MAFL 2010 : Round 16

Faced with six home team favourites Investors could easily have been facing another dose of high risk, low potential return wagering this weekend, but a combination of moderate wagers on the two at-home underdogs and larger wagers on some of the more attractively priced at-home favourites has resulted in a far more balanced portfolio of wagers, at least for those with the Recommended Portfolio.

New Heritage is back to its profligate ways, finding six teams sufficiently to its liking to risk 60% of the Fund on them. Its four largest wagers are on teams priced in the $1.15 to $1.40 range, however, so it'd be fairer to call it brave rather than suicidal.

The Heuristic-Based Fund, currently entrusted to the Short-Term Memory I heuristic, is the next-most active Fund, making five wagers totalling 25% of the Fund. Four of these wagers are on favourites and one is on an underdog. Prudence has also made five bets but its five represent a marginally smaller 24% of its Fund. In keeping with its name, Prudence has outlaid money only on favourites.

Shadow has made four wagers totalling 20% of the Fund, all on favourites also, and ELO's made three wagers totalling 15%, two on teams giving start and one on a team receiving it.

Hope is this week's, and indeed this season's, least active Fund. It's made just two bets totalling 9% of the Fund, though one of these is a weekend-defining 5.9% on Adelaide at $3.75 facing the Cats at Football Park on Friday night.

Hope's two bets represent the entirety of MIN#002's wagering activity this week, while New Heritage's six represent MIN#017's weekend pleasure and pain.

For those with the Recommended Portfolio the 25 wagers represent about 27% of the entire Fund.

Here's the detail:

For Investors with the Recommended Portfolio the weekend's key matches are Adelaide v Geelong, which is the matchup offering the largest potential gain, and the Dogs v Port game, which represents both the largest possible loss and the largest swing between potential win and potential loss. In truth though, all the games except Collingwood v St Kilda and Carlton v Sydney matter to those with the Recommended Portfolio this weekend as all of them carry potential swings of 5.5% or more.

MIN#002 cares most about the Essendon v West Coast game, as it represents for him both the largest possible gain and the largest swing between potential win and potential loss.

MIN#017 faces six games for which the potential swing is 12% or more. Only the Adelaide v Geelong and Carlton v Sydney games don't meet this description. The Collingwood v St Kilda and Richmond v Roos games offer about a 6% upside, the Dogs v Port game threatens a potential 12.5% loss, and the swing between the best and worst possible outcomes is greatest for the Dons v Eagles clash where the difference is almost 15%.

Here's the Ready Reckoner:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, the profitability equation is a simple one this week: the results in at least five of the seven games need to go their way.

Tipsters, if those in MAFL can be considered a reliable guide, face a difficult time with three of the weekend's games. Two more of the games wold appear to require some thought, and the remaining three are the proverbial no-brainers.

Here are the details:

• Geelong are 9-6 favourites over Adelaide. All five Margin Tippers are on the Cats and are predicting victory margins between 3 and 23 points. ELO is the tipster at the top of the range and, by tipping the Cats by 23 points, passed on the opportunity to make a line bet on Adelaide by just half a point. ELO aside, the other competition leading MAFL tipsters - Easily Impressed I, Short Term Memory I and Follow The Streak - are all tipping a Crows win.
• St Kilda are 9-6 favourites over the Pies. In this game, the Margin Tippers are split 3-2 in favour of the Pies, though two of the Margin Tippers opting for the Pies - HAMP and LAMP - have them winning by only 1 point making this their Game of the Round. The four leading MAFL tipsters are split 2-2 on this game.
• Hawthorn are unanimous favourites over the Lions. The Margin Tippers predict victory margins in the 21 to 28 point range, ELO this time being the low bid and therefore declining to wager on the Hawks by just one-and-a-half points.
• Essendon are unanimous favourites over West Coast. Once again the range of victory margins selected by the Margin Tippers is very narrow - 16 to 22 points in this case. ELO tips the Dons to win by 17 points, which is just one half of a point less than the start they're being asked to give on line betting, so again there's no line bet here from ELO.
• The Dogs are unanimous favourites over Port. Margin Tippers predict victory margins ranging from 32 to 64 points. ELO is the tipster predicting the biggest blowout. Its 64 point margin prediction is the largest victory margin it has tipped this year and is the result of the rough 61 Ratings point difference between the sides, coupled with the Dogs' home team status.
• Sydney are 9-6 favourites over the Blues, though all five Margin Tippers are on the Blues with predicted margins ranging from 1 to 17 points. Chi is the tipster predicting the one point win and so has this as his Game of the Round. ELO has the Blues winning by 10 points, which is half a point less than the start that they're giving, so this is yet another game where ELO has declined a bet on the narrowest of bases. ELO aside, the remaining top MAFL tipsters are all supporting the Swans.
• Richmond are 11-4 favourites over the Roos. All five Margin Tippers predict a fifth successive win for the Tigers with margin predictions spanning the range from 1 to 25 points. ELO tips Richmond by 1 point and BKB has Richmond as its longest-priced favourite, which means that this game is both tipsters' Game of the Round. All four of the top MAFL tipsters are on the Tigers.
• Fremantle are 12-3 favourites over the Dees, with the Margin Tippers again being unanimous in their support. Predicted margins range from 26.5 to 33 points. The four top MAFL tipsters are split 2-2 on this game, however, with Easily Impressed I and Follow The Streak siding with Melbourne, and ELO and Short Term Memory I opting for Freo.

Something seems to be deeply, deeply wrong with HELP. This week it's served up eight line tips all on the away team and all carrying an identical probability forecast. Weird.

MAFL 2010 : Round 15 Results

For most Investors it was another weekend of nibbling away at the season's deficit.

Carlton's loss on Sunday evening meant that, for those with the Recommended Portfolio, the nibble was only a nip, but a couple of percent is undeniably better than an ocular prod with a dulled wooden implement.

Over the eight games of the round the Recommended Portfolio jumped about 2.1% leaving it down about 11.4% on the season, while the Portfolio of MIN#002 dropped 1.4% to leave it down 13.7%, and the MIN#017 Portfolio climbed 7.3% leaving it down 47% on the season.

Here's the latest Dashboard.

With this week's 3c gain Prudence is now virtually at break-even for the season. It might well achieve profitability next week, a status currently enjoyed only by the ELO and Heuristic-Based Funds.

With seven favourites winning this weekend, tipping proved to be relatively easy for most tipsters. Along with BKB, ELO, Silhouette and Chi also scored seven from eight, which in ELO's case was enough to catapult it to joint-leadership on 80.5 from 120 (72%). Three other tipsters are on the same total for the season: Easily Impressed I, Short-Term Memory II and Follow The Streak.

BKB's seven was enough to drag it into joint fifth, one tip back on 79.5, along with Easily Impressed II and Short-Term Memory I.

Six teams either climbed or fell a single position on MARS Ratings this week. The Western Bulldogs grabbed second position at Collingwood's expense, Freo snatched fifth from Carlton, and the Tigers finally surrender last position to the Eagles.

There's now a 14 Ratings-point differential between the Crows in ninth and the Lions in tenth, which seems about the right distance when you consider that the Crows have won six of their last nine games while the Lions have won just one of their last eleven. That must feel troubling like a developing habit to Lions fans.

Our Margin Tippers performed exceptionally well this weekend, all of them knocking at least one-third of a point off their season Mean APEs, and two of them knocking off three-quarters of a point or more, an extraordinary achievement when you consider that we're already 15 rounds into the season so you'd be expecting averages to respond to weekly performance spikes as the QEII responds to requests to turn to starboard. BKB continues to lead on the Mean APE metric, with LAMP second and ELO third.

LAMP reduced its Median APE by an astonishing one-and-a-half points this weekend to claim the lead outright from ELO. BKB, which reduced its Median APE by a point, lies third.

