2011 Round 26 Results: Another Half a Cent (Almost)

The semi-final dominance of teams finishing with the double-chance continued this week, but not before the Blues came within an umpire's decision - a 50:50 one to be fair - of becoming only the 3rd team in the last 12 seasons to advance to a Prelim from outside the top 4 spots.

Instead, the cumulative record for teams with the double-chance now stands at 22 and 2 (see table at left), with no teams from positions 5th, 7th or 8th having progressed to a Prelim Final under the System we now have in place, which commenced in 2000.

The dominance of fourth-placed over fifth-placed teams is now the greatest amongst all semi-final pairings, with the cumulative record for games between these teams standing at 5-0 in favour of teams finishing 4th.

In the other Semi-Final the Hawks barely looked troubled, even when the Swans rallied in the 2nd-half, and eventually wound up 36-point victors, nudging Investor Portfolios up by just under 0.5c as a consequence. If ever there was an outcome that exemplified the phrase "too little, too late" ...

Victories by both of the pre-game favourites meant perfect scores for all the Head-to-Head Tipsters, so ladder positions remained unchanged.

The victory margins were equally predictable, especially for Combo_NN_2, which had tipped Hawthorn by 29 and West Coast by 3. Its MAPE of 3.8 for the Round was comfortably the best of all the Margin Predictors this week, though Combo_NN_1, ProPred_3 and ProPred_7 each managed to record single-digit MAPEs as well.

No Predictor fared worse than an MAPE of 14.8 (Bookie_9) for the round, which meant that every Predictor's season-long MAPE declined this week.

Bookie_3 now leads Combo_7 by 0.6 points per game, which represents about a 116-point lead - too much, I'd suggest, to be bridged across the three remaining contests. Combo_7 remains capable, however, along with Bookie_3, of finishing the season with a sub-30 MAPE. To do that Combo_7 needs to record an aggregate absolute error of less than 50 points across the final 3 contests. Bookie_3 has a little more leeway and needs to record an aggregate absolute error of less than 166 points across the Prelims and GF to stay below the 30-point barrier.

All our Probability Predictors, Head-to-Head and Line, also performed well, H2H doing best amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors this week, though still trailing the TAB Sportsbet bookmaker by a considerable margin across the season (for further details see Fund Performance - Head-to-Head Fund).