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.

MAFL 2010 : Round 12 Results

As I've probably mentioned before, I dislike draws, not so much for their inconclusive nature, but more for the fact that they make the statistics messy. All the formulae in my spreadsheets that calculate returns need to cater for this once-or-twice-in-a-season phenomenon, and all the tipping statistics now sport an awkward .5 at the end.

At least the Dees v Pies draw provided me - and most other Investors - some recompense for the inconvenience. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the head-to-head wagering rules, or who have might forgotten them, head-to-head wagers pay half-price on draws. We had the Dees at $5, so they paid out at $2.50 for us.)

This draw was sufficient to secure a very small nett profit for the round for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio, which grew by 0.38c and now stands at 89.29c. It wasn't, however, enough to drag MIN#002 or MIN#017 into the black: MIN#002's portfolio fell 1.8c to 85.80c, and MIN#017's portfolio fell 1.57c to 61.43c.

For all Investors then MAFL still has much work to do.

Here's the week's MAFL Dashboard.

You'll notice that Shadow lost money again this week for the Heuristic-Based Fund and, as a consequence, now cedes control of this Fund to Short-Term Memory I, which is the Fund with the best level-stake return on its home team selections across the season to date.

ELO-Line produced another profitable round this weekend, its third in succession, during which time is has made 11 profitable wagers and only 3 unprofitable wagers. This Fund is now up by 28.5% since the start of the season.

On tipping we now have three joint leaders: Short-Term Memory I, Easily Impressed I and Easily Impressed II. They're all on 64.5 (there's that ugly .5) from 96, which is about a 67% record. The next seven tipsters trail by no more than three tips.

ELO has tipped 26.5 from 40 across the last five rounds, which is the best performance of any of our tipsters during that period, and goes some way to explaining the profitability of the ELO-Based Fund in recent weeks.

The MARS Ratings of all but five teams changed on the basis of this weekend's results. West Coast recorded the largest drop, falling three places to 15th as a result of its thumping by the Tigers. The Dogs, Dees and Roos recorded the largest climbs, each jumping two spots on the back of their better-than-expected performances. Geelong remains 20 Ratings points clear at the top of the table.

All the Margin Tippers saw their Mean APE's head in the wrong direction this weekend. BKB still has the best Mean APE, with LAMP now in 2nd and ELO in 3rd on this measure, these two tipsters swapping places over the course of the round.

Using the Median APE metric ELO and LAMP are now joint leaders, with BKB in 3rd, a full 1 point behind.

HELP tipped just three correct line results from eight this week and generated probability scores that pushed it even further from naivety.

Even with the Pies shocking 9.22 effort the weekend still produced the most accurate kicking seen since Round 7. In aggregate, the eight matches produced just 188 goals and 155 behinds, which represents a 54.8% conversion rate.

Round 13 is the split round, so we'll only have five games to savour next weekend, and three the weekend after.

MAFL 2010 : Round 12

Is it really the second half of the season already?

Recommended Portfolio holders can look forward to another weekend of cheering for favourites one game and underdogs the next. This week they've one game (Kangaroos v Carlton) in which their interest is solely in the line and not the head-to-head result, and another game in which they've no interest at all (Richmond v West Coast).

They have 18 wagers in total, four from ELO totalling 20% of the Fund, three from New Heritage totalling a tick over 30%, three more from Hope totalling around 16%, another three each from Shadow and Heuristic-Based totalling 15% of each Fund, and two more from Prudence totalling a little over 6% of that Fund. In aggregate, that's about 17% of total funds at risk.

About one-third of that money is on the Dogs, either at $1.28 head-to-head or $1.90, and about another one-quarter is on the Hawks, all of it at $1.36 head-to-head.

Here's the detail:

Despite the large amounts on the Dogs and the Hawks, their contests are only the second- and fourth-most important in terms of largest swing between best and worst possible results. These games do, however, represent the largest downside.

The game that represents the largest swing is the Melbourne v Collingwood matchup, which is also the game with the largest upside. Next largest upside belongs to the Essendon v Cats game.

Here's the Ready Reckoner:

There's something far more settling about seeing a portfolio of wagers where the best and worst possible outcomes are roughly equidistant from zero. So call me a symmetrist ...