HELP had another poor round attempting to tip line winners, managing just 3 from 8, and its probability scores suffered markedly from its misplaced conviction.

(BTW The Super Smart Model performed very well this week on margin tipping, recording a Mean APE for the round of just 17.75 points per game, two points per game better than BKB. It managed only four from eight on line tipping however.)

After last week kicking a large proportion of all goals scored, winning teams this week recorded a remarkably low proportion of all scoring shots - a season low of just 53%. This was due to losing teams' ability to create ample scoring opportunities - they produced more scoring shots than their opponents in three games - but a chronic inability to convert them. Collectively, losing teams kicked 87.97 this weekend, which means they recorded only about 3 fewer scoring shots per game than did the victors collectively, but converted at a rate over 11 percentage points lower than did the games' winners.

Mark my words: poor kicking is going to see a team miss a finals spot or lose a final, and my money's on Collingwood or Hawthorn to be one of the teams involved.

MAFL 2010 : Round 15

Investors face a far less breathtaking set of wagers this weekend.

In fact, they can take a complete breather until Saturday since none of the Funds have any interest in Friday night's Port v Collingwood game, despite Port playing at home and being priced at $5.00 head-to-head and +32.5 points on line betting.

Across the seven other games the Funds have conspired to find 20 wagering opportunities amongst themselves, in aggregate these representing about one-sixth of Total Initial Funds in the Recommended Portfolio.

The ELO-Line Fund is the busiest, with five wagers totalling 25% of the Fund. Prudence, with 4 four wagers totalling about 12% of that Fund, is next busiest, followed by New Heritage, Shadow and Hope, each with three wagers. Such is the New Heritage penchant for large wagers, however, its three bets total just under one-quarter of the Fund; Shadow's and Hope's three bets total around 15%.

The Heuristic-Based Fund is the week's quietest. It has just two wagers totalling 10% of the Fund.

Investors MIN#002 and MIN#017 have just three wagers each in total.

Here's the detail:

(Note I've updated this table, the Ready Reckoner, and the blog in general to reflect the fact that we've no line bet on Melbourne. Six and a half points start is just too much.

Friday edit: I've also updated them both now to reflect the fact that I'd reversed the prices for the Lions v Saints and Richmond v Freo games in these outputs - though fortunately not in the model inputs. Regretably the bookies hadn't reversed their prices, so I didn't get the Tigers at $4)

For Investors with the Recommended Portfolio the weekend's key matches are Carlton v the Dogs, which represents the largest potential win and the largest swing between the best and worst possible outcomes, and the Geelong v Hawthorn game, which represents the largest possible loss.

MIN#002 has the most to gain from the Carlton v Western Bulldogs game, and MIN#017 has the most to gain from the Sydney v Roos game and the most to lose from the Geelong v Hawthorn clash.

Whilst there are no unanimous favourites amongst the MAFL tipsters, in six of the eight contests there are no more than three dissenters and in the other two contests the split is only 9-6.

Here are the details:

• Collingwood are 14-1 favourites over Port Adelaide, the Margin Tippers predicting Pies victories by between 12 and 35 points.
• Geelong are 12-3 favourites over the Hawks. The Margin Tippers are all backing the Cats, and see them winning by anything between 4 and 39 points. Chi is one of these tipsters and has the Cats winning by 4 points making this one of his two Games of the Round.
  Short Term Memory I, however, is one of the three tipsters siding with Hawthorn, which is the reason Investors don't have a bet on the Cats from the Heuristic-Based Fund.
• Adelaide are 13-2 favourites over West Coast. LAMP has the Eagles winning by just 1 point, and Chi has the Crows winning by just 4 points, making this game both tippers Game of the Round (in Chi's case his second Game of the Round).
• St Kilda are 14-1 favourites over Brisbane. St Kilda are tipped to win by between 8 and 25.5 points.
• Fremantle are 12-3 favourites over Richmond. The Tigers do though have the support of Follow The Streak, one of the three joint-leaders of the MAFL Tipping Competition.
• Sydney are 14-1 favourites over the Roos, and the Swans are predicted to win by between 13 and 24 points.
• Melbourne are 9-6 favourites over Essendon. ELO tips Melbourne by 4 points making this one of its two Games of the Round.
• Carlton are 9-6 favourites over the Dogs, though the Dogs have the support of four of the five Margin Tippers, including BKB. ELO tips the Dogs to win by 4 points making this its other Game of the Round.

To finish then, the HELP line predictions, which are all for the away team and all with associated probabilities of 75% or higher.

MAFL 2010 : Round 14 Results

Well that was a good weekend's wagering no matter how you dissect it.

What prevented it from attaining 'fantastic' status was the mercy shown by the teams occupying 1st and 2nd on the table, each of which slacked off in the latter parts of their respective games leading to our losing one line bet (on the Cats) by 4.5 points and the other (on the Saints) by just half a point.

This leniency cost those Investors with the Recommended Portfolio about 2% but still left them up 7.4% on the round and, as a result, now down just 13.5c on the season. MIN#002 also made money - about 6.4% - as did MIN#017, who made 11.5%. They're now down 12.3% and 54.3% respectively.

All up then, less than perfect but directionally encouraging.

Here's the details, as recorded in this week's MAFL Dashboard.

So as well as every Portfolio, every Fund increased in value this week, though only ELO and Heuristic-Based have recorded a net profit across the entire season.

On tipping, we have three joint leaders - Follow The Streak plus Short Term Memory I and II - all on 75.5 from 112 (67.4%). They lead Easily Impressed I and II by just one tip. The week's best round was recorded by Home Sweet Home, which bagged 8 from 8 as a result of victories by the seven home teams and by the team higher on the ladder in the one contest for which there was no home team (the Collingwood v West Coast game). Tipsters generally performed well this week, with the average score being 6.2 from 8.

Collingwood leapt two places on MARS Ratings this week, jumping into 2nd ahead of the Dogs and the Saints, who each slipped by one position. In other moves, Hawthorn and Sydney swapped places, with the Hawks taking 7th, and the Roos and Essendon also swapped places, with the Roos snatching the coveted 11th position.

Four Margin Tipsters now have sub-30 Mean Absolute Prediction Errors, Chi being the odd one out, and with BKB leading the pack with a MAPE of 28.3 points per game. All five Margin Tipsters now also have sub-30 median APEs, with ELO and LAMP responsible for the lowest median APEs of 26.0 points. HAMP has joined BKB in third on this metric, each of them with median APEs of 27.5 points.

HELP had a poor round attempting to tip line winners, managing just 2 from 8. Its probability scores suffered commensurately.

This week, winning teams kicked 64.8% of all the goals registered. That's the greatest proportion that winning teams have snared in any round this season, and takes the season-long proportion to 60.6%, which is a couple of percent higher than the historical average for this metric. Winning teams also kicked quite straight this week, none of them converting at a rate under 50% and most converting at a significantly higher rate, Richmond foremost amongst them in kicking 14.5. Their accuracy was the main reason they edged out the Swans who managed to convert just 48% of their 25 scoring shots.

MAFL 2010 : Round 14

If you're an Investor this is probably a blog best read seated.

In six of the weekend's eight games the home team is the favourite, and in five of them it's the short-priced favourite. The reaction from the MAFL Funds to this circumstance - especially from the New Heritage Fund - has been akin to the response you get if you open a packet that sounds even vaguely like a chip packet within earshot of Chi: immediate and overwhelming interest, palpable desire and a fixation on securing a piece of whatever's on offer.

Here's what the result of all that interest looks like.

(I feel as though I should have triggered a warning when you clicked the "Read more" button just then ...)

If your maths is exceptionally good, you'll have noted that Investors with the Recommended Portfolio find themselves with 33 wagers across 8 games this week, totalling over one-third of Total Initial Funds - the greatest level of activity and the highest outlay in a single round in the history of MAFL.

