2014 - Round 2: Not Without Interest

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All three MatterOfStats Funds are active once again this round, and the general wagering tone remains subdued. The Head-to-Head Fund's lone wager is a small one on the Dees, who are priced at $7.50 for their clash with the Eagles. Whilst not as speculative a wager as last round's Giants plunge, this small bet on the Dees doesn't exactly have "collect" written all over it either.

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2014 - Round 1: Results - Underdogs 5, Favourites 4

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On the face of it, Round 1 results were tough to pick, with only four of the nine pre-game TAB favourites running out victors. Seven of the winners, however, were teams that finished higher on the competition ladder than did their opponents at the end of the 2013 home-and-away season, which was great news for the MatterOfStats Heuristic Tipsters almost all of which adopt the Consult The Ladder approach in the first round of the season.

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2014 - Round 1b: A Few Matters of Housekeeping

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In last week's post I revealed MatterOfStats' wagers and tips for the entirety of the 1st round, none of which I'll be altering this week in light of the results from the first half of that round. Investors are reminded that they have only SuperMargin wagers to look forward to this weekend, which have as perhaps their only virtue the fact that they generally render all but the last few minutes of a contest largely moot.

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2014 - Round 1a Results: Well, That Was Nice

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Based on the traffic to the MatterOfStats website today, I'm guessing that many regular visitors already know that the first four-ninths of Round 1 of the 2014 season has proven to be profitable for anyone holding the Recommended Portfolio.

The Head-to-Head Fund recorded two successful wagers from two attempts, most notably recognising the now-obvious value that subsisted in the Giants' $13 pre-game price-tag. This Fund is now up by over 9c on the season and is comfortably buttressed against a relatively extended period of ineptitude. The Line Fund also benefited from the Giants' strong showing, its wager with over 8 goals start never seeming to be seriously in danger.

Only the Margin Fund finished the weekend unfulfilled, with both of its Blues'-related wagers coming up short despite promising signs at the end of the first three quarters. It shed 2.5c as a consequence of its poor judgement.

So, all told, the Recommended Portfolio is up by almost 3c after just four games and never have I felt more compelled to remind myself that extrapolation almost always ends in tears.

On the tipping front, Home Sweet Home is enjoying a very rare period of relative accuracy, its 2 from 4 as good as any of the MatterOfStats (MOS) Head-to-Head Tipsters. It too, I suspect, should take heed of the pitfalls in extrapolation.

In other MOS contests, H2H_Unadj_3 leads all-comers amongst the Margin Predictors, although its 42.23 mean absolute prediction error is a long way from elevating it into MOS folklore, and H2H_Adj and H2H_Unadj have, jointly, the best Head-to-Head Probability Predictor performances.

As well, the Line Fund algorithm is enjoying a very rare period of net positive log probability scoring.

Of course, I'd do well to remember that five-ninths of a round is a long time in football ...

MatterOfStats in 2014

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Last year at around this same time I said 

Compared to most previous seasons, the number of changes to MAFL Funds and algorithms this year has been very small.

For 2014 I've treated last year as a worthy precedent and made only a handful of changes, none of them significant.

I'd love to be able to present an empirical case for these weightings but, alas, none exists. If pressed I'd simply relay my sense that, last year, a Fund carrying only 10% of the total portfolio seemed to be something of an irrelevance, regardless of how active it was.

  • This year I wanted to do something in memory of MatterOfStats' (then MAFL's) inaugural mascot, who guilted me out of half a banana and half an apple for the last time late last year, so I've created ChiPS from which spring C-Marg and C-Prob, respectively a new Margin and a new Probability Predictor.

That's it. Everything else will be this year as it was last year including, I hope, our wagering success.