2016 Round 3 : Pleasing Discernment

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After a good start to a season - and we have had a number of those before, not all of them portending the season to follow - it's nice when the main Fund algorithms avoid establishing an impromptu game of double-or-nothing with the bookmaker of choice and, instead, remain considered in their wagering.

This week, both the Head-to-Head and Line Funds have made just four wagers each, and in neither case would a loss of all four wagers drive the respective Fund into red ink for the season. 

Of the four head-to-head wagers, two are on favourites and two on mild underdogs, the longest of those underdogs St Kilda, priced at $3.05 and taking on the Pies. St Kilda also enjoys the good favour of the Line Fund, carrying that Fund's equal-largest wager of 1.8% and a three-goal head start.

The other, similarly-sized wager of the Line Fund is on the Dogs, who take on Hawthorn, receive 7.5 points start, and carry a $2 price tag.

There's also a degree of restraint from the Overs/Unders Fund this week, it having just four wagers as well, a pair of those representing its first ever Overs wagers. The other two are Unders wagers, one on the Dogs v Hawks game, which means that the round's most lucrative result for Investors would be a Dogs win in a game where the total score is 187 points or less.

Conversely, the worst result for Investors would be a Dogs loss by 8 points or more in a game where the total score exceeded 187 points.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

This week, only three contests split the Head-to-Head Tipsters, and in one of those games, the Saints v Pies matchup, it's only the constant contrarian, Home Sweet Home, that's in the minority.

In the two other games where there is some dissent, it's the Tigers with four Tipsters behind it taking on the Crows, and the Hawks with four Tipsters behind it taking on the Dogs. That leaves us with an overall Disagreement Index of just 13%, a season low.

Disagreement levels are at a season low amongst the Margin Predictors too, the all-Predictor mean absolute deviation (MAD) coming in at just 4.5 points per Predictor per game.

There's most disagreement, in a margin sense, about the Geelong v Brisbane Lions game, with the range spanning a low of a 30-point Geelong win (ENS_Linear_MoS) and a high of a 58-point Geelong win (Bookie_3), and all-Predictor MAD of 7.1 points. 

The more interesting disagreement comes though in those games where there's less of it in an absolute sense, but where a number of the Predictors straddle the zero point. In the Dogs v Hawks game, six Predictors are making positive margin forecasts and six negative margin forecasts, and their mean represents about a 2-point Hawthorn win, while in the Tigers v Crows game, seven predictors have a positive margin, four a negative margin, and Bookie_3 is forecasting a draw. The average margin prediction in that game is just +0.2 points in favour of the Tigers. Draw, anyone?

Looking across the Predictors we see that it's ENS_Linear_MoS that is most deviant from the mean, its MAD of 7.6 points per game over a point higher than the next-highest, its sibling Predictor, ENS_Greedy_MoS. RSMP_Weighted is the Predictor nearest the all-Predictor mean vector this weekend, its MAD just 1.7 points per game.

And, to complete the round's low levels of disagreement, we find the Probability Predictors also turning in a season low all-Predictor MAD, theirs a figure of 3.4% points per game.

For them, it's the Dogs v Hawks game where disagreement is greatest, though even there the range of forecasts covers just a 15% point range - three on one side of 50% and two more on the other side - and the MAD is only 6.0%.

MoSSBODS_Prob has the round's biggest MAD of 5.6% points per game, and Bookie_OE the lowest at 2.0% points per game.

MoSSBODS' DETAILED PREDICTIONS

This week, according to MoSSBODS, two home teams will be playing at venues where, historically, their opponents have performed better relative to expectations than have they. St Kilda, who play Collingwood at the MCG on Saturday afternoon, are about a 1 Scoring Shot (SS) poorer team on that ground than are their opponents, while Richmond, who play Adelaide at Docklands on Saturday, have such a poor record at that ground relative to MoSSBODS' expectations and relative to Adelaide that their 3 SS Interstate Travel advantage is more than wiped out, leaving the Crows as a +0.2 SS better team at that venue.

In the other games, the home teams enjoy Net Venue Effects ranging from 0 SS to 6 SS, the latter being the advantage enjoyed by the Cats playing the Lions at Kardinia Park.

Compared to the TAB, MoSSBODS' margin predictions are no more than 16 points different in an absolute sense in any single game, and less than two goals different in five of the nine contests. The biggest difference comes in the Cats v Lions contest where, despite the 6 SS benefit attributed to the Cats based on the game's venue, MoSSBODS' forecast of a 37-point Cats win still comes in well below the TAB's forecast of a 52.5-point win.

Looking at the team-by-team score predictions we find that MoSSBODS is projecting smaller scores for six of the home teams and six of the away teams by amounts ranging from virtually zero (Adelaide) to over 19 points (Geelong).

For those teams where MoSSBODS' projections exceed those of the TAB, none is projected to score more than an additional five points relative to the TAB's implicit forecast.

Overall then, in seven of the contests, MoSSBODS is projecting a smaller aggregate score, and in only two is it projecting a larger aggregate.

(Note that, at the time MoS' wagers were locked in, Richmond were -2.5 points and $2 on the Line market, but when the snapshot was taken to compile this final table, they were +2.5 points and $1.90 in that same market.)