A hefty slice of that total outlay has been wagered head-to-head on teams at prices of $1.33 and below, which means that the total upside in all of that activity falls some considerable distance short of the downside, as illustrated in the week's Ready Reckoner.

Only the Hawks v Bulldogs and Tigers v Swans games are of little consequence this weekend for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio. The Adelaide v Essendon game offers the greatest upside and is also the game with the largest difference between the best and worst results.

A Pies loss to the Eagles would be the single most painful result for the weekend for these Investors, although losses by either the Cats or the Saints would be less painful only in a strictly mathematical sense.

For MIN#002, as ever all losses are equally costly, while Crows and Blues wins would be most welcomed.

For MIN#017 the weekend holds the greatest terror of all. A worst-case set of outcomes would reduce this Portfolio to zero, while a best-case set of outcomes would restore only about 15% of its initial value. Over one-half of any increase would come from Adelaide and Carlton wins, and any of six separate outcomes could knock about 10% off the value of the portfolio.

The confidence displayed by the Funds is, for the most part, reflected in the tips of the MAFL Tipsters where we find four games with unanimous support for the favourite and three more games where at least 11 of the 15 tipsters foresee an Investor-pleasing outcome.

Here are the details:

• Carlton are the first of the week's unanimous favourites. They face the Lions and are tipped to win by margins ranging from 12 to 28 points.
• The Bulldogs are 11-4 favourites over the Hawks. LAMP is among the minority but tips the Hawks by just a point, making this its Game of the Round.
• Fremantle are unanimous favourites over Port and are tipped to win by anywhere between 12 and 42 points.
• Collingwood are unanimous favourites over West Coast. The Pies are predicted to win by between 9 and 57 points, the latter prediction belonging to ELO and representing the largest margin predicted by this tipster so far this season.
• Adelaide are 13-2 favourites over Essendon. ELO tips Adelaide to win by just 12 points, which makes this its Game of the Round.
• The Cats are 11-4 favourites over the Roos and are expected to win by a margin between 17 and 52 points.
• Richmond are 8-7 favourites over Sydney in the only game that's generating significant rates of disagreement this week. This uncertainty is reflected in the fact that three tipsters have this as their Game of the Round: HAMP, which tips Richmond to win by 1; Chi, who tips Sydney by 7; and BKB, which tips Richmond to win (probably) by 6.5 points.
• St Kilda are unanimous favourites over the Dees. The Saints are predicted to win by between 22 and 45 points.

That leaves me with only the HELP line predictions to report.

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 Results (Final)

This'll be brief.

When scanning the week's Ready Reckoner, never do I consider the "Best Possible" or "Worst Possible" results as lying within the feasible set of actual wagering outcomes. How wrong I've been.

Three games, three losses. Waiter, may I have the menu for Round 14 please?

Here's the week's MAFL Dashboard.

In deference to the dollars that sacrificed themselves in providing the data that now lies in the MAFL Wagering section of the Dashboard, I'll not be further commenting on it.

On tipping, Short-Term Memory now leads outright on 69.5 from 104 (67%), 1 tip ahead of Easily Impressed I and II, Short Term Memory II, Ride Your Luck and Follow the Streak, the latter tipster bagging the round's best performance, tipping 6 from 8.

Home Sweet Home recorded the round's worst tipping performance, managing just 3 from 8, to leave it with a season-long 53.4% record. As MAFL is currently constructed, it's never going to be a good year for wagering when Home teams aren't performing.

St Kilda's dominant second half over the Cats, which led to its 24-point victory, was enough to leap it over the Pies on MARS Ratings, despite Collingwood's 25-point win over the Swans. There were two other ratings moves further down the ladder, which saw the Crows and the Roos swap places with the Lions and the Dees respectively. The Crows now lie 9th on the MARS ladder, almost 8 Ratings points behind the Hawks.

All Margin Tippers except LAMP saw their Mean APEs fall over the round. BKB still leads, but LAMP's decline has allowed ELO to slip into second place. All three tipsters still have sub-30 MAPE's.

As we've seen a few times already this season, it's quite possible for a tipster's Mean and Median APEs to move in different directions over the course of the same round. We saw that again this round, which meant that LAMP took outright leadership on the Median APE metric, relegating ELO to second-place. BKB remains third.

HELP correctly predicted five of the round's eight line results and did a little to restore its overall probability scoring record to something a mite less embarrassing. I'll provide more details in future weeks if the upward trend continues.

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 - Part II

Even with two attractive-looking matchups in the Cats v Saints and Swans v Pies games, this weekend can't help but seem like the stale bit of the loaf that is Round 13. (Apologies if you're a Melbourne or Adelaide fan, but I'm finding it hard to get enthused about 13th v 15th.)

The weekend's status might be elevated though if the Cats, Swans and Dees all wins, the Cats doing so by 21 points or more, since then the Recommended Portfolio will rise by about 3.9% more than offsetting, if barely, the losses suffered last weekend.

Rooting for an away team victory, which all Investors except MIN#002 will be doing this weekend in the Crows v Dees game, is a relative rarity for Investors since all but the New Heritage Fund are permitted to wager only on home teams. This week, New Heritage's splurge on the Dees is sufficiently bold to induce broad Investor support for the travellers.

The Cats, by the way, as far as MAFL is concerned are the home team in their game, since it's being played at the MCG, one of the Cats' MAFL-designated home grounds this season and not one of the Saints'.

All told, Investors holding the Recommended Portfolio have 10 wagers totalling about 9% of Total Funds this week.

MIN#002's happiness rests solely in the hands of the Crows, who need only to win to produce a profit for his portfolio, and MIN#017 shares the hopes and dreams of Recommended Portfolio holders in that he wants the Cats, Swans and Dees to win. In his case though, the size of the Cats' victory is immaterial.

Here's the detail:

For the Recommended Portfolio, the Cats v St Kilda game represents the greatest potential profit and the greatest potential loss.

For MIN#017 the Adelaide v Melbourne game is the one filled with equal parts promise and pain, while MIN#002, as already noted, has a stake in only one contest.

Here's the Ready Reckoner detail:

On tipping this week, no team has the support of more than 80% of tipsters.

Here are the details:

• Geelong are the week's most supported favourites. Twelve of the fifteen tipsters are predicting that they will prevail. The Margin Tipsters, Chi aside, reckon that the Cats should win by about 3.5 to 4 goals. Ride Your Luck is the best-credentialled amongst the minority plumping for a Saints victory.
• Collingwood are 10-5 favourites over the Swans, though none of the Margin Tipsters predicts a double-digit victory margin for either side.
• Adelaide are 10-5 favourites over Melbourne. If you're an Adelaide fan you might take comfort from the fact that the Margin Tippers have the Crows winning by between 8.5 and 27 points; if you're a Melbourne fan you might, instead, note that Easily Impressed I and Short-Term Memory I - currently joint-leaders of our tipping competition - are both tipping a Dees victory.

HELP produced a 3 from 5 performance last weekend, reviving some hope that publishing its forecasts won't continue to feel so futile. Here are its remaining predictions for the round:

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 Results (Interim)

If I've much more practice in being philosophical after wagering losses I fear I'll wind up smoking a pipe, blogging about the meaning of truth, affecting a permanent, faraway look and calling myself Bruce. (Any Monty Python fans here?).

So far, Round 13 has not been a happy one for any Investor. The Recommended Portfolio has shed 3.7%, MIN#002's Portfolio has dropped 7.5%, and MIN#017's Portfolio has fallen 7.1%, these falls largely due to poor showings by the Blues and the Lions, who went down by 9 and 19 points respectively.

Given the likely prices on offer for the remaining three games, it seems unlikely that a net profit for the round will be the final outcome. Only an upset Sydney win over the Pies might make a difference, but it doesn't look as if any of the Funds is especially keen to invest in that particular result.