Three of the weekend's games have the tipsters scratching their collective non-existent heads: Port v Sydney, Richmond v West Coast, and Fremantle v St Kilda. For none of the games are our tipsters unanimous.

Here are the details:

• Carlton are 14-1 favourites over the Roos, with only Home Sweet Home tipping the Roos. LAMP, while tipping the Blues, does so by only 10 points, making this its Game of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over Adelaide. The Crows do, however, have the competition leaders, Easily Impressed I, tipping their victory.
• Geelong are 14-1 favourites over Essendon. Chi's tipping the Cats, but only by 1 point, making this his Game of the Round.
• Port Adelaide are 8-7 favourites over Sydney. HAMP, which tips Port by 7 points, and BKB, which tips them (probably) by 6.5 points, both have this as their Game of the Round, though in BKB's case it's one of two such games.
• West Coast are 8-7 favourites over the Tigers. BKB will, in all likelihood, tip Richmond by 6.5 points, which makes this its other Game of the Round.
• The Dogs are 13-2 favourites over the Lions. The two tipsters selecting the Lions do have solid tipping form, however. They're Easily Impressed I and Short-Term Memory I, which lie first and third in our tipping competition.
• St Kilda are 10-5 favourites over Fremantle. ELO tips the Saints by just 1 point, making this its Game of the Round.
• Collingwood are 14-1 favourites over Melbourne. Only Home Sweet Home expects the Dees to win.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is 3.5 this week, which is an historically high value for this metric.

HELP has taken the high-risk approach this week, with no probability estimate below 73% and five of them in the 90s.

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.

MAFL 2010 : Round 11 Results

Absent an upset victory by either the Tigers or the Eagles - both of which outcomes seemed possible for at least a portion of their respective games - that was just about as good a weekend as Investors with the Recommended Portfolio might have hoped for.

An improbable Dogs victory also tantalised for a few minutes late in the final term on Friday, but that outcome ultimately proved unattainable, leaving the Recommended Portfolio up 2.4c on the weekend and down now just 11.1c on the season.

The portfolio of MIN#017 also finished in the black, though the 8.4c hike has left much still to do to return that Portfolio to parity, languishing as it does still some 37c down on the season. Still, how does one eat an elephant? The conventional answer is: one spoonful at a time.

MIN#002 was the only Investor to suffer losses this week. His portfolio fell 6.3c to 75.2c, a victim of Hope's curiously lacklustre performance so far this season, which has seen it land just 4 of 12 wagers.

Here's the detail.

Shadow lost money for the second week in row and so is now at risk of losing control of the Heuristic-Based Fund. Short-Term Memory I will assume control from Round 13 if Shadow loses money again in the next round and if the profitability of wagering on STM I's home team tips continues to be the highest amongst all the heuristic tipsters.

Speaking of heuristic tipsters, their overall tipping performance this week might best be described as adequate, with almost all tipping fewer than BKB's six. Ride Your Luck was the only tipster to match BKB, and Chi was the only tipster to outperform it. Chi tipped seven, but still remains a considerable distance from the lead bunch.

Easily Impressed I, which tipped just 4 from 8 this week, retains outright leadership on 61 from 88 (69%). Easily Impressed II is second on 60 and Short-Term Memory I is third on 59, each of them also tipping correctly in just 4 from 8 contests. These uninspiring performances have allowed BKB to narrow the gap so that it is now just 4 tips from joint-leadership.

MARS Ratings saw some jostling amongst positions 3 to 6, with St Kilda claiming third and Carlton fifth, dropping the Dogs into fourth and Freo into sixth. No other changes in ladder position occurred, a consequence of the weekend's generally close games in which no victory margin exceeded 41 points and in which six games were decided by margins of four goals or fewer.

Amongst the Margin Tippers, LAMP benefited most from the narrowness of victory margins since they most closely resembled its prediction. Its Mean APE for the round of just 14 points per game enabled it to lop 1.5 points off its season-long Mean APE, and the fact that none of its APE's for the round exceeded 27 points meant that it also lopped a stunning 7 points off its Median APE. This performance leaves LAMP third on Mean APE and has catapulted it into first on Median APE.

BKB retains overall leadership on Mean APE - though all but Chi have now joined BKB in having a sub-30 Mean APE -but it now finds itself third on Median APE, behind LAMP and ELO.

