2016 Round 11 : A More Balanced Portfolio
/If last week's portfolio of wagers was a high-risk hedge fund, this week's is a far more diversified bundle of assets, with a high-risk / high-reward tilt at the Suns offset by a trio of more pedestrian, term deposit-like investments. (Can you guess which sector of the economy I've spent a lot of my life working in?)
In the head-to-head markets, our lone, speculative Suns wager was secured at $13 before support from other, more cashed-up punters drove their price down to $10 at the TAB, while the remaining bets on the Cats, Pies and Dogs were locked in at less lucrative prices in the $1.65 to $1.80 range.
Those four bets are matched by line wagers on the same teams ranging in size from 0.5% to 1.8% and with prices all of $1.90 excepting that on the Cats -6.5 at $1.85.
Together, the octet yields the following Ready Reckoner:
Clearly, a marquee weekend is going to need the Suns to spring the upset, but even a modest loss by them coupled with favourable outcomes in the three other games could see as much as about 3c added to the price of the Overall Portfolio.
TIPS AND PREDICTIONS
This week sees unprecedented levels of agreement amongst MoS Tipsters and Predictors as all three sets have turned in record or equal-record lows for their respective disagreement measures.
The Head-to-Head Tipsters have an overall Disagreement Index of just 13%, the equal-lowest for the year, with even Home Sweet Home managing only, by its disagreeable standards, a paltry 18% figure for the round.
Consult The Ladder this week assumes the role of Tipster Most Extreme, a position resulting from the fact that, in three games, the team higher on the competition ladder has been installed by the TAB as underdogs.
In no single game do more than three Tipsters disagree with the consensus, the lone three-Predictor minority getting behind the Eagles against the Dogs.
The Margin Predictors' average Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) is 4.0 points per game per Predictor this week, which is a season low, surpassing the 4.1 figure of Round 9. MoSSBODS_Marg (6.3) has the week's highest Predictor MAD, though it is only slightly ahead of one of the ensemble models based on it, ENS_Linear_MoSS, whose MAD is 6.2. The only other Predictors substantially above the all-Predictor average are C_Marg (5.1) and ENS_Greedy_MoSS (4.9). Three of the directly bookie-based Predictors have the round's lowest MADs: Bookie_9 (1.9), Bookie_Hcap (1.7), and Bookie_LPSO (1.5).
Looking across the games, margin predictions are most divergent for the Gold Coast v Sydney game where the MAD is 7.6 points per predictor and the forecast Swans victory margins span a range of over four goals from 40 to 65 points. There are also above-average MADs for the Dogs v Eagles (5.1 points), Pies v Power (4.4), and the Crows v Saints (4.3) games.
MoSSBODS_Prob (4.8% points per game) and C_Prob (3.4%) have the largest MADs amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors in a round where the all-Predictor average is just 2.9% points per game per Predictor, also a season low. MoSSBODS is most divergent in its opinions about the chances of Geelong, Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs, for all of which teams its assessments are about 10% points higher than the other Predictors'.
MoSSBODS DETAILS
None of the nine home teams this week tends to perform less well than their opponents at the particular venue where their game is being played, and eight actually tend to perform better. Seven of those teams are hosting a team from interstate, which, according to MoSSBODS, contributes heavily to that advantage (viz +3 Scoring Shots).
MoSSBODS sees seven of the contests producing fewer than 175 points, and two of those (Fremantle v Essendon, and Western Bulldogs v West Coast) producing fewer than 150 points. Only three teams are expected to score more than 100 points - Adelaide (107), Hawthorn (106) and Sydney (106).
The high-scoring game of the round is expected to be Hawthorn v Melbourne contest, where MoSSBODS foresees 190 points being scored.