MAFL 2010 : Round 13 - Part I

And so we enter the first half - well five-eighths actually - of the split Round 13.

Recommended Portfolio holders have wagers in four of the week's five games, with the Eagles v Dogs clash the only one failing to attract the interest of at least one Fund. New Heritage is the boldest Fund (who'd have guessed?), wagering about 22% of the Fund on three bets including two that are for around 10% of the Fund both of which are on teams that are favourites but by no means raging hot ones in the form of the Hawks and Lions. The third bet is a contrarian, away team wager on Port Adelaide that, when offset by the wagers of Prudence and the Heuristic-Based Funds on the Roos in the same game, makes the outcome at best a small profit for those with the Recommended Portfolio.

Four other Funds have also made three wagers, Shadow, the Heuristic-Based and ELO-Line Funds, all of which are risking 15% of their respective Funds, and Prudence, which is risking a little over one-half of that percentage.

Shadow, you'll remember, has been stripped of its Heuristic-Based Fund managing duties, this onerous responsibility having now been placed in the hands of Short-Term Memory I, a heuristic which, as I've previously noted, has the equivalent footballing knowledge of a goldfish.

Hope has taken the weekend off, though it does look likely to make two wagers in the three games next weekend.

So that's 15 wagers in total this week for those with the Recommended Portfolio, collectively worth about 12% of the entire Fund.

Here's the detail:

From this week's Ready Reckoner it's fairly easy to see that Hawks and Lions victories are required for the profitability of all portfolios bar MIN#002's. His portfolio instead requires a Blues victory, coupled with a win by either of the Hawks or the Lions.

There's a modicum of disagreement about three of the weekend's games, and unanimity or near to it for other two.

Here are the details:

• Hawthorn are the week's only unanimous favourites. They take on Essendon on Friday night. Tipped margins of victory range from a low of 9 points to a high of 30 points.
• Carlton are 11-4 favourites over Fremantle, though Freo has the moderately credentialled Follow The Streak and Ride Your Luck in its corner.
• Brisbane are 11-4 favourites over Richmond. Amongst the Tiger supporters are Easily Impressed I, and Short-Term Memory I and II, which makes for a formidable, albeit inanimate supporter-base if tipping form is anything to go by.
• The Roos are 11-4 favourites over Port Adelaide. Easily Impressed II and Short-Term Memory II are both siding with the underdogs.
• The Dogs are 14-1 favourites over the at-home Eagles. Some signs of nervousness are, however, evident amongst those tipping the Dogs: three of the Margin Tippers are predicting Dog victory margins under 3 goals.

I almost didn't bother posting the HELP predictions for the week, but pondered what I'd do if HELP suddenly started making tips superior to those which I could instead make using the spare change in my pocket. It'd look a little suspicious if HELP's best performances were those I posted about after the event, not having pre-published its predictions beforehand.

So, unadorned by commentary, here they are:

With probability estimates this extreme HELP will record an aggregate probability score of about -17 for the round if all line results are unfavourable, and a score of about +15 if all are favourable, which represents about one-quarter of the aggregate score it's painstakingly accumulated across the first 11 rounds of the season.

MAFL 2010 : Round 12 Results

As I've probably mentioned before, I dislike draws, not so much for their inconclusive nature, but more for the fact that they make the statistics messy. All the formulae in my spreadsheets that calculate returns need to cater for this once-or-twice-in-a-season phenomenon, and all the tipping statistics now sport an awkward .5 at the end.

At least the Dees v Pies draw provided me - and most other Investors - some recompense for the inconvenience. (For those of you who are unfamiliar with the head-to-head wagering rules, or who have might forgotten them, head-to-head wagers pay half-price on draws. We had the Dees at $5, so they paid out at $2.50 for us.)

This draw was sufficient to secure a very small nett profit for the round for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio, which grew by 0.38c and now stands at 89.29c. It wasn't, however, enough to drag MIN#002 or MIN#017 into the black: MIN#002's portfolio fell 1.8c to 85.80c, and MIN#017's portfolio fell 1.57c to 61.43c.

For all Investors then MAFL still has much work to do.

Here's the week's MAFL Dashboard.

You'll notice that Shadow lost money again this week for the Heuristic-Based Fund and, as a consequence, now cedes control of this Fund to Short-Term Memory I, which is the Fund with the best level-stake return on its home team selections across the season to date.

ELO-Line produced another profitable round this weekend, its third in succession, during which time is has made 11 profitable wagers and only 3 unprofitable wagers. This Fund is now up by 28.5% since the start of the season.

On tipping we now have three joint leaders: Short-Term Memory I, Easily Impressed I and Easily Impressed II. They're all on 64.5 (there's that ugly .5) from 96, which is about a 67% record. The next seven tipsters trail by no more than three tips.

ELO has tipped 26.5 from 40 across the last five rounds, which is the best performance of any of our tipsters during that period, and goes some way to explaining the profitability of the ELO-Based Fund in recent weeks.

The MARS Ratings of all but five teams changed on the basis of this weekend's results. West Coast recorded the largest drop, falling three places to 15th as a result of its thumping by the Tigers. The Dogs, Dees and Roos recorded the largest climbs, each jumping two spots on the back of their better-than-expected performances. Geelong remains 20 Ratings points clear at the top of the table.

All the Margin Tippers saw their Mean APE's head in the wrong direction this weekend. BKB still has the best Mean APE, with LAMP now in 2nd and ELO in 3rd on this measure, these two tipsters swapping places over the course of the round.

Using the Median APE metric ELO and LAMP are now joint leaders, with BKB in 3rd, a full 1 point behind.

HELP tipped just three correct line results from eight this week and generated probability scores that pushed it even further from naivety.

Even with the Pies shocking 9.22 effort the weekend still produced the most accurate kicking seen since Round 7. In aggregate, the eight matches produced just 188 goals and 155 behinds, which represents a 54.8% conversion rate.

Round 13 is the split round, so we'll only have five games to savour next weekend, and three the weekend after.

MAFL 2010 : Round 12

Is it really the second half of the season already?

Recommended Portfolio holders can look forward to another weekend of cheering for favourites one game and underdogs the next. This week they've one game (Kangaroos v Carlton) in which their interest is solely in the line and not the head-to-head result, and another game in which they've no interest at all (Richmond v West Coast).

They have 18 wagers in total, four from ELO totalling 20% of the Fund, three from New Heritage totalling a tick over 30%, three more from Hope totalling around 16%, another three each from Shadow and Heuristic-Based totalling 15% of each Fund, and two more from Prudence totalling a little over 6% of that Fund. In aggregate, that's about 17% of total funds at risk.

About one-third of that money is on the Dogs, either at $1.28 head-to-head or $1.90, and about another one-quarter is on the Hawks, all of it at $1.36 head-to-head.

Here's the detail:

Despite the large amounts on the Dogs and the Hawks, their contests are only the second- and fourth-most important in terms of largest swing between best and worst possible results. These games do, however, represent the largest downside.

The game that represents the largest swing is the Melbourne v Collingwood matchup, which is also the game with the largest upside. Next largest upside belongs to the Essendon v Cats game.

Here's the Ready Reckoner:

There's something far more settling about seeing a portfolio of wagers where the best and worst possible outcomes are roughly equidistant from zero. So call me a symmetrist ...

Three of the weekend's games have the tipsters scratching their collective non-existent heads: Port v Sydney, Richmond v West Coast, and Fremantle v St Kilda. For none of the games are our tipsters unanimous.

