2021 : Simulating the Final Ladder After Round 8

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The latest round of Standard Methodology home-and-away simulations still has 12 teams with a better than 1-in-5 shot at playing Finals, and now 8 teams with a better than 1-in-5 shot at finishing Top 4. Even under the Heretical Methodology, which (as by now I’m sure you know) tends to push probability estimates closer to 0 and 1, there are 11 teams with a better than 1-in-5 shot at playing Finals, and 8 teams with a better than 1-in-5 shot at finishing Top 4.

(For details about the methodologies I’ve used, see this earlier blog)

LADDER FINISHES

Team Expected Wins under the Standard Methodology grew by about 1 full win this week only for Geelong, and fell by about 1 full win for Richmond and Gold Coast.

The big gainers in terms of Finals chances were Geelong (+16% points to 85%) and West Coast (+12% points to 68%). The big losers were Richmond (-16% points to 63%) and Gold Coast (-12% points to 11%).

Also, according to both the Standard and the Heretical Methodology, the Dogs and Dees both remain about 1-in-3 to 2-in-5 chances for the Minor Premiership.

STANDARD METHODOLOGY

HERETICAL METHODOLOGY

The range of Expected Wins using the Standard Methodology across the 18 teams moved to about 11.5 wins this week, while using the Heretical Methodology it came in at just under 14 wins.

Of the five teams that started with a 0-2 record (Brisbane Lions, Carlton, GWS, Essendon, and North Melbourne), the Standard Methodology now estimates that there’s about a 95% chance at least one of them will end up playing Finals.

Across the 50,000 simulations there are 47,418 different sets of teams playing Finals, treating different orderings of the same eight teams as a different set. No ordering appears in more than six replicates. If we ignore ordering, there are 2,219 different sets of eight Finalists. We are winnowing the contestants, but only slowly.

TEAM AND POSITION CONCENTRATION

The HHI figures for the most recent Standard Methodology simulation replicates appear below.

(For information about the HHI, also see that previous blog linked to earlier).

We see considerable reductions in final ladder position uncertainty this week for Geelong, Gold Coast, West Coast, and Adelaide.

We also see a sizeable increase for Richmond, who are now effectively competing for 12 positions on the ladder.

Fremantle, GWS, and Carlton remain the teams with greatest uncertainty about the positions in which they’ll finish on the ladder, each of them effectively competing for about 12.5 to 13 ladder spots now. North Melbourne still have the least uncertainty and are effectively competing for only 1.5 spots, though Melbourne and Western Bulldogs still also enjoy relatively low levels of uncertainty, with each of them effectively competing still for only about four to five different spots.

We also see reductions in the uncertainty associated with all ladder positions except 1st and 18th, with the largest declines for 7th through 11th, and 15th and 16th.

It remains emphatically the case that the mid-table positions - 6th through 12th - are the ones that are associated with most uncertainty, and the top and tail positions - 1st through 3rd, and 16th through 18th - with least uncertainty.

There are still, effectively, only about three teams vying for the Minor Premiership, and less than two battling for the Spoon.

IMPORTANCE OF PERCENTAGE

The Standard Methodology simulations now suggest that it’s slightly less likely than a 50:50 proposition that the last spot on the Finals will be determined by percentage.

There is now an estimated 49.3% chance that 8th and 9th will finish equal on competition points, a 21% chance that 8th and 10th will, and a 7% chance that 8th and 11th will.

There’s also about a 43% chance that the double-chance in the Finals will be determined by percentage.

WINS TO MAKE The 8

Based on the Standard Methodology, the estimates of team chances of playing Finals should they finish on only 11 wins still mostly lie in the 10% to 25% range, and they lie in the 75% to 90% range should they record 12 wins.

Melbourne, St Kilda, Adelaide, Fremantle, and Hawthorn are least likely to play Finals with 11 or 12 wins, while Geelong and Essendon have the highest estimated chances.

TEAM DEPENDENCIES IN FINALS CHANCES

Next, let’s review the dependencies in the estimated Finals chances of the six teams now estimated to have between a 25% and a 75% unconditional chance of playing Finals according to the Standard Methodology.

Using the arrow lengths as a proxy for dependence, we see that:

  • The Blues’ are most dependent on the Giants’

  • The Dockers’ are most dependent on the Swans’

  • The Giants’ are most dependent on the Blues’ and Tigers’

  • The Tigers’ are most dependent on the Giants’

  • The Swans’ are most dependent on the Dockers’

  • The Eagles’ chances are about equally dependent on the Swans’, Tigers’, Giants’, Dockers’, and Blues’

HOW MANY WINS TO FINISH WHERE

Now a look at what the Standard Methodology shows for the joint distribution of number of wins and final ladder position for each team.

WINS FOR A PARTICULAR LADDER POSITION

And, finally, an update on the distribution of wins associated with each ladder position.

It now looks even more as though 12 wins rather than 11 will be associated with the team finishing 8th, and that 14 wins rather than 13 wins will be associated with 4th spot on the final home-and-away ladder.

GAME IMPORTANCE

Finally, let’s take a look at how the Standard Methodology estimates the importance of each of the remaining 155 games (see this blog for details about how these are calculated).

Here is the list of the 25 most important games in terms of their estimated influence on the composition of the finalists.

GWS and Richmond are now involved in 8 of the Top 25, Sydney in 7, Carlton, St Kilda, and West Coast in 5, and Fremantle in 4. Six teams - Adelaide, Collingwood, North Melbourne, Hawthorn, Melbourne, and Western Bulldogs are currently not involved in any of the estimated Top 25.