MAFL 2010 : Round 14

If you're an Investor this is probably a blog best read seated.

In six of the weekend's eight games the home team is the favourite, and in five of them it's the short-priced favourite. The reaction from the MAFL Funds to this circumstance - especially from the New Heritage Fund - has been akin to the response you get if you open a packet that sounds even vaguely like a chip packet within earshot of Chi: immediate and overwhelming interest, palpable desire and a fixation on securing a piece of whatever's on offer.

Here's what the result of all that interest looks like.

(I feel as though I should have triggered a warning when you clicked the "Read more" button just then ...)

If your maths is exceptionally good, you'll have noted that Investors with the Recommended Portfolio find themselves with 33 wagers across 8 games this week, totalling over one-third of Total Initial Funds - the greatest level of activity and the highest outlay in a single round in the history of MAFL.

A hefty slice of that total outlay has been wagered head-to-head on teams at prices of $1.33 and below, which means that the total upside in all of that activity falls some considerable distance short of the downside, as illustrated in the week's Ready Reckoner.

Only the Hawks v Bulldogs and Tigers v Swans games are of little consequence this weekend for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio. The Adelaide v Essendon game offers the greatest upside and is also the game with the largest difference between the best and worst results.

A Pies loss to the Eagles would be the single most painful result for the weekend for these Investors, although losses by either the Cats or the Saints would be less painful only in a strictly mathematical sense.

For MIN#002, as ever all losses are equally costly, while Crows and Blues wins would be most welcomed.

For MIN#017 the weekend holds the greatest terror of all. A worst-case set of outcomes would reduce this Portfolio to zero, while a best-case set of outcomes would restore only about 15% of its initial value. Over one-half of any increase would come from Adelaide and Carlton wins, and any of six separate outcomes could knock about 10% off the value of the portfolio.

The confidence displayed by the Funds is, for the most part, reflected in the tips of the MAFL Tipsters where we find four games with unanimous support for the favourite and three more games where at least 11 of the 15 tipsters foresee an Investor-pleasing outcome.

Here are the details:

• Carlton are the first of the week's unanimous favourites. They face the Lions and are tipped to win by margins ranging from 12 to 28 points.
• The Bulldogs are 11-4 favourites over the Hawks. LAMP is among the minority but tips the Hawks by just a point, making this its Game of the Round.
• Fremantle are unanimous favourites over Port and are tipped to win by anywhere between 12 and 42 points.
• Collingwood are unanimous favourites over West Coast. The Pies are predicted to win by between 9 and 57 points, the latter prediction belonging to ELO and representing the largest margin predicted by this tipster so far this season.
• Adelaide are 13-2 favourites over Essendon. ELO tips Adelaide to win by just 12 points, which makes this its Game of the Round.
• The Cats are 11-4 favourites over the Roos and are expected to win by a margin between 17 and 52 points.
• Richmond are 8-7 favourites over Sydney in the only game that's generating significant rates of disagreement this week. This uncertainty is reflected in the fact that three tipsters have this as their Game of the Round: HAMP, which tips Richmond to win by 1; Chi, who tips Sydney by 7; and BKB, which tips Richmond to win (probably) by 6.5 points.
• St Kilda are unanimous favourites over the Dees. The Saints are predicted to win by between 22 and 45 points.

That leaves me with only the HELP line predictions to report.

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 Results (Final)

This'll be brief.

When scanning the week's Ready Reckoner, never do I consider the "Best Possible" or "Worst Possible" results as lying within the feasible set of actual wagering outcomes. How wrong I've been.

Three games, three losses. Waiter, may I have the menu for Round 14 please?

Here's the week's MAFL Dashboard.

In deference to the dollars that sacrificed themselves in providing the data that now lies in the MAFL Wagering section of the Dashboard, I'll not be further commenting on it.

On tipping, Short-Term Memory now leads outright on 69.5 from 104 (67%), 1 tip ahead of Easily Impressed I and II, Short Term Memory II, Ride Your Luck and Follow the Streak, the latter tipster bagging the round's best performance, tipping 6 from 8.

Home Sweet Home recorded the round's worst tipping performance, managing just 3 from 8, to leave it with a season-long 53.4% record. As MAFL is currently constructed, it's never going to be a good year for wagering when Home teams aren't performing.

St Kilda's dominant second half over the Cats, which led to its 24-point victory, was enough to leap it over the Pies on MARS Ratings, despite Collingwood's 25-point win over the Swans. There were two other ratings moves further down the ladder, which saw the Crows and the Roos swap places with the Lions and the Dees respectively. The Crows now lie 9th on the MARS ladder, almost 8 Ratings points behind the Hawks.

All Margin Tippers except LAMP saw their Mean APEs fall over the round. BKB still leads, but LAMP's decline has allowed ELO to slip into second place. All three tipsters still have sub-30 MAPE's.

As we've seen a few times already this season, it's quite possible for a tipster's Mean and Median APEs to move in different directions over the course of the same round. We saw that again this round, which meant that LAMP took outright leadership on the Median APE metric, relegating ELO to second-place. BKB remains third.

HELP correctly predicted five of the round's eight line results and did a little to restore its overall probability scoring record to something a mite less embarrassing. I'll provide more details in future weeks if the upward trend continues.

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 - Part II

Even with two attractive-looking matchups in the Cats v Saints and Swans v Pies games, this weekend can't help but seem like the stale bit of the loaf that is Round 13. (Apologies if you're a Melbourne or Adelaide fan, but I'm finding it hard to get enthused about 13th v 15th.)

The weekend's status might be elevated though if the Cats, Swans and Dees all wins, the Cats doing so by 21 points or more, since then the Recommended Portfolio will rise by about 3.9% more than offsetting, if barely, the losses suffered last weekend.

Rooting for an away team victory, which all Investors except MIN#002 will be doing this weekend in the Crows v Dees game, is a relative rarity for Investors since all but the New Heritage Fund are permitted to wager only on home teams. This week, New Heritage's splurge on the Dees is sufficiently bold to induce broad Investor support for the travellers.

The Cats, by the way, as far as MAFL is concerned are the home team in their game, since it's being played at the MCG, one of the Cats' MAFL-designated home grounds this season and not one of the Saints'.

All told, Investors holding the Recommended Portfolio have 10 wagers totalling about 9% of Total Funds this week.

MIN#002's happiness rests solely in the hands of the Crows, who need only to win to produce a profit for his portfolio, and MIN#017 shares the hopes and dreams of Recommended Portfolio holders in that he wants the Cats, Swans and Dees to win. In his case though, the size of the Cats' victory is immaterial.

Here's the detail:

For the Recommended Portfolio, the Cats v St Kilda game represents the greatest potential profit and the greatest potential loss.

For MIN#017 the Adelaide v Melbourne game is the one filled with equal parts promise and pain, while MIN#002, as already noted, has a stake in only one contest.

Here's the Ready Reckoner detail:

On tipping this week, no team has the support of more than 80% of tipsters.

Here are the details:

• Geelong are the week's most supported favourites. Twelve of the fifteen tipsters are predicting that they will prevail. The Margin Tipsters, Chi aside, reckon that the Cats should win by about 3.5 to 4 goals. Ride Your Luck is the best-credentialled amongst the minority plumping for a Saints victory.
• Collingwood are 10-5 favourites over the Swans, though none of the Margin Tipsters predicts a double-digit victory margin for either side.
• Adelaide are 10-5 favourites over Melbourne. If you're an Adelaide fan you might take comfort from the fact that the Margin Tippers have the Crows winning by between 8.5 and 27 points; if you're a Melbourne fan you might, instead, note that Easily Impressed I and Short-Term Memory I - currently joint-leaders of our tipping competition - are both tipping a Dees victory.

HELP produced a 3 from 5 performance last weekend, reviving some hope that publishing its forecasts won't continue to feel so futile. Here are its remaining predictions for the round:

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 Results (Interim)

If I've much more practice in being philosophical after wagering losses I fear I'll wind up smoking a pipe, blogging about the meaning of truth, affecting a permanent, faraway look and calling myself Bruce. (Any Monty Python fans here?).

So far, Round 13 has not been a happy one for any Investor. The Recommended Portfolio has shed 3.7%, MIN#002's Portfolio has dropped 7.5%, and MIN#017's Portfolio has fallen 7.1%, these falls largely due to poor showings by the Blues and the Lions, who went down by 9 and 19 points respectively.

Given the likely prices on offer for the remaining three games, it seems unlikely that a net profit for the round will be the final outcome. Only an upset Sydney win over the Pies might make a difference, but it doesn't look as if any of the Funds is especially keen to invest in that particular result.

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 - Part I

And so we enter the first half - well five-eighths actually - of the split Round 13.

Recommended Portfolio holders have wagers in four of the week's five games, with the Eagles v Dogs clash the only one failing to attract the interest of at least one Fund. New Heritage is the boldest Fund (who'd have guessed?), wagering about 22% of the Fund on three bets including two that are for around 10% of the Fund both of which are on teams that are favourites but by no means raging hot ones in the form of the Hawks and Lions. The third bet is a contrarian, away team wager on Port Adelaide that, when offset by the wagers of Prudence and the Heuristic-Based Funds on the Roos in the same game, makes the outcome at best a small profit for those with the Recommended Portfolio.

Four other Funds have also made three wagers, Shadow, the Heuristic-Based and ELO-Line Funds, all of which are risking 15% of their respective Funds, and Prudence, which is risking a little over one-half of that percentage.

Shadow, you'll remember, has been stripped of its Heuristic-Based Fund managing duties, this onerous responsibility having now been placed in the hands of Short-Term Memory I, a heuristic which, as I've previously noted, has the equivalent footballing knowledge of a goldfish.

Hope has taken the weekend off, though it does look likely to make two wagers in the three games next weekend.

So that's 15 wagers in total this week for those with the Recommended Portfolio, collectively worth about 12% of the entire Fund.

Here's the detail:

From this week's Ready Reckoner it's fairly easy to see that Hawks and Lions victories are required for the profitability of all portfolios bar MIN#002's. His portfolio instead requires a Blues victory, coupled with a win by either of the Hawks or the Lions.

There's a modicum of disagreement about three of the weekend's games, and unanimity or near to it for other two.

Here are the details:

• Hawthorn are the week's only unanimous favourites. They take on Essendon on Friday night. Tipped margins of victory range from a low of 9 points to a high of 30 points.
• Carlton are 11-4 favourites over Fremantle, though Freo has the moderately credentialled Follow The Streak and Ride Your Luck in its corner.
• Brisbane are 11-4 favourites over Richmond. Amongst the Tiger supporters are Easily Impressed I, and Short-Term Memory I and II, which makes for a formidable, albeit inanimate supporter-base if tipping form is anything to go by.
• The Roos are 11-4 favourites over Port Adelaide. Easily Impressed II and Short-Term Memory II are both siding with the underdogs.
• The Dogs are 14-1 favourites over the at-home Eagles. Some signs of nervousness are, however, evident amongst those tipping the Dogs: three of the Margin Tippers are predicting Dog victory margins under 3 goals.

I almost didn't bother posting the HELP predictions for the week, but pondered what I'd do if HELP suddenly started making tips superior to those which I could instead make using the spare change in my pocket. It'd look a little suspicious if HELP's best performances were those I posted about after the event, not having pre-published its predictions beforehand.

So, unadorned by commentary, here they are:

With probability estimates this extreme HELP will record an aggregate probability score of about -17 for the round if all line results are unfavourable, and a score of about +15 if all are favourable, which represents about one-quarter of the aggregate score it's painstakingly accumulated across the first 11 rounds of the season.