Here are the details:

• Carlton are 14-1 favourites over the Roos, with only Home Sweet Home tipping the Roos. LAMP, while tipping the Blues, does so by only 10 points, making this its Game of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over Adelaide. The Crows do, however, have the competition leaders, Easily Impressed I, tipping their victory.
• Geelong are 14-1 favourites over Essendon. Chi's tipping the Cats, but only by 1 point, making this his Game of the Round.
• Port Adelaide are 8-7 favourites over Sydney. HAMP, which tips Port by 7 points, and BKB, which tips them (probably) by 6.5 points, both have this as their Game of the Round, though in BKB's case it's one of two such games.
• West Coast are 8-7 favourites over the Tigers. BKB will, in all likelihood, tip Richmond by 6.5 points, which makes this its other Game of the Round.
• The Dogs are 13-2 favourites over the Lions. The two tipsters selecting the Lions do have solid tipping form, however. They're Easily Impressed I and Short-Term Memory I, which lie first and third in our tipping competition.
• St Kilda are 10-5 favourites over Fremantle. ELO tips the Saints by just 1 point, making this its Game of the Round.
• Collingwood are 14-1 favourites over Melbourne. Only Home Sweet Home expects the Dees to win.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is 3.5 this week, which is an historically high value for this metric.

HELP has taken the high-risk approach this week, with no probability estimate below 73% and five of them in the 90s.

With probability estimates this extreme HELP will record an aggregate probability score of about -17 for the round if all line results are unfavourable, and a score of about +15 if all are favourable, which represents about one-quarter of the aggregate score it's painstakingly accumulated across the first 11 rounds of the season.

MAFL 2010 : Round 11 Results

Absent an upset victory by either the Tigers or the Eagles - both of which outcomes seemed possible for at least a portion of their respective games - that was just about as good a weekend as Investors with the Recommended Portfolio might have hoped for.

An improbable Dogs victory also tantalised for a few minutes late in the final term on Friday, but that outcome ultimately proved unattainable, leaving the Recommended Portfolio up 2.4c on the weekend and down now just 11.1c on the season.

The portfolio of MIN#017 also finished in the black, though the 8.4c hike has left much still to do to return that Portfolio to parity, languishing as it does still some 37c down on the season. Still, how does one eat an elephant? The conventional answer is: one spoonful at a time.

MIN#002 was the only Investor to suffer losses this week. His portfolio fell 6.3c to 75.2c, a victim of Hope's curiously lacklustre performance so far this season, which has seen it land just 4 of 12 wagers.

Here's the detail.

Shadow lost money for the second week in row and so is now at risk of losing control of the Heuristic-Based Fund. Short-Term Memory I will assume control from Round 13 if Shadow loses money again in the next round and if the profitability of wagering on STM I's home team tips continues to be the highest amongst all the heuristic tipsters.

Speaking of heuristic tipsters, their overall tipping performance this week might best be described as adequate, with almost all tipping fewer than BKB's six. Ride Your Luck was the only tipster to match BKB, and Chi was the only tipster to outperform it. Chi tipped seven, but still remains a considerable distance from the lead bunch.

Easily Impressed I, which tipped just 4 from 8 this week, retains outright leadership on 61 from 88 (69%). Easily Impressed II is second on 60 and Short-Term Memory I is third on 59, each of them also tipping correctly in just 4 from 8 contests. These uninspiring performances have allowed BKB to narrow the gap so that it is now just 4 tips from joint-leadership.

MARS Ratings saw some jostling amongst positions 3 to 6, with St Kilda claiming third and Carlton fifth, dropping the Dogs into fourth and Freo into sixth. No other changes in ladder position occurred, a consequence of the weekend's generally close games in which no victory margin exceeded 41 points and in which six games were decided by margins of four goals or fewer.

Amongst the Margin Tippers, LAMP benefited most from the narrowness of victory margins since they most closely resembled its prediction. Its Mean APE for the round of just 14 points per game enabled it to lop 1.5 points off its season-long Mean APE, and the fact that none of its APE's for the round exceeded 27 points meant that it also lopped a stunning 7 points off its Median APE. This performance leaves LAMP third on Mean APE and has catapulted it into first on Median APE.

BKB retains overall leadership on Mean APE - though all but Chi have now joined BKB in having a sub-30 Mean APE -but it now finds itself third on Median APE, behind LAMP and ELO.

HELP recorded another unreportable set of results finishing with just 3 from 8 correct line picks and an overall sub-naive set of probability scores.

In aggregate, the weekend's matches produced just 173 goals and 171 behinds, comfortably the lowest total for each scoring type in a round this season. Though the weather could legitimately be cited as a contributory cause this week, the general inaccuracy in front of goal that saw almost as many goals scored as behinds has been a season-long phenomenon. To date, the season has seen 2,260 goals scored and 2,110 behinds - a conversion rate of just 51.7%, which is significantly below the long-term average. Only nine teams have a conversion rate above 50%, and seven of them are in the top eight. The exceptions are Hawthorn, who are eighth and have a 48.9% conversion rate, and Essendon, who are ninth and have a 51.8% conversion rate.

MAFL 2010 : Round 11

Every week I learn a little more about my tolerance for risk.

I feel far more comfortable with an array of wagers that includes the Tigers at $5.50 and West Coast at $6.00 than I did with last week's festival of favourites. Wagering at odds-on prices still feels inordinately Sysyphean to me.

Anyway, the Recommended Portfolio includes 23 bets this week, which represent, in aggregate, about 15% of total funds. The ELO-Based Fund is the most active, with 6 bets totalling 30% of the Fund. New Heritage is next most active, with 5 bets totalling 15% of the Fund, three of them contrarian bets on away teams - an indulgence afforded only to this Fund and an annoyance to those with the Recommended Fund who win and lose on this game no matter the outcome (though in both cases they win more if the home team prevails).

All four remaining Funds - Prudence, Hope, Shadow and Heuristic-Based - have just 3 bets each representing aggregates ranging from about 4.5% of the Fund in Prudence's case to 17.5% of the Fund in Hope's case, a startling return to activity from a Fund that's wagered not much more than this over the course of the last 3 rounds combined, and nothing at all in Round 10.

Here's the detail:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, it's the Eagles v Cats game that represents the largest swing between best and worst outcomes, and the largest upside - hardly surprising, I guess, when you've thrown a wad of cash at a team priced at $6. The next-largest upside, and the next-largest swing as it happens, comes from wagers on the Tigers at $5.50.

The largest downside is associated with wagers on Sydney at $1.72 facing the Dons, though a Lions win over the Roos would hurt almost as much.

Here's the detail of the week's Ready Reckoner:

Two games - Dogs v Pies on Sunday and Swans v Dons on Saturday - are generating the highest levels of disagreement amongst tipsters this week, and only one game has elicited unanimity.

Here are the details:

• The Saints are 13-2 favourites over the Tigers, though the competition-leading Easily Impressed I is one of the two tipsters backing the Tigers. The Margin Tippers are predicting Saints victory margins ranging from 7 to 40 points.
• Carlton are the week's only unanimous favourites. They take on the Dees. Predicted margins of victory for the Blues range from 12 to 29 points.
• Fremantle are 14-1 favourites over Adelaide. ELO, though tipping Freo, predicts just a 6 point margin making this its Game of the Round.
• Brisbane are 12-3 favourites over the Roos. Two of the three Roos tips come from Margin Tippers: Chi tips them to win by just 1 point, and LAMP tips them to win by 3 points, making this game both of these tipster's Game of the Round (in Chi's case, one of two such Games).
• Geelong are 14-1 favourites over the Eagles, with the Cats tipped to win by between 17 and 42 points.
• Sydney are 10-5 favourites over Essendon. HAMP, which tips Sydney to win by 2 points, and BKB, which tips them to win by 6.5 points, have this as their Game of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over Port Adelaide. Predicted margins for the Hawks range from 7 to 29 points.
• Western Bulldogs are 8-7 favourites over the Pies. Chi and BKB are the only Margin Tippers selecting the Pies, in Chi's case by just 1 point, making this his other Game of the Round.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is about 2.6 this week, up considerably on last week's 1.1.