HELP recorded another unreportable set of results finishing with just 3 from 8 correct line picks and an overall sub-naive set of probability scores.

In aggregate, the weekend's matches produced just 173 goals and 171 behinds, comfortably the lowest total for each scoring type in a round this season. Though the weather could legitimately be cited as a contributory cause this week, the general inaccuracy in front of goal that saw almost as many goals scored as behinds has been a season-long phenomenon. To date, the season has seen 2,260 goals scored and 2,110 behinds - a conversion rate of just 51.7%, which is significantly below the long-term average. Only nine teams have a conversion rate above 50%, and seven of them are in the top eight. The exceptions are Hawthorn, who are eighth and have a 48.9% conversion rate, and Essendon, who are ninth and have a 51.8% conversion rate.

MAFL 2010 : Round 11

Every week I learn a little more about my tolerance for risk.

I feel far more comfortable with an array of wagers that includes the Tigers at $5.50 and West Coast at $6.00 than I did with last week's festival of favourites. Wagering at odds-on prices still feels inordinately Sysyphean to me.

Anyway, the Recommended Portfolio includes 23 bets this week, which represent, in aggregate, about 15% of total funds. The ELO-Based Fund is the most active, with 6 bets totalling 30% of the Fund. New Heritage is next most active, with 5 bets totalling 15% of the Fund, three of them contrarian bets on away teams - an indulgence afforded only to this Fund and an annoyance to those with the Recommended Fund who win and lose on this game no matter the outcome (though in both cases they win more if the home team prevails).

All four remaining Funds - Prudence, Hope, Shadow and Heuristic-Based - have just 3 bets each representing aggregates ranging from about 4.5% of the Fund in Prudence's case to 17.5% of the Fund in Hope's case, a startling return to activity from a Fund that's wagered not much more than this over the course of the last 3 rounds combined, and nothing at all in Round 10.

Here's the detail:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, it's the Eagles v Cats game that represents the largest swing between best and worst outcomes, and the largest upside - hardly surprising, I guess, when you've thrown a wad of cash at a team priced at $6. The next-largest upside, and the next-largest swing as it happens, comes from wagers on the Tigers at $5.50.

The largest downside is associated with wagers on Sydney at $1.72 facing the Dons, though a Lions win over the Roos would hurt almost as much.

Here's the detail of the week's Ready Reckoner:

Two games - Dogs v Pies on Sunday and Swans v Dons on Saturday - are generating the highest levels of disagreement amongst tipsters this week, and only one game has elicited unanimity.

Here are the details:

• The Saints are 13-2 favourites over the Tigers, though the competition-leading Easily Impressed I is one of the two tipsters backing the Tigers. The Margin Tippers are predicting Saints victory margins ranging from 7 to 40 points.
• Carlton are the week's only unanimous favourites. They take on the Dees. Predicted margins of victory for the Blues range from 12 to 29 points.
• Fremantle are 14-1 favourites over Adelaide. ELO, though tipping Freo, predicts just a 6 point margin making this its Game of the Round.
• Brisbane are 12-3 favourites over the Roos. Two of the three Roos tips come from Margin Tippers: Chi tips them to win by just 1 point, and LAMP tips them to win by 3 points, making this game both of these tipster's Game of the Round (in Chi's case, one of two such Games).
• Geelong are 14-1 favourites over the Eagles, with the Cats tipped to win by between 17 and 42 points.
• Sydney are 10-5 favourites over Essendon. HAMP, which tips Sydney to win by 2 points, and BKB, which tips them to win by 6.5 points, have this as their Game of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over Port Adelaide. Predicted margins for the Hawks range from 7 to 29 points.
• Western Bulldogs are 8-7 favourites over the Pies. Chi and BKB are the only Margin Tippers selecting the Pies, in Chi's case by just 1 point, making this his other Game of the Round.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is about 2.6 this week, up considerably on last week's 1.1.

HELP's has again selected all 8 away teams as line betting winners this week, but has attached probabilities in a much narrower range: 63% to 67%.

This week those with the Recommended Portfolio would like to see a round riddled with upsets. Wins by the Tigers and the Eagles would be especially welcomed (though I'll settle for just one of them winning).