MAFL 2010 : Round 8 Results

Wow. It feels like I'm about to compose a eulogy.

Silly of me really, in hindsight, to hope that the Saints - who, I remind you, should probably be the reigning premiers - could add a mildly cheery note to an otherwise gloomy weekend's wagering. Instead, their failure merely compounded the misery that saw those with the Recommended Portfolio turn a profit in just three of the eight contests, wiping 11.2% off the value of their Investment.

Investors with other portfolios fared no better, MIN#002 dropping 11.8% and MIN#017 dropping 23.2%, leaving them, as those with the Recommended Portfolio, solidly in the red.

Still, it's only Round 8, so there's plenty of time to forgive and forget.

Here's the summary of each portfolio's performance this week and for the season as a whole:

So far this season I've not provided a graph of Fund performance, but with every Fund now having been active for at least three rounds, now seems like a good time to produce one, so here it is.

I do wish that those lines looked a little less cygnine, but they are what they are, I suppose.

Here are the game-by-game details of the weekend's wagering:

For the third week in succession just five favourites took the competition points - a phrase that's at least still synonymous with victory in the AFL if not the NRL - leaving BKB now five games behind our tipping leaders on 47 from 64 (63%): Easily Impressed I, which bagged seven this weekend, and Short Term Memory I, which bagged six.

Easily Impressed II is in clear third, on 45 from 64 (70%), and Follow the Streak is in fourth, on 44 from 64 (69%).

Home teams had yet another poor showing this week, causing Home Sweet Home to register just a single correct tip. It might have been two from eight but, there being no true home team in the Dogs v Swans game, the Home Sweet Home heuristic goes with the team higher on the ladder, which in this case was the losing Swans and not the notionally at-home Dogs.

The Heuristic-Based Fund lost money this week, so Shadow is now just two loss-making rounds away from surrendering control of the Fund to another heuristic. Based on current performance, the heuristic taking over the Fund would be Short Term Memory I.

Though losing this week, the Heuristic-Based Fund has recorded a 29% increase for the season to date. As the tables below demonstrate, much of this return has been due to Melbourne, Carlton and Fremantle, and only four teams have been loss-making for this Fund (Hawthorn, Port, St Kilda (barely) and the Dogs).

The New Heritage Fund has suffered from untimely losses perpetrated by seven of the teams, most painfully from those of St Kilda, Brisbane and Melbourne. Prudence has lost money on six teams, and most of all on St Kilda, Fremantle and Melbourne.

Melbourne, Port, St Kilda and the Dogs have been the sole value destroyers for the Shadow Fund, while the Lions, Fremantle and Melbourne have provided a similar service to the Hope Fund. ELO-Line has lost money on six teams, with the Saints inflicting the greatest net loss.

You might have noticed the names Melbourne and St Kilda cropping up regularly in the last few paragraphs discussing Fund losses. Small wonder then that they're prominent when we look at team performance by portfolio.

Investors with the Recommended Portfolio can thank Sydney, the Roos, Collingwood and Geelong for generating the greatest increments to their wealth, and can blame a slew of teams including the Saints, Lions, Dees and Freo for underperforming at inopportune times.

The MARS Ratings are particularly interesting this week, as five teams - Geelong, Collingwood, the Dogs, St Kilda and Carlton - have now established a sizeable ratings point lead on the rest of the field.

Over the course of the weekend, six teams changed position on MARS ratings, three recording rises and three recording falls. Essendon and West Coast enjoyed the weekend's only 2-spot rises, and Port Adelaide and Melbourne suffered the weekend's only 2-spot falls.

The Saints have dropped almost nine ratings points in two weeks and now find themselves in fourth spot and in danger of dropping to fifth should they have another poor showing against West Coast and should the Blues perform well against Hawthorn.

On margin predicting, BKB has retained its sub-30 MAPE and its preeminent position on MAPE and on Median APE rankings.

LAMP is in second spot on MAPE, though it's last on Median APE, a full point behind Chi. ELO holds second spot on Median APE, but trails BKB by 1.5 points and needs four games of sub-28 point performance to drag its Median APE down to BKB's current level.

HELP had a horrible week on line tipping and probability estimation, picking just two line-winning teams and scoring at a sub-naive level on all three probability scores, mostly because three of its four most confident tips proved to be incorrect.

This week I'll finish what's already been a long blog with a review of teams' quarter-by-quarter performances.

No team has won all eight of any single quarter. The best performance in a quarter has been the Dogs in second quarters where they've won seven of eight and registered a 176.6 percentage.

Two teams, however, have lost eight from eight for a particular quarter: Richmond have lost all eight third terms, and Hawthorn have lost all eight final terms.

Summing across all four quarters, Collingwood now have the best record of all teams, having won 22 of 32 quarters and drawn 1. Geelong are next best (on 22 from 32) and then Carlton (on 20 from 32).

Richmond, by some distance, have the worst performance. They're averaging less than a single winning quarter per game.