HELP's has again selected all 8 away teams as line betting winners this week, but has attached probabilities in a much narrower range: 63% to 67%.

This week those with the Recommended Portfolio would like to see a round riddled with upsets. Wins by the Tigers and the Eagles would be especially welcomed (though I'll settle for just one of them winning).

MAFL 2010 : Round 10 Results

When seven of the weekend's eight contests produce the result that you expected - the right team winning head-to-head, the right team winning on handicap, in some games both - I think you've a reasonable expectation of profit.

No such luck.

Port Adelaide just had too much money riding on them, so the triumphs in the other seven contests nevertheless left those with the Recommended Portfolio down a little over 1 cent for the round. MIN#002 fared no better, his portfolio also dropping by about a cent, while the portfolio of MIN#017 did even worse, dropping over 5 cents.

Here's the MAFL Dashboard for the round.

Most tipsters managed 5 from 8 this week though Home Sweet Home recorded a 7 and Short-Term memory I scored only 3, dropping it to third on the ladder, two tips behind Easily Impressed I and one tip behind Easily Impressed II. Only five favourites won, so BKB made no impression on most of the tipsters above it and remains 6 tips from joint-leadership.

It's interesting to note that no tipster has a better tipping record over the past 5 rounds than it has over the season as a whole, a reflection of how difficult tipping has been recently.

On MARS Ratings, Geelong widened the gap between itself and the Pies and the Dogs. It now has a 16.5 Ratings point lead over the second placed Pies and a lead of almost 19 Ratings points over the third placed Dogs.

Three teams climbed a spot on the Ratings ladder (Fremantle, Essendon and the Eagles), and three fell one spot (Carlton, Adelaide and Port Adelaide). Eleven teams are now rated 990+, and with a rating of 1,000 generally sufficient to see a team make the finals, we can look forward to a tightly contested second half of the season.

BKB still leads the Margin Tipsters on the Mean APE metric, but has been joined by ELO in the race for Median APE honours. LAMP has narrowed the gap between it and BKB on the Mean APE measure, knocking more than 0.6 points from its average this week while BKB knocked only 0.5 points from its average; LAMP is now just over 1 point per game behind BKB.

HELP did nothing much this weekend, correctly tipping just 3 of 8 line results and generally performing much as you'd expect a naive tipster to perform.

MAFL 2010 : Round 10

At some point earlier today, for reasons I expect we'll never know, TAB Sportsbet felt comfortable in reopening the Saints v Crows markets, pricing them exactly where they'd been a couple of days previously when the allegations broke and attracting wagers from four of the five head-to-head wagering MAFL Funds. Among them only Hope abstained, as in fact it has on all eight games this round.

The ELO-Based Fund also chose not to bet on this game, deeming the 27.5 points start that the Saints were required to give just 1 point too many.

All told, the MAFL Funds have made 26 wagers this week, representing around 30% of the initial Funds placed in the Recommended Portfolio. All the head-to-head wagers are on favourites, at prices from $1.03 (yes - Geelong again) to $1.30.

The only wagers we have on underdogs are line bets - one on Essendon +19.5 versus the Dogs, and the other on the Lions +21.5 versus Collingwood.

Here's the detail:

This week Geelong carry the largest proportion of Recommended Portfolio funds though their ridiculously low price makes the upside from the head-to-head portion of those wagers fairly insignificant. As a consequence, it's the Port v Tigers and not the Cats v Dees game that represents the greatest difference between the best and worst possible outcomes.

Five matches have swings of around 5.8% or more riding on their outcome. None of them have upside greater than 1.4%. Such is the price of backing favourites. It's going to be a tough week to make a profit if you're in the Recommended Portfolio.

Here's the week's Ready Reckoner:

On the tipping front it's wholesale harmony this week. On three of the matches there's unanimity and in two more there's only a single dissenting tipster.

• The Dogs are 14-1 favourites over Essendon. Only Home Sweet Home is duty-bound to opt for the Dons. Notwithstanding the overwhelming support for the Dogs, both BKB and LAMP have this as their Game of the Round (though neither is tipping a single digit victory margin)
• Geelong are unanimous favourites over the Dees. Predicted margins range from 26 points to 50.5 points, so this could be a game that gets boring pretty quickly.
• Port Adelaide are unanimous favourites over the Tigers. For this game too the margin predictions are quite high - none is below 17 points.
• Collingwood are 13-2 favourites over the Lions. Tipped margins for the Lions start at 13 points and work their way up to 34 points.
• St Kilda are 14-1 favourites over the Crows, with all but one of the margin tippers predicting Saints victories by between 27 and 32 points.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over Sydney. This is the Game of the Round for ELO (tipping a Hawks victory by 4 points) and HAMP (tipping a Hawks victory by 23 points, which makes something of a mockery of the notion of a Game of the Round).
• Carlton are 12-3 favourites over the Eagles. Chi is one of the three dissenting votes. He has the Eagles winning by a point, making this his Game of the Round.
• Fremantle are unanimous favourites over the Roos. Predicted victory margins are from 14 points to 40 points.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is only 1.13 this week, a long way from last week's 3.25. So, the surprisals forecast for this week would be very low.

HELP's continues on its eccentric way, this week tipping all eight away teams, six of them receiving start, with probability estimates from 62% to 81%.

Here's to an exceptionally good weekend for BKB tipping ...

MAFL 2010 : Round 10 (Coming Soon to a Browser Near You)

Well normally I'd be posting this week's pre-round blog, but, as I type this, the Saints' alleged player sex scandal is still unresolved, at least to the satisfaction of the TAB Sportsbet bookie. As a consequence all St Kilda v Adelaide markets are suspended.

So, we've no ability to back the Saints, which we probably will both on the head-to-head and line markets once we're able. I'll wait 24 hours and see what happens.

MAFL 2010 : Round 9 Results

For the third week in succession, those with the Recommended Portfolio were let down by the Saints' performance in the last game of the round. In Rounds 7 and 8 it was the Saints' ineptitude that caused the disappointment; in Round 9 that ineptitude was nowhere to be seen when Investors most needed it.

Not that the weekend's losses can be entirely attributed to the Saints' victory on Sunday evening. Collingwood, the Roos, Sydney and Carlton all did their bits too, offset only - and not completely - by Essendon, Melbourne and Adelaide victories.

This week I'm trialling a new way of presenting the various pieces of information about wagers, tips, team ratings and margin prediction. I call it the MAFL Dashboard.

In the first part of the MAFL Wagering section you can see that only one of the six Funds is currently priced above its buy-in price of $1, and you see that three Funds made money this round (Prudence, Shadow and Heuristic-Based) and the other three Funds lost money. You can also see each Fund's season long performance statistics and price history.

Below this you'll find the same information for the various portfolios. You'll see that the Recommended Portfolio dropped 1.3c this week, the MIN#002 Portfolio rose by 1.9c, and the MIN#017 Portfolio dropped 2.6c. This leaves all portfolios in varying states of unprofitability.

Next is the MAFL Tipping section, which holds all the regular information about the performance of the 13 MAFL tipsters. Short-Term Memory I and Easily Impressed I currently head our tipping competition on 52 from 72 (72%). BKB continues to struggle, scoring just four this week (the Tipping Performance - Last 5 Rounds section has this information), leaving it now six tips behind the leaders.

The column headed Return (Home) records the profit or loss that would have accrued to someone level-stake betting on the tips of the relevant tipster whenever that tipster predicted a home team victory. So far this season, following that strategy with the predictions emanating from Short-Term Memory I would have been the most lucrative, yielding a profit of 9.63 units. Adopting the same strategy with Shadow, as the Recommended Portfolio has been via Shadow's own Fund and via its control of the Heuristic Fund, has yielded a profit of 6.18 units. Incidentally, Shadow made money this weekend and so will retain control of the Heuristic Fund for at least another three rounds.

