Just four wagers dot the weekend's footballing landscape, and none threatens the long-term health of Investors' or the TAB Bookmaker

This week saw a surprisingly high level of team re-Ranking on both the ChiPS and the MARS Rating Systems, nine teams moving house on ChiPS, and 12 doing the same on MARS.

Some games can be strange affairs for me now. As well as posting tips and wagers here on MoS, I also participate in the FMITL and in all three Monash Competitions, using different algorithms in each to exploit the particular scoring mechanics employed. That leaves me with divided - sometimes trisected - loyalties.

The TAB Bookmaker is predicting a round of moderate to comfortable wins for seven of its favourites this week, all seven expected to win by between about two-and-a-half and six goals according to their line market handicaps.

Outside of the top 4, all but one of the teams changed their Ranking on ChiPS this week, the most significant falls being the Pies' and the Dogs' three-spot declines, and the most significant climb being the Roos' three-spot ascension.

The round started this week on the vast open fields of the MCG with a tepid display by the pre-game favourite Pies, who ultimately went down to the Cats by about 7 goals, and ended in the very insular confines of MatterOfStats spreadsheets where the ChiPS Tipsters registered significant falls on all of its Leaderboards.

In the blog wrapping up last week's wagering results (not that there was much to rap) I mentioned that the Fund algorithms had one more week of calibration before bet sizes were likely to increase. While that's true for the Head-to-Head Fund, it's actually not for the Line Fund. It ratchets up from Round 5, which had me a little taken aback when the Line Fund algorithm gave me my wagering instructions for the week.

Sydney's loss to the Dogs this past round saw it shed Rating Points (RPs) on both ChiPS and MARS, relegating it to 4th place on ChiPS and 3rd on MARS. Fremantle and West Coast both moved up a single ladder position on both Ranking Systems, filling 2nd and 3rd places respectively on ChiPS, and 2nd and 4th on MARS. Hawthorn remains in 1st position under both Systems, its lead over Fremantle almost 8 RPs on ChiPS and over 10 RPs on MARS.

The Eagles victory over GWS provided the week's only collect for Investors, the 1.4c return from that game been much more than offset by 4.7c losses from the three other Head-to-Head wagers that were in play over the course of the round. Combined, the four bets snipped another 3.3c off the Head-to-Head Fund's price, which now stands at 92.3c, down 7.7c.

No better was the story for the Line Fund, its sole wager on the Roos falling more than 5 goals shy of troubling the TAB Bookmaker, stripping another 1.3c off the Line Fund's price as a consequence. That Fund is now down by almost 11c on the season and the Overall Portfolio down by 9.6c.

The Line Fund remains circumspect this week, venturing just a single wager on the Roos with 19.5 points start against the Hawks, but the Head-to-Head Fund sees value to varying degrees in four of the home teams, one favourite and three underdogs.

Hawthorn and Sydney both shed Rating Points (RPs) on the ChiPS and MARS Rating Systems this past weekend but remain in 1st and 2nd positions, respectively, on both Systems

It's an odd weekend's football when the three predicting progeny of the ChiPS System wind up as the best Head-to-Head, Margin and Probability predictors.

Today, not a post about football, but one about the history of one of MoS’ Margin Predictors, Shadow.

Neither the Head-to-Head nor the Line Fund algorithm think much of the TAB prices on offer this week with the result that they've put only 2.6% of the entire Portfolio at risk across the nine games

Hawthorn wrested back from Sydney its Number 1 ChiPS Ranking this weekend, bringing the ChiPS and MARS Rankings for the top two places back into alignment. Hawthorn are now, according to ChiPS, about a half-goal better side than Sydney at a neutral venue.

All nine favourites won this week, but only five of them were home teams, and only two of those five covered their respective spreads, so whilst it was a week of solid result tipping and margin predicting it was a not a week of profitable MoS wagering.

The relatively late withdrawal of Gary Ablett from the Suns team to play the Cats on Sunday provided a fascinating case study in how bookmakers value such pivotal players.

Many teams' latent abilities and inabilities were revealed this past weekend, reflected by the changes in their ChiPS and MARS Ratings and Rankings.

If you've had a poor round's wagering and tipping, I think you're due an appalling pun in your blog post title.

No sooner, it seems, at this time of year, does one round finish before the next one starts.