2012 Finals Week 1 Results : No Joy

Investors went close to securing their first SuperMargin wager in 35 attempts on Friday night as the Hawks defeated the Pies by 38 points, a margin only two points fewer than was required for a long-awaited collect for the Fund. After that, the weekend went relentlessly downhill, the Crows contriving to generate more scoring shots than their opponents, the Swans, but still losing to them by almost 5 goals, the Cats deciding to take the 1st quarter off and never fully recovering from their absence, and the Eagles blowing the Roos off the park in all but the 3rd term to run out eventual 96 point winners, some 57 points more than we, at most, required.

Five losses from five bets cost us a little over 5c, leaving Overall Portfolios down by almost 21% on the season.

Finals are usually kind to home teams - and, consequently, to MAFL - but two of this week's victors, the Swans and Fremantle, were playing many hundreds of kilometres from their home grounds. None of the still-active Head-to-Head Tipsters had predicted either of these upsets, so all finished the round with 2 from 4 tipping records.

The combination of underdog victories and the unexpectedly large win by the Eagles over the Roos served to impair Margin Predictor performances too, the all-Predictor MAPE for this week's four games coming in at 45.59 points per game, with the best result being Combo_NN_2's 38.55 points per game. The worst performer was ProPred_3 with a massive 51.90 points per game average, the worst single-round average of any Predictor this season. Bookie_9 ensured that its period outside the top 3 was very short by returning a relatively respectable 41.24 points per game average, about 8 points per game better than the H2H Predictors that previously sat above it on the Ladder.

The Margin Predictors also performed poorly as line betting judges this week, averaging only 1.3 correct selections from 4, and did equally badly as guides for SuperMargin wagering as none selected the correct bucket in any of the games. (A number did, however - Combo_NN2, the Margin Funds' labrador-needing guide, included - miss by only a single bucket in the Hawks v Pies clash.)

Head-to-Head and Line Probability scoring was also poor this week. Best amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors was the TAB Bookmaker, who managed to eke out a zero probability score, while worst was ProPred, who racked up a significant negative probability score.

The Line Fund algorithm also recorded a negative probability score, its first since Round 20.