In the right-hand portion of this section there is information about the recent tipping form of each tipster, as evidenced by its accuracy in each of the last five rounds. The two tipsters currently leading the overall tipping competition also have the (equal) best performances of all tipsters across rounds 4 to 9. In these five rounds they've tipped 28 winners.

Underneath the MAFL Tipping section is the MARS Ratings section. This week, seven teams moved up or down the MARS Ratings ladder. Largest amongst these moves was the two-rung climb recorded by the Hawks based on their 60-point victory over the Blues, which earned them 5.6 ratings points. Currently, the seven highest-ranted teams are also the top seven from the competition ladder, albeit in a different order. The eighth-highest rated team is Brisbane, who sit eleventh on the competition table. Port are eighth on the ladder, but are rated twelfth.

In the chart on the right of this section you track the ratings trajectories of each team.

The final section is the Margin Predictors section and it records the performance of the five MAFL Margin Predictors. BKB still has the season's best margin predictions, whether you rank based on Mean Absolute Prediction Error or on Median Absolute Prediction Error. LAMP is now second on Mean APE while ELO is second on Median APE. The chart on the right shows each Margin Predictor's Mean APE as at the end of every round of the season.

I've not included HELP's data in the dashboard since its unspectacular performance seems unworthy of considered attention.

This week HELP correctly predicted 5 of the 8 line results and moved to a 50% win-loss record for the season. Its very high levels of confidence in all of its predictions meant that its probability scores ended up sub-naive for the second successive week.

In the next day or so I'll be posting another blog in which I'll introduce one more dashboard, this one providing information about team performances.

MAFL 2010 : Round 9

Just when you get into a routine, someone has to go and change something.

This week the TAB Sportsbet bookie decided to post the line markets a day early, leaving me with the dilemma of deciding whether to follow the time-honoured strategy of placing bets around noon on Wednesday or, instead, to follow the other time-honoured strategy of placing bets just after the line markets go up. In the past, save for those weeks where there's been a Thursday game, these two events have coincided.

Worse was the fact that only half the line markets were posted, so I couldn't make all the bets I wanted to anyway.

Well the bets have been placed though we're still waiting for four more line markets to be posted, three of which we'll be wagering on. (I've included these wagers in the MAFL Wagers summary and in the Ready Reckoner, though the latter might need to change if we don't secure a price of $1.90 for the three line market bets we want to make.)

(Update: It's now Thursday evening and we've placed the three remaining line bets. On two of the bets we've secured more favourable terms than I expected: backing Adelaide we wound up getting 7.5 points start rather than 6.5, and backing Sydney we received a price of $1.95 rather than $1.90. In the other bet we took West Coast +6.5 points but only received a price of $1.80. The Ready Reckoner below now reflects these wagers.)

Investors holding the Recommended Portfolio have 23 wagers this weekend - including the three wagers-in-waiting - just one fewer than they had last weekend. New Heritage has six of those wagers, Prudence and Hope have two each, Shadow and the Heuristic-Based Funds have three each, and ELO-Based will have the remaining seven.

In total, Investors with the Recommended Portfolio will have about 19% of their funds at risk this week, again only a tad less than they risked - and significantly lost - last weekend.

In aggregate, Essendon carries the majority of the week's wagers. They're priced at $1.28 and are playing Richmond, a team that appear to have decided to act as this year's quasi-bye, thereby allowing other teams to become accustomed to what they'll face next year when the Gold Coast joins the competition. Hawks fans might have a somewhat different view, of course, as their team went perilously close last weekend to dropping points to the bye.

Other bets are at prices ranging from $1.36 to $2.25, so none of the funds at risk can reasonably be tagged "best forgotten".

Here's the detail:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, the Essendon v Richmond clash, by virtue of the shedload of cash on the Dons, represents the largest swing between best and worst outcomes. It also represents by some considerable margin the largest downside risk.

The Adelaide v Lions game carries the second largest swing between best and worst outcomes, which it does because it promises the largest upside should the Crows win and cover the spread but because it also threatens the second largest downside should the Crows lose.

Here's the Ready Reckoner in full (subject to amendment [Update: now duly amended] once the three remaining line bets are placed):

For the tipsters it's a weekend of moderate agreement, with unanimity in just one of the games.

• The Pies are 11-4 favourites over Geelong. The Cats can count BKB, Chi and the Easily Impressed brothers amongst their supporters, though BKB looks likely to have this game as one of its four - yes, four - Games of the Round, and no margin-tipper is predicting a victory margin in excess of 8 points.
• The Dogs are 14-1 favourites over the Roos, with only Home Sweet Home tipping the upset. All five margin-tippers are on the Dogs with margins ranging from 13 to 24.5 points.
• Fremantle are 9-6 favourites over the Swans, though all the margin-tippers are predicting a Swans victory. BKB will have this as another Game of the Round.
• Essendon are the week's only unanimous favourite. They face Richmond and are tipped to win by margins from 16 to 34 points.
• Port Adelaide are 12-3 favourites over the Dees. Three of the five margin-tippers - LAMP and BKB being the exceptions - are tipping Port victories, including ELO, who is tipping Melbourne by just 1 point, making this its Game of the Round.
• Adelaide are 10-5 favourites over the Lions. This is the Game of the Round for Chi (tipping a Crows victory by 2 points), LAMP (tipping a Lions victory by 1 point) and BKB (tipping a Lions victory by 6.5 points)
• Carlton are 11-4 favourites over the Hawks and are tipped by all five margin-tippers with margins ranging from 10 to 27 points.
• St Kilda are 9-6 favourites over the Eagles. This is the final Game of the Round for BKB. None of the margin-tippers are suggesting that either team will win by a sizeable margin - the largest tipped victory margin for St Kilda is 13 points and for the Eagles is 6 points.

The average number of dissenting tipsters per game is, therefore, about 3.5. This fact, coupled with the bookie's generally miserly points start offerings, suggests that this will be a difficult round to tip. Only the Dons and the Dogs might reasonably be considered 'bankers' and four, maybe five of the remaining six contests have a coin-tossy feel to them.

Whilst seasoned judges might be expressing high degrees of uncertainty about the head-to-head results, HELP's expressing near-certainty about the result of all eight games when adjusted for points start.

Remarkably, all eight HELP predictions are for the away teams. In contrast, the ELO-Based Fund will be making seven wagers on home teams. I think we all know which tipster we want to be incorrect more often.

This week I'll finish by providing my short version of the competition ladder, from which I'd like to highlight the Saints' performance. Despite losing three of their last four games they remain in the top eight. The table shows that this is not because of their points-scoring ability (for which they're ranked equal fourth last) but is instead attributable to their defensive skills: they've allowed only 583 points in their eight games, including only 10.5 goals per game.

MAFL 2010 : Round 8 Results

Wow. It feels like I'm about to compose a eulogy.

Silly of me really, in hindsight, to hope that the Saints - who, I remind you, should probably be the reigning premiers - could add a mildly cheery note to an otherwise gloomy weekend's wagering. Instead, their failure merely compounded the misery that saw those with the Recommended Portfolio turn a profit in just three of the eight contests, wiping 11.2% off the value of their Investment.

Investors with other portfolios fared no better, MIN#002 dropping 11.8% and MIN#017 dropping 23.2%, leaving them, as those with the Recommended Portfolio, solidly in the red.

Still, it's only Round 8, so there's plenty of time to forgive and forget.

Here's the summary of each portfolio's performance this week and for the season as a whole:

So far this season I've not provided a graph of Fund performance, but with every Fund now having been active for at least three rounds, now seems like a good time to produce one, so here it is.

I do wish that those lines looked a little less cygnine, but they are what they are, I suppose.

