MAFL 2010 - The Tradition Continues

Welcome to MAFL 2010.

This year MAFL celebrates its 5th season of faithfully frustrating and sporadically enriching Investors. As I trust you've now come to expect, MAFL changes every year and, indeed, this year's MAFL is a little different from last year's.

E-mail Subscription
MAFL Online now offers an e-mail subscription facility. To subscribe, click on the link in the "Subscribe via email" section at top right then follow the prompts and provide your e-mail address. Sometime after you've done that an e-mail will arrive in your Inbox containing a link that you'll need to click to confirm your subscription.

Thereafter on those days where there's something new on the MAFL Online site (and only on those days) you'll be sent an e-mail containing the first few hundred characters of the new posting and a link to the MAFL Online site so you can, if you want, come and read the entire posting.

Delisting of MAFL Stats
Another change this year is the retirement of the MAFL Stats site. I'm not sure whether it was the mention of "Stats", the turgid nature of the postings, or the misfortune of being the junior and lesser-updated MAFL site, but whatever it was, by season's end MAFL Stats was generating less web traffic than you'd see for a site offering weight-loss tips to Sumo wrestlers.

All of the static content that was on MAFL Stats has been transferred to MAFL Online (so clearly I'm not buying the "turgid" content angle) and I'll selectively move some of the dynamic content across to MAFL Online - such as the weekly ladder, Alternative Premierships and MARS Ratings - as the season progresses.

Fund Changes
MAFL will offer six Funds this year, five wagering on the head-to-head and one wagering on the handicap market.

Head-to-Head Funds
Three of the head-to-head Funds - New Heritage, Prudence and Hope - will be repeat-offenders from 2009, and two will be new Funds. One of the new Funds, The Shadow Fund, will be based on the tips of the Shadow heuristic and will level-stake wager commencing in Round 6. Each wager will be 5% of the Fund and bets will only be made on a game if Shadow is tipping the home team, actual or notional.

The other new head-to-head Fund, which for now I'll call the Heuristic Fund since I'm lacking in inspiration this early in the new year and so have nothing better to offer, will also be heuristic-based. It will promiscuously bound from heuristic to heuristic, remaining faithful to a single heuristic only until such time as wagering on that heuristic's (home team only) tips has cost the Fund money for 2 successive rounds after which time the Fund will transfer its affection to the heuristic with the season's best home-team wagering performance at that point. It too will level-stake wager, risking 5% of the Fund in each bet, and will wager on the Shadow Fund's home team tips in Round 1.

To more fully explain the Heuristic Fund, let me walk through a hypothetical few rounds of wagering:
Round 1: The Heuristic Fund wagers 5% on the home team, true or notional, in any game where the Shadow Fund has tipped the home team to win.

Round 2: The Heuristic Fund again wagers 5% on the home team, true or notional, in any game where the Shadow Fund has tipped the home team to win.
(In short, the Heuristic Fund wagers will mirror those of the Shadow Fund for, at least, Rounds 1 and 2.)

Round 3: Assume that the Heuristic Fund lost money in Rounds 1 and 2 by following Shadow's tips. In that case the Heuristic Fund would switch allegiances to whichever heuristic had the best (notional) wagering performance at the end of Round 2 assuming that level-stake wagers had been placed on all of the heuristic's home team tips during the season. For Round 3 the Heuristic Fund would wager on the home team tips of this, the currently most successful, heuristic. (If two or more Funds happen to be equal on performance to date I'll break the tie by selecting the heuristic with the stronger overall tipping performance amongst the 13 tipsters we followed in 2009.)
Let's assume that the Ride Your Luck heuristic had started the season very well and so the Heuristic Fund switched to it for Round 3.

Round 4: The Heuristic Fund would again wager on the home team tips of the Ride Your Luck heuristic.

The Fund would continue to wager on the home team tips of Ride Your Luck until such time as this caused the Fund to lose money for two successive rounds at which point the Fund would again switch heuristics to whichever heuristic was at that point most successful to that point in the season. Simple really. (Don't worry too much as this Fund will have a low weighting in the Recommended Portfolio. I just wanted to make sure we had a bit more happening in the first few weeks of the season than we did in the last few seasons.)

Following this strategy would have made money in each of the seasons 2006 to 2009 with profits ranging from 1.5 to 16 units. That said, of course, our 2010 mileage may vary.

