There were some mostly gentle re-rankings on the MoS twins this week, with, on the increasingly-unreliable MoSSBODS, Fremantle climbing three spots into 9th, and Sydney, Gold Coast and St KIlda all falling two spots.
On MoSHBODS, Sydney fell four places, Hawthorn three, and Western Bulldogs and St Kilda two. Meantime, Collingwood, Geelong, Carlton, GWS and Gold Coast all rose by two spots.
Read MoreAnother feast of nine-games this week, and played in a variety of States just to add some more colour to the mix.
Seven of the nine games are expected to be won by less than three goals, one by about four-and-a-half goals, and the remaining game by just over seven goals, which should again make head-to-head tipping quite challenging this week.
Let’s see what the models make of the nine.
Read MoreAnother seven of the early-week favourites got up this week, leading to all but ENS_Linear and Home Sweet Home registering that score on the Head-to-Head Tipsters Leaderboard. That left MoSHPlay still a tip clear of the field on 36 from 44 (82%).
The all-Tipster score came in at 6.4 from 9, which took the season-long all-Tipster performance to 31.8 from 44 (72%).
Read MoreMoSHPlay now has some preliminary thoughts about the remainder of the round.
MoSHPlay’s ends with the Crows winning by 10 points.
MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game has the Crows winning by 9 points.
A full set of Totals markets have gone up very early this week and, consistent with MoS philosophy, we’ve wagered in these markets as soon as possible.
MoSSBODS this week disagrees with MoSHBODS on the Total for every game by amounts ranging from 1 point to 8 points. On average, however, across all nine games, MoSSBODS is one point higher than MoSHBODS.
The two bookmakers are, on average, about 4 points higher than MoSSBODS.
Read MoreWith every team now having played at least three games, it feels an appropriate time to look at how the various MoS Team Rating Systems view the teams.
One thing to bear in mind this season is that MoSSBODS has been optimised to produce better game total forecasts, which will, in my experience, necessarily lessen its ability to forecast game margins well. It will also lead, as we’ll see, to quite different assessments of the 18 teams. In short, don’t expect the extremely high levels of correlation between MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS that we’ve grown used to in recent years.
That difference can be seen immediately when we look at the two System’s team ratings at the end of Round 4.
Read MoreWe have only our second nine-game round this week, and it feels as though it signals the end of the first portion of the season, after which we’ll have some reasonable ideas about the most likely and most unlikely Finalists.
Two-thirds of the nine games are expected to be won by less than three goals, one by four goals, another by about five goals, and the remaining game by about five-and-a-half goals. All of which you might expect to make head-to-head tipping quite challenging.
Let’s see what the models make of the new nine.
Read MoreRound 4 was another entirely acceptable round, with seven of the early-week favourites getting up, leading to MoSHPlay, Bookie Knows Best, the RSMP twins, and ENS_Linear all registering that score on the Head-to-Head Tipsters Leaderboard.
That left MoSHPlay a tip clear of the field on 29 from 35 (83%).
The all-Tipster score came in at 6.4 from 8, which took the season-long all-Tipster performance to 25.3 from 35 (72%).
Read MoreMoSHPlay is staying with the Cats by just over 6 goals, and has some slightly altered ideas about some of the Sunday games.
MoSHPlay is staying with the Pies by a goal for tonight and now has preliminary views about the remaining games in the round.
MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game has the Pies winning by 6 points.
MoSSBODS this week again disagrees with MoSHBODS on the Total for most games and by amounts ranging from 1 point to 7 points. On average, across all eight games, MoSSBODS is one point higher than MoSHBODS.
The two bookmakers are, on average, a couple of points higher.
Read MoreYet another eight game round this week, which includes five games expected to be decided by two goals or less, one that’s expected to be decided by 4-and-a-half goals, and two more that are expected to be won by about seven-and-a-half to eight goals.
Let’s see what the models make of them.
Read MoreAlmost as if Lady Stochastos reads this blog, in response to my lamentations last week, she went out of her way to smile on me this week.
The first sign of this is that MoSHPlay tipped all 8 winners this week, and was the only Head-to-Head Tipster to do so, although seven successes for Bookie Knows Best and a relatively low incidence of contrarianism meant that another of the MoS trio, as well as the RSMP twins, all scored seven from eight.
Most others scored six, with the exception of Home Sweet Home, who scored only five.
All of that left MoSHPlay one tip ahead of Bookie Knows Best and RSMP_Weighted at the head of the Leaderboard.
Read MoreMoSHPlay has finished at Dockers by 25 points.
MoSHPlay has finished at Hawks by 6 points and Lions by 9 points.
MoSHPlay has a couple of small adjustments to its still-preliminary views about the remaining games in the round.
MoSHPlay’s final thoughts about tonight’s game are now locked in (still the Dons by 3 points), and here are its thoughts about the remaining games in the round.
Its largest difference from MoSHBODS is currently 10 points in the Hawks v Giants game.
MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game has the Dons winning by 3 points, and represents only the fourth time this season that MoSHPlay has tipped a different winner to MoSHBODS. It’s 3 and 0 for the previous examples, which is why it’s three tips ahead on the Leaderboard.
MoSSBODS this week disagrees with MoSHBODS on the Total for each game by amounts ranging from 1 point to 6 points but, on average, has the same expected Total of 171 points per game.
That exactly matches the all-game average for the two bookmakers, even with a 20-point difference in the Lions v Cats game.
Read MoreWe’ve yet another eight-ninths of a full round coming up this week in this the Year of Making the Ladder Impossible to Interpret. Three of those eight games are currently forecasted to be settled by about a goal or less, two more by about two goals, two more by about four goals, and only one by about seven goals.
Let’s see what the models make of it all.
Read MoreIf ever you feel the need to learn a little more about yourself, spend time each week for a l-o-n-g time documenting the public performance of some activity you perform, and notice just how much less enjoyable it is when that performance has been less than what you’d hoped for. I’ve been doing this now for over 20 years, but the difference remains chasm-like.
Anyway, tipping winners was fairly challenging this week, with only 5 of 8 early-week favourites taking the points, which resulted in Bookie Knows Best, RSMP_Weighted, and ENS_Linear turning in the week’s best Head-to-Head Predictor results of just that 5 from 8.
The remaining Predictors scored only 3 or 4, which left the Leaderboard showing Bookie Knows Best, MoSHPlay_Marg, and RSMP_Weighted tied at the top on 14 from 19 (74%), just one tip ahead of ENS_Linear and RSMP_Simple.
Read MoreMoSHPlay ends at Lions by 69 points.
MoSHPlay ends at Cats by 13 points.
Some very small changes to MoSHPlay’s Sunday forecasts.
MoSHPlay still has the Hawks by two goals tonight, and its preliminary thoughts about the remaining games in the round appear below.
MoSHPlay’s preliminary thoughts about Thursday night’s game is Hawthorn by 2 goals.
A clear feature of 2025 is, I think, going to be the different opinions that MoSHBODS and MoSSBODS will have on occasion now that they’re optimised for two different metrics - game margin MAE for MoSHBODS, and game total MAE for MoSSBODS.
This week, for example, they disagree by more than half a goal in three of the eight games, although their overall means differ by only a point.
The bookmakers, for their part, are very much in agreement, while MoSHBODS differs from them most of all in the Power v Tigers, Roos v Dees, and Dockers v Swans games and MoSSBODS in the Saints v Cats, and the Roos v Dees, and Dockers v Swans games as well.
Read MoreWe’ve eight-ninths of a full meal this coming weekend and three of those eight games are currently forecasted to be settled by about a goal or less. Three more have lines between 16.5 and 20.5, leaving just the Power v Tigers, and Lions v Eagles games as potential blowouts.
Let’s see what the models make of the eight this week.
Read MoreTipping winners wasn’t all that hard this week, with eight of the nine early week favourites taking the points. The moderate levels of contrarianism meant that no Tipster did better than eight, but none also did worse than six.
MoSHPlay_Marg was one of the four Tipsters scoring eight from nine and now leads Bookie Knows Best and the RSMP twins by a single tip.
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