2011 Round 11 Results: Not Dodged, But Only Grazed

Doubtless I should be unhappier. I certainly was late on Friday night after the Dons had capitulated to the Dees, immolating over 12% of Investor Portfolios in the process, and I was again mid Sunday afternoon as the Hawks slipped nearly 5 goals behind Freo late in the 3rd term, threatening to lay waste to another 8%.

But, thanks to an amazing Hawks surge in the final term and another by the Blues on Sunday night, profits from those two encounters added to the 7% earned from the Pies' 57-point win over the Saints on Saturday night meant that the loss for the week was a mere 3.6%. Not ideal by any means, but acceptable given the circumstances of its creation. As the title of this blog suggests, I feel as though while we didn't metaphorically dodge the bullet, we sustained only a flesh-wound.

Here's the current picture of the Funds:

That's three losing weeks in a row now for the Head-to-Head Fund and only 6 winning bets from 15 attempts. Clearly that needs to change. The story for the Line Fund is far rosier, with 5 profitable rounds from the last 7, eked out of a very modest 22 from 46 performance during those rounds - Kelly-staking now appears to be working for the Line Fund. In total, Investor Portfolios now stand at 77.2c.

Only one favourite lost this week (and boy was it the wrong one), which resulted in generally strong head-to-head tipping performances. The week's best result came from BKB, which scored 7 from 8, including a successful tip in the Lions v Swans game where the heuristic for BKB requires it to follow Consult the Ladder when a match has equal-favourites. This score was matched by Combo_NN_1 and Combo_NN_2, leaving Combo_NN_1 tied with Bookie_9 atop the head-to-head tipsters leaderboard with 70% accuracy levels, and Combo_NN_2 and BKB just 1 tip adrift.

It's interesting to note that Home Sweet Home now occupies last place on the leaderboard as only about 56% of AFL-designated Home teams have won this season, a figure well down on the historical average.

Whilst tipping proved to be generally easy this week, margin prediction did not due mostly to the unexpected and sizeable loss by the Dons, and larger than expected results for Sydney, the Roos and the Blues. The all-Predictor average MAPE for the round was 38.4 points per game, the second-highest this season.

Bookie_3 did best, registering an MAPE of 36.5 points per game to leave it atop the MAPE leaderboard ahead of Combo_7 and Bookie_9. Combo_NN_2 lies in fourth spot having returned the round's worst MAPE of 40.6 points per game.

The Margin Predictors also proved to be lousy judges of line betting this week. On average they tipped just 3.3 line betting winners from 8, the third-worst performance they've collectively turned in this season. Best amongst them was Bookie_3, which registered 6 from 8 to give it a 58% record for the season, comfortably above a statistically chance-like performance.

Head-to-Head Probability Predictors also cashed in on a round rich in victories by short-priced favourites, though the Dons' loss prevented it from being a complete triumph. All Head-to-Head Probability Predictors increased their probability scores across the round, the TAB Sportsbet bookmaker most of all, leaving him at the head of the pack with an historically very high figure of 0.203 per game.

The probability score for the Line Fund algorithm was slightly negative again this round, as it had been for the two rounds prior.