The one head-to-head Fund that has not made the list for 2010 is the Chi-squared Fund. No matter how generous I was in adjusting its 2009 performance to allow for the effects of Dame Misfortune, the Chi-squared Fund reminded me of the Heritage Funds of 2007 and 2008 but without the profit. So, this year, the MAFL Mascot will revert to being merely a tipster unless his tipping performance is so outstanding that it gets him a run for The Heuristic Fund at some point in the season.

Line Fund
The Line Redux Fund of 2009 is another casualty for this season, replaced by a Fund based on the margin predictions of ELO, which for now I'll call the ELO Line Fund (I told you before, right now I'm not doing inspired).

This Fund will level-stake wager at 5% and only when the tipped margin is such that the home team, actual or notional, is predicted to win on handicap.

*****

And that, for now, is that.

More to come in the weeks ahead ...

Second-Placed Cats Spoil the Symmetry (Not That They Care)

Ah well, the better side on the day and all that. Congrats to the Cats but they can count themselves very lucky indeed as a gracious coach admitted in his post-game address.

The Saints' lack of finish in front of goal cost Investors dearly this weekend, the undefended goal-after-the-siren merely making their frustration complete as it consigned their line bet to the same fate as their multitudinous head-to-head bets.

Those with the Recommended Portfolio wound up losing 6.1% on the GF to finish the season up by about 1.4%. MIN#001 lost 6.3% to finish up 5.9% for the season, MIN#015 lost 5.9% to finish up 5.2% on the season, and MIN#017 lost just 4% to finish up 33.4% on the season. So, as we knew before the Granny started, profit for everybody. Just not as much as I'd hoped.

Investors: please advise me by e-mail what you'd like done with your Funds.

We now enter the chart and table section of this blog. Prepare to scroll.

Here's a chart showing the game-by-game performance of every Investor's Portfolio:

As you can see by those dips on the far right, Investors lost money over the course of the Finals this year, in stark contrast with years past.

Next, here's a chart giving the round-by-round summary:

Turning our attention to the individual Funds, we start with a table showing each Fund's performance with every team across the entire season:

And we follow this with a table summarising this data by team:

Lastly, we finish with a round-by-round summary:

On tipping BKB finishes the year with 125 from 185 (68%), ELO with 124 from 185 (67%), and Chi with 118 from 185 (64%). If offered these stats at the start of the season I'd have accepted Chi's and leapt at ELO's.

On line betting, ELO and Chi both finish with a loss, leaving Chi on 85 from 185 for the season (and 1 from 9 in the finals), and ELO on 103 from 185. Level-stake wagering on ELO's line bets would have yielded 9.49 units of profit across the season. Level-stake wagering on Chi's line bets would have yielded a peptic ulcer.

Chi's final Mean APE is 30.6 points per game, beaten by ELO's 28.7 points per game, in turn edged out by BKB's 28.0 points per game. On Median APE ELO is the best of the three. Its 23 points beats BKB's 23.5 points. Chi's 26 points places him third.

This Week We're All Saints

After 341 wagers across 184 games Investors with the Recommended Portfolio have effectively offered the TAB Sportsbet bookie a double-or-quits proposition.

If the Saints win on Saturday, their profit will lift from about 7.5% of Initial Funds to about 15.1%; if the Saints lose the entire year's effort will amount to a profit of about 1.4%.

The story for other Investors is different but they too are now all guaranteed a profit for season 2009 ranging in size from 5% to 33%.

Head-to-head bets on the Saints range from Chi-squared's 14.1% to Prudence's 3.2%, and Line Redux has its customary 5% on the Saints +8.5 points.

The bookies' re-estimation of the relative chances of the Saints and the Cats on the basis of just one game each has been quite dramatic and, in my view, excessive. This time last week I calculated that we should expect a Saints price of $1.80 to $1.95 if they were to take on the Cats in the GF. We got them at $2.30.

Our Ready Reckoner is as follows:

Those are fairly dramatic swings for just a single game. Still, it is the Granny ...

On tipping this week, a little explanation is required.

Not for Chi, who's on the Saints by 3, nor for BKB, who's on the Cats, but for ELO, who's on the Saints by 31 despite the fact that Geelong have a marginally better MARS rating (1,043.3 to the Saints' 1,043.1) and there's no true home team this week.

