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.