MAFL 2010 : Round 4

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If last weekend was the SSO in the Opera House this weekend is an acapella duo down the local pub.

We've just two bets and they're both priced at under $1.60. One wager is on the Pies, who face Hawthorn on Saturday, and the other is on the Saints, who take on Fremantle on Sunday.

Here are the details:

The paucity of wagering action is reflected in the simplicity of the weekend's Ready Reckoner the simple message of which is that we need both teams to win if we're to record a net profit.

You might have noticed from the MAFL Wagers table above that two of the line markets are yet to be posted on TAB Sportsbet; at this point they'd be redundant anyway since the head-to-head markets for these games are already offering $1.90 for both sides with no start at all. Three other games have line markets with starts of fewer than 12 points, which might help explain why you're finding it hard to settle on your tips this week.

Our own tipsters suffered no such self-doubt or uncertainty in arriving at their selections, which are shown in the table below (now that'd be a fun bit of AI development - a tipping algorithm that's uncertain about its tips, a bit overwhelmed by the data at its disposal and struggling to make a final selection, maybe outputting 'Cats by 6 ... No, wait a minute, I forgot about that game 12 seasons ago ... make that Port by 2 ... oh, but the Cats are at home, so let me just calculate something else ... carry the 3 ... okay make that Cats by 2 ... oh, but hang on, it's played on a Sunday in April isn't it ... actually, can you get back to me? ... give me another hour ... or maybe two ...').

This week I've included for the first time a column showing each tipster's season-long performance (though 24 games is shy of 30, the sample size sometimes suggested as the minimum necessary to purge a sample from the pejorative label of 'small'). Adding this column gave me the first opportunity to review the tipping performances of LAMP and HAMP, which I'm pleased to report are both superior to BKB's 62.5%.

Here's a summary of the tips:

  • Essendon are 9-6 favourites over West Coast, though they're underdogs and not tipped by any of the margin-tipping tipsters. Chi tips the Eagles by just 2 points, making this his Game of the Round.
  • Sydney are 14-1 favourites over the Roos, with Home Sweet Home the only tipster coming down on the side of the Roos. Despite the lopsidedness of the tipping the game appears likely to be a close one since the largest predicted margin is the bookie's and it is only 11.5 points.
  • Carlton are 10-5 favourites over Adelaide, BKB being assigned Consult The Ladder's selection in the absence of a clear favourite in head-to-head prices. This game too looks destined to be a close one since the largest predicted margin is just 8 points. HAMP and LAMP are predicting margins of just 2 and 3 points respectively, making this one of their two Games of the Round.
  • Collingwood are 14-1 favourites over Hawthorn. Easily Impressed I is the shaglike tipster for this game, tipping Hawthorn solely on the basis that it deems their 16-point loss impressive - or, I suppose more correctly, less unimpressive - than the Pies' 28-point loss. If this heuristic was any more one-dimensional it'd be a point (ooh look, maths humour).
  • Brisbane are 8-7 favourites over the Bulldogs, with BKB again being allocated the selection of Consult The Ladder. This is yet another game thought likely to be won narrowly, Chi's tip of an 8 point victory by the Dogs being the largest predicted margin. The narrowness of victory predicted by HAMP and LAMP make this their other Game of the Round selection.
  • Melbourne are 13-2 favourites over Richmond. Whilst ELO now rates Melbourne a better team than Richmond, the numerical magnitude of the Dees' superiority is narrowly insufficient to overcome Richmond's home ground advantage. Thus ELO is one of the two Tiger tippers, but ELO predicts just a 1 point margin making this ELO's Game of the Round. The only other Richmond selection comes from Home Sweet Home, a tipster also swayed by Richmond's home team status.
  • Geelong are 10-5 favourites over Port Adelaide. Amongst the margin-tipsters, Chi's support is the most lukewarm as he's predicted a Cats win by just 8 points.
  • St Kilda are the round's only unanimous choice. They face Fremantle. Chi is, again, the margin-tipster with the lowest predicted margin of victory for the Saints, but even he has them as 10-point favourites.

We finish with the week's line tips from HELP, which this week are far more conservative than they were last week, all of them having attached probabilities in the 59% to 67% range. Probabilities in that range provide little opportunity to rack up large probability scores on any of the measures, but they also preclude the possibility of anything catastrophic.

HELP's selections are, however, all away teams, so they're interesting tips if not particularly brave ones.

A reminder that this is the last round in which there'll be only one Fund active. Next week Hope starts trading and from Round 6 everything's live.