With almost 12% of the home-and-away season now completed, and knowing twice as much about it as we did last week, time to update our projections about how this part of the season will wind up.

For details about the methodologies being used here, see this post from last week.

LADDER FINISHES

Under the regular simulation methodology, Port Adelaide significantly increased its probability of a top ladder finish this week, and is now rated an 88% chance for a spot in the Finals, and a 26% chance for the minor premiership.

The Finals chances of Geelong, North Melbourne, Essendon, and St Kilda also rose sharply, while those of GWS, Hawthorn, Sydney, West Coast, Western Bulldogs, and Adelaide all fell by double-digit percentage points.

Overall, the standard methodology remains fairly conservative, with only about 4.5 Expected Wins separating 1st from last.

The heretical methodology is less conservative, but still offers a range of only 7.25 Expected Wins.

Under this methodology, teams’ percentage point gains and losses in probability estimates for key spots are broadly similar, as are the ranges of probabilities across the teams for those key ladder finishes.

For example, under the standard methodology, teams’ Finals chances range from about 9% to 88%, while under the heretical methodology they range from 3% to 89%. Similarly, those for the Minor Premiership range from 0.1% to 26% under the standard methodology, and 0% to 28% under the heretical methodology.

What the heretical methodology does most of all, it seems, is spread the teams out in terms of Expected Wins, but this translates into smaller differences in estimated probabilities than we might expect.