Here are the game-by-game details of the weekend's wagering:

For the third week in succession just five favourites took the competition points - a phrase that's at least still synonymous with victory in the AFL if not the NRL - leaving BKB now five games behind our tipping leaders on 47 from 64 (63%): Easily Impressed I, which bagged seven this weekend, and Short Term Memory I, which bagged six.

Easily Impressed II is in clear third, on 45 from 64 (70%), and Follow the Streak is in fourth, on 44 from 64 (69%).

Home teams had yet another poor showing this week, causing Home Sweet Home to register just a single correct tip. It might have been two from eight but, there being no true home team in the Dogs v Swans game, the Home Sweet Home heuristic goes with the team higher on the ladder, which in this case was the losing Swans and not the notionally at-home Dogs.

The Heuristic-Based Fund lost money this week, so Shadow is now just two loss-making rounds away from surrendering control of the Fund to another heuristic. Based on current performance, the heuristic taking over the Fund would be Short Term Memory I.

Though losing this week, the Heuristic-Based Fund has recorded a 29% increase for the season to date. As the tables below demonstrate, much of this return has been due to Melbourne, Carlton and Fremantle, and only four teams have been loss-making for this Fund (Hawthorn, Port, St Kilda (barely) and the Dogs).

The New Heritage Fund has suffered from untimely losses perpetrated by seven of the teams, most painfully from those of St Kilda, Brisbane and Melbourne. Prudence has lost money on six teams, and most of all on St Kilda, Fremantle and Melbourne.

Melbourne, Port, St Kilda and the Dogs have been the sole value destroyers for the Shadow Fund, while the Lions, Fremantle and Melbourne have provided a similar service to the Hope Fund. ELO-Line has lost money on six teams, with the Saints inflicting the greatest net loss.

You might have noticed the names Melbourne and St Kilda cropping up regularly in the last few paragraphs discussing Fund losses. Small wonder then that they're prominent when we look at team performance by portfolio.

Investors with the Recommended Portfolio can thank Sydney, the Roos, Collingwood and Geelong for generating the greatest increments to their wealth, and can blame a slew of teams including the Saints, Lions, Dees and Freo for underperforming at inopportune times.

The MARS Ratings are particularly interesting this week, as five teams - Geelong, Collingwood, the Dogs, St Kilda and Carlton - have now established a sizeable ratings point lead on the rest of the field.

Over the course of the weekend, six teams changed position on MARS ratings, three recording rises and three recording falls. Essendon and West Coast enjoyed the weekend's only 2-spot rises, and Port Adelaide and Melbourne suffered the weekend's only 2-spot falls.

The Saints have dropped almost nine ratings points in two weeks and now find themselves in fourth spot and in danger of dropping to fifth should they have another poor showing against West Coast and should the Blues perform well against Hawthorn.

On margin predicting, BKB has retained its sub-30 MAPE and its preeminent position on MAPE and on Median APE rankings.

LAMP is in second spot on MAPE, though it's last on Median APE, a full point behind Chi. ELO holds second spot on Median APE, but trails BKB by 1.5 points and needs four games of sub-28 point performance to drag its Median APE down to BKB's current level.

HELP had a horrible week on line tipping and probability estimation, picking just two line-winning teams and scoring at a sub-naive level on all three probability scores, mostly because three of its four most confident tips proved to be incorrect.

This week I'll finish what's already been a long blog with a review of teams' quarter-by-quarter performances.

No team has won all eight of any single quarter. The best performance in a quarter has been the Dogs in second quarters where they've won seven of eight and registered a 176.6 percentage.

Two teams, however, have lost eight from eight for a particular quarter: Richmond have lost all eight third terms, and Hawthorn have lost all eight final terms.

Summing across all four quarters, Collingwood now have the best record of all teams, having won 22 of 32 quarters and drawn 1. Geelong are next best (on 22 from 32) and then Carlton (on 20 from 32).

Richmond, by some distance, have the worst performance. They're averaging less than a single winning quarter per game.

MAFL 2010 : Round 8

Some weeks there's a period where I'm 5 years old again and I hold my breath and close my eyes while I run the Fund scripts and partly fear, partly hope for the worst. This week that apprehension was tied to just how much we'd have riding on the Tigers who were being offered by TAB Sportsbet at $4.50 and taking on the Hawks at the G.

When I peeked and exhaled I found that the Funds commanded ... no head-to-head bet on the Tigers. We did have a 5% line bet though, but with 30.5 points start, I'll take that as a reasonable proposition.

In total, those with the Recommended Portfolio have an even two-dozen wagers this week, five of them struck by Prudence and representing about 15% of that Fund, four from each of Shadow (20%), Heuristic-Based (20%), New Heritage (38%) and ELO-Line (20%), and three from the Hope Fund and representing about 11% of that Fund.

In total, Investors with the Recommended Portfolio have about 21% of their total funds at risk. I tell you, money in that portfolio just turns its little tail off.

Only one of the week's bets is at a price in excess of $2, and that's Hope's 5.5% wager on the Lions at $3 facing the Cats but playing at home at the Gabba. Frankly, I like those odds. The remaining wagers are at prices from $1.36 - on Melbourne, of all teams, head-to-head facing the Eagles - up to $1.90, on Fremantle, head-to-head playing the Pies, and on all four line bets.

Here's the detail:

For those with the Recommended Portfolio, the round's last game, which is the Saints v Dons clash, is the game that represents the largest swing between best and worst outcomes. It also represents the largest downside risk as a loss would set 4.8% of the Portfolio ablaze. At the other end of the spectrum, the Lions v Cats game offers the greatest upside. If the underdog Lions win, the Recommended Portfolio will leap by 2.65%.

So then, what other threats and promises does this week's Ready Reckoner enfold?

For those holding the Recommended Portfolio it's another weekend where the outcome of most games carries a wealth swing of 2.5% or more. In consequence it's another weekend of baldly partisan viewing.

The tipsters are broadly in agreement for yet another week, although in none of the games is there unanimity amongst them.

• The Pies are 13-2 favourites over Freo, with only Home Sweet Home, HAMP and LAMP separate from the herd. LAMP is by no means overwhelmingly committed to the home team Freo, however, and has them winning by just 5 points, making this its Game of the Round. The bookies too are only weak supporters, though they're on the Pies, and look set to have this as one of their two Games of the Round.
• The Dogs are 12-3 favourites over the Swans. All five margin-tippers are on the Dogs with margins ranging from 8.5 to 25 points.
• Melbourne are 12-3 favourites over the Eagles. In this game, predicted Eagles victory margins range from 11 to 23 points.
• Geelong are 13-2 favourites over the Lions. HAMP has the Cats winning by just 6 points, making this its Game of the Round.
• Adelaide are 8-7 favourites over the Roos. All the margin-tippers are on the Roos, however, including ELO, who is tipping the Roos by 2, making this its Game of the Round.
• Hawthorn are 13-2 favourites over the Tigers. Chi is one of the two tipsters predicting a Tigers win and he has them winning by just 2 points.
• Port Adelaide are 11-4 favourites over the Blues. Chi's on the Blues but tips just a 1-point win, so this is his Game of the Round. It also looks likely to be the bookie's other Game of the Round, with Port set to be offering just 6.5 points start.
• St Kilda are 13-2 favourites over the Dons, though heaven knows why after the way they played on Monday night. The margin tipsters are particularly confident and are prophesying margins ranging from 17.5 to 31 points. Let's hope they're right.

Average starts this week are again quite low. All but one of them are 18.5 points or fewer, the highest being the 30.5 points start that the Tigers enjoy.

Finally, to HELP, who's looking to consolidate last weekend's improved showing (whatever that oft-quoted sporting reference really means).

There's some pluck in them there predictions, with Melbourne, the Roos, Hawthorn and St Kilda all confidently predicted to cover their respective spreads. Pluck comes, as ever, stapled to risk and reward, however, so HELP faces a roller-coaster weekend of probability scoring.