AND PREDICTORS

With so many home team favourites this week I'd have expected Home Sweet Home to record a relatively low Disagreement score, but the Head-to-Head Tipsters' majority support for the Away team underdogs in the form of the Giants and Lions has been enough to see Home Sweet Home maintain its usual place as Tipster Most Contrarian.

WinPred the Head-to-Head Tipster shares this designation with Home Sweet Home amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters this week, and its Margin Predictor and Probability Predictor brethren are similarly alternative in the context of their respective peers.

What's especially noticeable more generally about the Margin Predictors their level of agreement about the likely margins of victory in each game. The maximum disagreement, as measured by the standard deviation of the predicted margins, occurs for the Hawthorn v Fremantle game, and even there the disagreement relates to the size of the Hawks' victory rather than whether or not it will transpire. The WinPred twins are predicting victories for the Hawks in this game by just 4 points, where Combo_NN1 and Combo_NN2 think that 40-plus margins are more likely.

Turning next, and lastly, to the Probability Predictors, and starting with the Head-to-Head subset, we see that that it's WinPred that is responsible for maximising the spread of probability assessments in a number of games. In the Roos v Lions game, WinPred is at the low end, assessing the Roos as 58% chances in contrast with ProPred's assessment of 86%, and again in the Hawks v Freo clash we find WinPred at the skinny end, assessing the Hawks as 56% chances to ProPred's 83%.

In the Melbourne v GWS game it's WinPred this time defining the home-team high watermark, here assessing the Dees as 86% chances in contrast with the Overrround Equalising variant of the TAB Bookmaker's 60% assessment. The Sydney v Geelong game again sees WinPred minimising the home team's chances, here assessing the Swans as being only 48% chances compared to the H2H assessments of 72%.

Like WinPred, the Line Fund algorithm is more probabilistically assured in its opinions this week, rating the Cats, Freo, Port Adelaide, Dees and Roos as 60% chances or better on line betting, and the Saints and Dogs as 55% chances. One way or another that's likely to lead to significant changes in the algorithm's log probability score for the week.