It seems odd, when you've byes and a truncated round, to start proceedings a day early, but that's again what the AFL has decided to do this year. Two games will have been completed then before the weekend proper has even started, and, for now at least, those are the only two games on which Investors will have any money at risk.

And not much money, nor much risk, at that.

The TAB line market on the Adelaide v Kangaroos game behaved a little oddly on Monday, jumping to that $1.75 price for Adelaide shortly after opening (and before I'd even seen the market when it was at its showroom-new $1.90). Not long after, the TAB adjusted the line to -18.5 @ $1.90 - and the price duly jumped to $2.00.

Anyway, the four bets we have amount to about 3.6% of initial Overall Funds and produce a ready reckoner as follows:

Sufficiently large wins then by both the Crows and the Pies promise a 2.6c increment in the value of the Overall Portfolio, and an overall profit is impossible unless at least one of the two line bets is secured.

Perhaps the Overs/Unders Fund will add some excitement for Investors beyond Friday night.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

It's unanimity (for Richmond, GWS, and Hawthorn) amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters in three of the six contests this week, and just a lone dissenter in two more, CTL opting for an upset Roos win, and HSH for an even bigger upset Saints win. 

That leaves only the Pies v Dockers game, and there we have the bookmaker-favourite Pies garnering six supporters to the Dockers' five.

That Pies v Dockers contest is particularly interesting when we turn to the Margin Predictors and find C_Marg and MoSSBODS_Marg as the book-ending forecasters for the game. C_Marg has the Dockers winning by 8 points, and MoSSBODS_Marg the Pies winning by 22 points. That's a potential 30-point turnaround on the Leaderboard, which is about 25% of the overall MAE difference between the two forecasters across the entire season. MoSSBODS_Marg aside, the other Predictors are all suggesting quite small victory margins in this game, with many of them forecasting the difference to be just a goal or less.

The 30-point range in that game is the largest of the six this week, but three games have larger mean absolute deviations (MADs). The all-zoo Tigers v Lions matchup has the largest MAD of 6.9 points per Predictor, with the forecasters polarised between predictions of 24-34 point victories (5 Predictors) and 37-46 points victories (7 Predictors). 

It's the Pies v Dockers game that is most prominent amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors too, the MAD for that game coming in at 7.8% points per Predictor, boosted by the 34% point difference between C_Prob's and MoSSBODS_Prob's assessments of the Pies' chances.

The Crows v Roos, and Tigers v Lions games also have relatively large MADs, both around the 5% points per Predictor figure.

MoSSBODS_Prob is Predictor Most Extreme in two games this weekend and C_Prob in five, so we might see some movement on the MoS Leaderboard by the time Sunday evening comes around.

MoSSBODS DETAILS

MoSSBODS has come to its conclusion about the likely margin in the Collingwood v Fremantle game based on its opinion that the Pies are about a 1.3 Scoring Shot (SS) better team than the Dockers right now on a neutral venue, and that the MCG will offer the Pies a further 4.6 SS advantage (+1.6 SS for the Venue and +3 SS for the Dockers' Travel Penalty). All up, that makes the Pies 6 SS favourites in what MoSSBODS also thinks will be a low-scoring game.

In fact, the 152 points that MoSSBODS expects will be scored in that game is the lowest of all six contests. Thursday night's Crows v Roos game is tipped to be the high-scoring game of the round and to finish as a 107-83 point victory for the Crows.