I've been planning to play with the cascade charts function of this Excel sparklines add-in for some time, and this weekend's relatively wager-free status gave me the opportunity. So, here's a summary of Head-to-Head and Line wagering so far this season. (It's a big chart, even by MAFL standards, so please remember that you can click it for a larger version. Alternatively, here's a PDF of the file formatted for A3-sized paper.)

The leftmost block of the chart contains information that's largely self-evident.

It contains the round number, the date on which the game was played and the venue at which it was played, the home team for the game (as designated by the AFL) and its score, and the away team and its score.

All fairly straightforward.

The middle section contains the information relevant to head-to-head wagering.

Under the column labelled "Result" is the game margin from the point of view of the home team. Next are details of the Head-to-Head Fund's wager, if any, the return from that wager and the cumulative return from all Head-to-Head Fund wagers for the season to date.

Where there's no head-to-head wager in a game, in the Head-to-Head Wager column there's either a green tick if the decision not to bet was a good one (since a wager on the home team would have been a loss-maker) or a red cross of the decision not to bet was a poor one (since a wager on the home team would have generated profit).

The last column contains the cascade chart, which depicts the 'Return' and 'Cum' data in pictorial form. Each bar's base is the cumulative position as at the conclusion of the previous wager and green bars represent additions to that cumulative position (ie profts) and so build to the right, while red bars represent reductions for the cumulative position (ie losses) and so build to the left. The solid black line represents the break-even point.

The rightmost section provides similar information for the Line Fund.

The column headed HAM provides the handicap adjusted margin for the game from the viewpoint of the home team.

The column headed 'Line Wager' provides details of the Line Fund's wager, if any, then comes the return from that wager and the cumulative return from all Line Fund wagers for the season to date.

Where there's no line wager in a game, in the Line Wager column there's either a green tick if the decision not to bet was a good one (since a wager on the home team would have been a loss-maker) or a red cross of the decision not to bet was a poor one (since a wager on the home team would have generated profit).

The last column again contains the cascade chart, and works in the same way as the equivalent column for the Head-to-Head Fund.