All year I've been selecting ELO's tips using a model, fitted to the results for seasons 2000 to 2008, that converts MARS ratings into predicted margins and takes into account true and notional home team status. This model, in the finals especially, places a great deal of weight on the home team even if that team is only the notional home team. The logic behind this is that, in the absence of a true home team, the notional home team - such as the Saints this week - finished higher on the competition ladder.

So, for ELO, the Saints by 31 points it is.

On Line Betting this means that Chi and ELO are also both on the Saints.

(Incidentally Chi's Mean APE is 30.7 points per game and his Median APE is 26.5 points. Any hopes of a sub-30 point Mean APE are long-gone, but around 30.5 points per game - which is possible if the Saints do win by around 3 points - is still a respectable outcome, unlike say his wagering performance.

ELO's Mean APE is 28.6 points per game and its Median APE is 23.0 points, respectable results both. With a Saints victory of the optimum magnitude - 31 points - the Mean APE could even finish below 28.5 points per game.

BKB's Mean APE is 28.1 points per game and its Median APE is 23.5 points, remarkably still trailing ELO's.)

Cold Pies Disappoint Investors

The neatness of the 2009 AFL Finals series continues, as the teams finishing 3rd and 4th on the home and away season ladder depart in the Prelims as scripted, leaving 1st to play 2nd in the GF.

A shame then that we wagered against such a tidy outcome.

St Kilda's head-to-head win and line betting loss, coupled with head-to-head and line betting losses for the Pies, left most Funds and Portfolios in red ink for the weekend.

New Heritage was the only Fund to increase in value, rising about 3.5% on 1 successful wager from 2. It's now made 99 bets during the season, 74% of which have been winners. Prudence was the only other Fund to land a winning wager, notching 1 from 2, but nonetheless shed a little under 2% in value. It's made 93 bets this season, winning 73% of them.

Chi-squared dropped furthest this weekend, frittering almost 16% on the Pies. It's made 42 bets this season, winning just 48%. Hope, another Pie-eyed Fund (gotta get these puns out now - time's running out this season), dropped a little over 5%. It's made 34 bets this season, winning exactly half.

Line Redux contrived to finish on the wrong side of both line markets this weekend (as did Chi and ELO), causing it to drop 10% of its initial value. It's made 73 bets this season and won 52% of them.

So, the Recommended Portfolio drops a little under 6%, leaving it up about 7.5% for the season. In other Portfolio news, MIN#001 and MIN#015 both dropped around 5-6% leaving them up about 11-12% on the season, and MIN#017 recorded the weekend's only Portfolio increase, rising about 3.5% to be up 37% on the season.

On tipping, Chi and ELO scored 1 from 2 and BKB scored 2 from 2. BKB and ELO are now tied on 124 from 184 (67%), 6 tips ahead of Chi on 118 (64%).

Pies To Spring the Upset?

It's that time of year when I wonder whether or not to ignore home ground advantage.

This week's Geelong v Pies clash is, as you probably know, being played at the MCG. Geelong, as the team finishing higher on the ladder, are the AFL's notional home team. But the G is Collingwood's home ground, not Geelong's (although it must be beginning to feel like a second home for the Cats and their supporters).

In the end, I've stuck with tradition and coded for this as a home game for the purposes of the MAFL models.

As a consequence of this coding, all the Funds, New Heritage excluded, can consider only Pies wagers. As it turns out, all of them, including New Heritage if only barely, have accepted the invitation to punt on a Pie.

Across the two games, New Heritage has 2 wagers totalling around 11.5% of the Fund, though only the one on St Kilda is of any consequence. Prudence also has two wagers, totalling almost 8.5% of the Fund in its case and biased slightly towards the Saints in size if not in risk.

Hope has a single wager of around 5% on the Pies, Chi-squared also has just a single wager on the Pies, though his is for 15.5% of the Fund (the phrase "death or glory" springs immediately, unbidden, to mind).

Line Redux has a 5% wager on each of the Saints, giving 17.5 start, and the Pies, receiving 15.5.

Here's what the Ready Reckoner resembles:

On tipping, we've unanimity in support of the Saints, but a 2-1 split for the Pies in the other game.

For line betting, Chi and ELO are both on the Saints and the Pies.