2013 : Round 25 (Finals Week 2) - Results

Football, and sport more generally, can be at its most compelling when it's a cliched "game of inches". Wagering, I can confidently assert, is anything but this when it amounts to a "game of cents".

For all this weekend's wagering efforts, which included perfect 1 from 1 records for the Head-to-Head and Line Funds (and, admittedly, a 0 from 4 tally for the Margin Fund), Investors emerged late on Saturday with a net profit of an at-risk-of-being-rounded-away 0.0375% for the round, driving their season-long profit from 6.77c to 6.81c. Put more concretely, we won $2.20. I've made more money from fortuitous vending machine transactions.

One more goal from Sydney, or one fewer from the late-surging Blues, would have been enough to add a little to that return, our SuperMargin wager on the Swans to win by between 30 and 39 points missing out by just 6 points on finishing as a collect. But, as so often this season, that wasn't to be.

So, three games to play, and still almost 7c in profit. 

TIPSTERS AND PREDICTORS

With both of this weekend's games going almost perfectly to script, most Tipsters and Predictors recorded strong performances.

All of the active Head-to-Head Tipsters bagged 2 from 2, and all of the Margin Predictors bar Combo_NN2 recorded mean absolute prediction errors (MAPEs) in the 8 to 16 point range. The uniformly good nature of these performances meant that there were no changes in the Tipster or Predictor rankings.

The Head-to-Head Probability Predictors also had excellent rounds, all securing comfortably positive probability scores for the round. They too maintained the same rankings, though Bookie - LPSO did manage to extend its lead over Bookie - RE by a small amount.

In the line betting market, the Line Fund algorithm registered its third straight positive probability score, though its conservatism this weekend in setting probability estimates only slightly larger than 50% meant that this score was only modestly positive.

SUPERMARGIN PERFORMANCES

Four Predictors, Bookie_Actual (based on the line market handicap), Bookie_3, and the two RSMP Predictors, all selected the correct bucket in the Sydney v Carlton game, while none plumped for the right margin in the weekend's other contest.

That leaves ProPred_3 as the most successful SuperMargin wagerer so far this season, with 28 correct selections and an ROI of +5.6%. Next best in terms of number of correct selections is Win_7 with 27. It's tended to choose more lucrative buckets, however, so its successes have earned it a slightly higher ROI of +7.4%.

Combo_NN2 has now been joined in 3rd place by RSMP_Simple. They've both made 26 correct selections, Combo_NN2 turning those triumphs into a positive ROI of 3.2%, while RSMP_Simple's more conservative predictions have produced a negative ROI of 8.3%.