With only three games and two rounds to complete the 2012 season, simulations get much simpler. All that's required is an assessment of the head-to-probabilities for next week's games and an assessment of the four possible Grand Final pairings that might result.

Here are the probabilities I've used for this week's simulations:

For the Preliminary Finals, the probabilities that matter are the 85% shown for Hawthorn beating Adelaide at home, and the 70% for Sydney defeating Collingwood at home.

Then, for the Grand Final, the relevant probabilities are 76% (Hawthorn beats Sydney), 83% (Hawthorn beats Collingwood), 57% (Adelaide beats Collingwood), and 46% (Adelaide beats Sydney). 

(Note that, in the Finals, the team finishing higher on the ladder is deemed to be the home team regardless of the actual venue.)

Collectively, those probabilities imply the following chances for each of the four remaining teams:

At the moment, the TAB prices for each team for the Flag are Hawthorn $1.60, Sydney $4.50, Collingwood $6.00, and Adelaide $11.00, at which prices only Hawthorn represents value. Based on their simulated Flag probability of 65.8%, a $1.60 price carries a 5% positive expectation.

The early head-to-head markets have next week's games priced at Sydney $1.65 / Collingwood $2.25 and Hawthorn $1.16 / Adelaide $5.25, which implies respective probabilities for the home teams of about 58% and 82%. I've used 70% and 85% in the simulations for this blog, so I expected that the TAB's Flag price for Sydney would be more generous than $4.50. The only logical assumption to make is that the TAB Bookmaker rates Sydney's chances against the Hawks, should both make the Grand Final, as better than the 24% I've used. 

And a Hawks v Swans Grand Final is by far the most likely outcome according both to the TAB and to the simulation outputs. 

The simulations assess this pairing as having about a 59% probability, with a Hawthorn v Collingwood pairing as the next most likely but as only a 3/1 shot, an Adelaide v Sydney matchup assessed as about an 8/1 prospect, and an Adelaide v Collingwood clash demanding fair odds of about 19/1.

On the TAB the respective prices are currently Hawthorn v Sydney $1.91, Hawthorn v Collingwood $2.61, Adelaide v Sydney $8.66, and Adelaide v Collingwood $11.81. Amongst those, the simulations imply that only the Hawks v Swans pricing represents value. It carries an estimated 13% edge.

Which means that we're loading up again this week on the Hawks Flag wager and the Hawks v Swans GF Quinella. Including those two new wagers, here's the summary of the notional wagers we've made so far based on the results of the various simulations performed over the past seven weeks: