2023 - Round 21 Results - It's Not Just About Winning

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It’s been fun and odd these past two weeks after seeing questions being raised by Pies fans on Twitter (sorry, X) about why so many statistical models didn’t rate their beloved 16 and 2 team particularly highly at the end of Round 19. The short answer is: because they’d won so many games by not so many points, and that they had an okay but not outstanding 6 and 2 record against teams then in the Top 8. The fact that they’ve gone 0 and 2 since then isn’t a huge surprise to any of us with models, but the vitriol aimed at the more prominent people who pointed out the Pies’ apparent frailty is a stark reminder to me about how far from mainstream are statistical ideas, and how deeply the shallow Win-Loss record is felt to be a reliable indicator of a team’s underlying ability.

Anyway, to this week’s results, where my entirely in-silico head-to-head models managed scores ranging from 5 to 8 out of 9, and where MoSHBODS_Marg and MoSSBODS_Marg were the only two Tipsters to snag 8 from 9 and, in so doing, secured 1st and 2nd places on the Leaderboard.

The all-Tipster average for the round was 6.8 from 9, which took the all-season figure to 119.8 from 180 (67%).

The Margin Predictors’ mean absolute errors (MAEs) were lower this week and covered a range from MoSSBODS_Marg’s 21.5 points per game to Bookie_3’s 25.7 points per game, with the all-Predictor average coming in at 23.3 points per game per Predictor, which is more than 8 points lower than last week.

The only movements on the Leaderboard were Bookie_Hcap’s moving ahead of ENS_Linear, and Bookie_9’s and MoSSBODS_Marg’s moving ahead of Bookie_3 and RSMP_Simple.

Log probability scores were all positive this week, but more so for the MoS trio, and best of all for MoSSBODS_Prob, who remains second on the Leaderboard behind MoSHPlay_Prob, MoSHBODS_Prob remains in 3rd.

WAGERING

Despite Fremantle spoiling the party on Sunday afternoon, all three Funds finished in profit, and the boost for the Combined profit finished at the 3rd highest for a single round this season.

Altogether, the Combined Portfolio rose by 3.7c, which left it up by 17.6c on the season, that from a 19.5% ROT on a 0.9 turn.