2016 Round 7 : Most Years, We'd Only Just Be Starting
/As alluded to in this week's blog title, most previous years would have seen MoS Funds sitting out the early parts of the season waiting for their respective Fund algorithms to calibrate themselves to the new reality.
Off-season analysis of the new Fund algorithms found that they needed no such period of acclimatisation - a conclusion that results so far have resoundingly endorsed with just one unprofitable week recorded during the first six rounds.
Round 7 brings another five Head-to-Head and six Line wagers to the table, these totalling a little over 7% of the initial Overall Portfolio, which is a little more than they did for these same two Funds last week and the week before that.
(NB: the Overs/Unders markets have not yet been posted. As usual, an update blog will appear once they have).
Friday night's Richmond v Hawthorn game offers the greatest upside to Investors with the Head-to-Head Fund opting to take the $6.50 on offer in the H2H market for the Tigers, and the Line Fund doing likewise to the 44.5 points start being offered in the line market. As the poor-man's Ready Reckoner below reveals, a Tigers win is therefore worth about 6c in profit for the Portfolio and a draw about half that, while a defeat by less than 45 points for the Tigers means about a 0.5c loss for the Portfolio, and a larger defeat means a loss of almost 2c.
The next-largest possible profit comes in the Saints v Roos game where a Saints win would add about 3c to the Portfolio value. Much smaller profits will accrue should the Cats, Suns, Dogs or Dockers produce the results most favourable to Investors.
In no single game is more than 1.7c of the Fund at risk, and the span of possible returns from the 11 wagers across the six games ranges from a loss of 7c up to a profit of a bit over 12c.
TIPS AND PREDICTIONS
Despite the average TAB favourite being priced at just over $1.40 this week, the second-highest average we've seen this season, Disagreement levels amongst Tipsters and Predictors are again low this week.
The Head-to-Head Tipsters have an overall Disagreement Index of just 19%, the lowest it's been since Round 3 and the third-lowest it's been for a single round all season. But for Home Sweet Home's 46% figure we'd almost certainly have had a season-low this week.
In two games - the Suns v Dees, and the Dogs v Crows matchups - the TAB has installed equal-favourites, but in neither of those has more than four Tipsters lined up on the minority side. Every other game sees no more than two Tipsters forming a minor party.
The Margin Predictors have also produced their third-lowest average Disagreement Index for the season, their average mean absolute deviation (MAD) this week of 4.6 points per game per Predictor exceeded by only five Predictors (the two ensemble MoSS predictors, the two RSMP predictors, and Bookie_3) and in only three games (Collingwood v Carlton, Western Bulldogs v Adelaide, and Richmond v Hawthorn).
Many of the games are expected to be decided by less than three goals by a significant number of Predictors - four in the Collingwood v Carlton game, nine in the Geelong v West Coast game, all 12 in the Gold Coast v Melbourne game, 10 in the Western Bulldogs v Adelaide game, three in the Fremantle v GWS game, seven in the St Kilda v Kangaroos game, and one in the Port Adelaide v Brisbane Lions game. If that's right, obviously it'll make for an interesting weekend's football.
Even higher levels of agreement are on display amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors, their mean MAD of 3.3% points per game per Predictor a certified season-low. Only MoSSBODS_Prob has a MAD higher than that the all-Predictor average. It's responsible for driving the MADs in the Collingwood v Carlton, and in the St Kilda v Kangaroos game above that same average. In the only other game where the mean MAD is above the overall mean - the Western Bulldogs v Adelaide game - it's MoSSBODS_Prob and C_Prob that are jointly responsible for that outcome.
Once again then this week, the Predictors that ignore bookmaker input are standing at something of a distance from all the other Predictors, which do use such input. So, we'll have another test of the efficacy of that approach.
MoSSBODS DETAILS
Two home teams this week, Richmond and Collingwood, find themselves playing at a location where their MoSSBODS-assessed venue advantage is negative. That's enough, in Collingwood's case, to convert what would otherwise be narrow favouritism into narrow underdoggedness (we've had this discussion before - what is the appropriate opposite?).
All seven remaining home teams enjoy positive advantages, six of them at least partly because they have the Interstate advantage of +3 Scoring Shots.
The two highest-scoring games of the round are expected to be the last two, the Saints v Roos game tipped to produced 192 points, and the Power v Lions game 193 points. Saturday's Swans v Dons game is predicted to be the round's lowest-scoring game, it expected to yield only 149 points, more than two-thirds of those accruing to the home team Swans.
