Favourites Stumble While (Most) Investors Profit

When you lose your first 9 wagers of the weekend and when you've a strategy built around favourites and half of them lose, you're not really entitled to expect to profit from such a weekend, especially when such profit is largely dependent on the team that's at the foot of the ladder toppling a team vying for a spot in the finals and the major wager on that team is one that's been placed by a canine whose to-do list comprises sleep, eat and beg for pats in varying orders.

So, it's with some relief that I report that the Recommended Portfolio and all but one Investor finished in the black this weekend.

Three Funds declined: New Heritage, which won 3 of 5 bets but declined by just under 10%; Prudence, which landed 4 from 6 bets but fell by 1%; and Line Redux, which was right only 1 time in 3 and consequently fell 5.5%. The two successful funds were Hope, which was right 2 times in 3 and rose almost 8%, and Chi-squared, which picked 2 from 4 but rose almost 19%, ensuring that Chi gets fed for another week.

In total that left the Recommended Fund up about another 1.5% and other portfolios up by amounts ranging from 1% to 8%, the only exception being the portfolio of MIN #017, which is down by almost 10% this week though still up almost 35% across the season.

On tipping, Shadow led the way with 6 from 8, propelling it to outright lead on 88 from 120 (73%), now one tip ahead of Silhouette in 2nd and a remarkable 6 tips ahead of BKB on 82 in 4th. Never have the bookies seemed so fallible.

On level-stake, home team only, starting in Round 6 wagering (one day I'll come up with a neat shorthand for that), all but one tipster, ELO, remain profitable.

Indeed, ELO posted something of a record this weekend, landing no line bets at all, three fewer than even Chi managed. Still, line betting based on ELO margin predictions would have been profitable across the entire season, albeit now only by 2.57 units. ELO still has an impressive MAPE of 28.2 points per game, just 0.3 points behind BKB and 2.3 points ahead of Chi.

Fremantle's capitulation to the Crows on Saturday shouldn't go unremarked. Freo recorded just 8 scoring shots (7 of them behinds) to Adelaide's 35, meaning that Freo registered only 19% of the scoring shots in the same. In the entire history of VFL/AFL, spanning more than 13,500 games, only 76 teams have kicked a smaller proportion of scoring shots, and only 3 have done so in the seasons from 1980 onwards. Oddly enough, the most recent of these was this season - in Round 5 when Geelong thumped the Lions 18.18 to 5.3. Prior to that, you need to hark back to Round 13 of 1996 when Geelong beat Fitzroy 25.16 to 6.3. Before that you need to return to Round 14 of 1981 when a wayward Carlton thumped Footscray 15.25 to 5.4. So, truly an historic occasion, though not one you'd expect Dockers fans to commit to memory.