A scoreless final term from the Roos consigned Investors’ head-to-head and line bets to the bin, and saw WoSHBODS finish the season with an accuracy of 70.2%, a Margin MAE of 18.9 points per game, and a Totals MAE of 17.9 points per game.

At the start of the season I’d probably have taken those metrics, by the performance at the back end of the season has been disappointing and includes a 4 from 9 tipping accuracy score for the Finals.

WAGERING

On wagering, Investors recorded a loss this week of about 1c, which meant that the final five weeks of the season knocked more than 6c off the Combined Portfolio price. It finished up by 10.1c, that from an 8.8% ROI on a 1.17 turn.

The Head-to-Head Fund was the only one to finish with a loss and that, interestingly, was largely due to its staking strategy. Had it, instead, level-staked (when the assessed edge was 5% or more), it would have recorded a +8.8% ROI and had it, instead, one-fifth Kelly Bet (also (when the assessed edge was 5% or more) it would have recorded a +17.9% ROI.

Food for thought for 2024.

We can review the wagering performance of the two main Funds by making separate calculations for home versus away status, and favouritism versus underdog status, which we do in the table at right.

As has been the case since we started looking, line betting on away teams has been lucrative, as has, to a lesser extent, head-to-head betting on underdogs, home or away.

Looking next at the team-by-team forecasting results for the season we find that Hawthorn’s margins proved easiest to predict, and Brisbane’s most difficult.

MAEs below 16 points per game were also registered by Fremantle, Essendon and Adelaide, while the other teams whose MAE were 22 points per game or higher were West Coast, Melbourne, Collingwood, Gold Coast, and Sydney.

Based on the LPS metric, the Bulldogs’ win probabilities have been best estimated, ahead of the Crows’, Giants’ and the Hawks’.

Most poorly estimated have been Brisbane’s, Collingwood’s, St Kilda’s, and Sydney’s win probabilities, which has meant that all of their LPSs finished negative for the season.

Lastly, let’s look at WoSHBODS’ performance in games broken down by the final victory margin.

In the end, the lowest margin MAEs were recorded for games won by between 6 and 11 points, and the second-lowest by games won by between 12 and 17 points.

In terms of accuracy, however, there was a positive relationship between margin size and accuracy, with only 34% of games being won by less than a goal correctly forecast, but 90% of games being won by 4 goals or more correctly forecast.

And with that, farewell until 2024.