2012 Round 16 - Wagers & Tips : Dogs At Home

Only two of this week's favourites are playing at home, so with Combo_NN2's season-long reticence to tip against the bookmaker (it's done so only three times all year), Investors have only a pair of SuperMargin wagers this week, one on the Tigers to beat Gold Coast by 30 to 39 points, and the other on the Eagles to beat the Swans by 10 to 19 points.

The Head-to-Head Fund, however, has found two underdog home teams that it likes at the price: Melbourne and Port Adelaide, both on offer at $3 against their respective opponents in Fremantle and Essendon. This Fund also fancies a tilt at the Eagles, having assessed their $1.55 price-tag as sufficiently attractive to justify a 9.5% wager, its second-largest wager of the season, smaller only than its unsuccessful 10.5% wager on the Saints in Round 10.

Which leaves only the Line Fund to discuss, which has found four home team underdogs to love and a single home team favourite to toss into the bundle.

 (Actually, calling the Dees, Tigers and Cats the "home team" this week is a bit misleading as you can see in the table above. None of them has greater Venue Experience than its opponent at the "home" venue in question. Even calling the Sydney Showground "home" for the Giants is something of a stretch given that they've only played there twice this season themselves.)

The relative absence of SuperMargin wagers makes for a more straightforward Ready Reckoner this week for most games. For two games we're entirely indifferent about the outcome, making and losing nothing regardless, and in four more our hopes and our fears are unambiguously delineated. We want Port Adelaide to win by any margin, Geelong to win or to lose by fewer than 11 points, GWS to win (sic) or to lose by fewer than 71 points, and the Dogs to win or to lose by fewer than 51 points.

In the three other games there are multiple outcomes that will produce different levels of profit and loss. Across these contests our preference is for Melbourne to win outright, Richmond to win by 40 points or more, and for West Coast to win by 10 to 19 points. This latter outcome represents the most lucrative opportunity this week for Investors and would bump Overall Portfolios up by almost 5c.

There's some uncharacteristic bickering amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters this week, even allowing for Home Sweet Home's vapid contrarianism, with a lack of unanimity in five of the contests attributable to Tipsters other than HSH. In two of these five contests, majority support is with the underdogs in the form of the Cats, taking on the Pies, and of the Swans, taking on the Eagles. There is however, it should be noted, solidarity in all nine games amongst BKB, ProPred and WinPred, the three best-performed Tipsters in this entire bunch.

The Margin Predictors have all lined up behind the favourites yet again, except Combo_NN1, which has tipped a small upset win by the Roos over the Blues in the Friday night game. In the other games, although the Predictors have all ultimately landed on the side of the favourites, in a few of the contests some Predictors are tipping narrow to very narrow victory margins. 

In fact, in every game except Richmond v Gold Coast, GWS v Adelaide and the Dogs v Hawthorn, at least one Predictor is tipping a single digit victory margin for the favourite. If you fancied a flutter on the draw - which essentially means that extortionate vig doesn't faze you - then the Melbourne v Freo and Port Adelaide v Essendon games appear to be the ones most likely.

As for the Head-to-Head Tipsters, there's atypically high levels of disagreement in the probability assessments of the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors this week too.

In the Roos v Blues and Geelong v Collingwood games, ProPred, WinPred and H2H all rate the home team chances as being much lower than does the TAB Bookmaker, while in the Melbourne v Fremantle, Port Adelaide v Essendon, and the West Coast vs Sydney games the opposite is true, with the Bookmaker making a much lower assessment of the home team's chances in each case.

GWS has been assessed by the Line Fund algorithm as an 81% chance of protecting the 70.5 points start it's being given this weekend, making this the most confident that the algorithm has been about a single team's chances all season. It's also fairly confident about the prospects for the Dogs, Tigers and Dees, which is why Investors find themselves with wagers on all three of these teams, as well as on the Giants.

The fifth wager, on the Cats, is the bet about which the Line Fund algorithm is least confident, rating it just a 54% chance of being successful. I'll gladly take four from five.