The TAB Sportsbet bookmaker is once again having nothing to do with the Giants' game. This week we care about this lack of interest though, since we want to get on the home team Crows on the SuperMargin market.

Actually, "want" is probably too strong a term to use in that sentence. I'll admit to being unconcerned about the missing SuperMargin market since the Margin Fund's recommended wager is for the Crows to win by just 20-29 points. Nonetheless, if the opportunity arises, I'll dutifully be placing the requisite wager on the Crows while fully expecting its expected value to shrink rapidly to zero sometime late in the first term: there's no point enlisting the help of dispassionate statistical models if I only act on their outputs when I think they look sensible.

Crows aside for now, here are the seven bets we do have:

As has mostly been the case so far this season, our SuperMargin wagers are tied to those buckets in and around those rated most likely by the TAB, so the prices we're facing are in the $7 to $7.50 range. Still, even at these prices, once again this week a single success will be enough to secure a profit for the round.

The Head-to-Head Tipsters are, collectively, predicting an upset in only one of this week's games: nine of them are tipping the Tigers to upset the Cats at Kardinia. In four of the other contests there's unanimous support for the favourites, and in all of the remainder at least nine of the Tipsters are backing the favourites.

Home Sweet Home finally has a round where it might reasonably expect to bag a hatful since 8 of the 9 favourites are home teams this week.

(In the absence of a TAB market for the Crows v GWS game I have once again been forced to frame my own markets for the purposes of those statistical models that need market prices and handicaps as inputs. Again I've gone with $1.01/$21 for the head-to-head market, and +99.5 for the handicap. By the way, last week, when the TAB did finally post a line market for the GWS game it was, as assumed, with a 99.5 point handicap.)

The Margin Predictors are even more united than the Head-to-Head Tipsters. In fact, they're unanimously predicting wins for the favourites in every game and mostly by similar margins. In only two of the matches does the standard deviation of the predicted margin reach double figures: in the Collingwood v Port Adelaide game where the predicted margins range from 33 to 73 points, and in the Adelaide v GWS game where they range from 29 to 78 points.

So far this season then, in 30 of 36 contests - including the last 3 rounds in their entirety - the Margin Predictors have been unanimous. For comparative purposes note that last year, across the full season, unanimity was observed in only about 65% of matches.

What then of the Probability Predictors?

Amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors too it's unanimities all the way down.

ProPred, WinPred and H2H are generally more confident than the TAB Bookie about the chances of every home team favourite except Adelaide for which, to be fair, there currently is no real TAB bookmaker opinion.

In the case of the Cats, the chances estimated by all four Predictors are roughly equal, and in the Dees v Dogs game, the TAB and WinPred are in rough agreement, while ProPred and H2H think much less of the Dees' chances.

The Line Fund rates two teams as better than 60% chances of winning on line betting: the Blues, which it rates 70% chances of covering the 39.5 point spread;  and the Lions, which it rates 61% chances of covering the 16.5 point spread.

(Update on Thursday night: The TAB has finally posted a line market for the Adelaide v GWS game. It has Adelaide giving 90.5 points start. The Line Fund still rates the Crows as about 55% chances to cover this spread.)