2012 Round 22 Results : One Hand on the Ledge

Friday night brought no dramatic and lucrative draw - in truth, it never looked likely once the 0-0 scoreline was breached - but the Tigers' 45-point victory, while torpedoing the Dons' chances of playing in September, was the next-best result to a draw for Investors and set up a moderately profitable weekend.

The Head-to-Head Fund landed both of its wagers, the Tigers' victory one of them, to climb 10c, while the Line Fund landed three of its four to climb 8.5c, performances weighed down only by the Margin Fund's 0 from 4, which knocked 10c off its price. For a short time late in the final term on Sunday afternoon as the Dogs closed to within 15 points of the Cats, a Geelong win by only 10 to 19 points did seem feasible, a result which would have boosted Overall Portfolios by about 8c and which would also have broken what is now a 23-long stretch of unsuccessful SuperMargin wagers.

Conservatively, the average odds for these 23 wagers would be about 9/1 - most have been priced at between 7/1 and 8/1 with only the occasional 11/1, 14/1 and 40/1 propositions - meaning that the probability of such an unbroken string of losses is only (9/10)^23, or about 9%. 

Despite the four losses from the Margin Fund, in total Overall Portfolios grew by about 5c over the weekend to finish down 18c on the season.

From a results and from a head-to-head tipping point of view the weekend's story was a, by now, very familiar one, with seven of nine favourites victorious and the best of the MAFL Head-to-Head Tipsters, accordingly, finishing with seven correct tips each. The worst performances came from Consult The Ladder, Easily Impressed I, Easily Impressed II and Combo_NN1, each of which scored just four, such results dragging the all-Tipster average down to just six.

With all the front-running Tipsters picking seven winners there was, yet again, no movement atop the Leaderboard, where H2H_Unadj_10 now finds itself with a 148 from 189 (78%) record and still with a 1-tip lead.

Only the two WinPred-related Margin Predictors produced sub-30 MAPEs this week, WinPred_3 the better of them with a MAPE of 29.70. The worst MAPE was Combo_NN2's at 43.47, a result which relegated it to second-last on the Leaderboard and which leaves it with the worst record of all the Margin Predictors in terms of margin predictions in error by more than 7 goals.

The all-Predictor MAPE for the round was 34.54 points per game, the highest average since Round 18.

These performances were good enough to produce an average line market score across all Predictors of 5.5 from 9, making it now six of the last eight weeks where the Predictors have collectively produce a better-than-chance result. Even more amazingly, all four H2H-based Predictors, as well as both WinPred-based and both ProPred-based Predictors, have season-long records of 56% or better, which is so much better than chance that it makes calculating a p-value laughable.

Three of the H2H-based Predictors - H2H_Unadj_3, H2H_Unadj_10, and H2H_Adj_3 - also had extraordinary Margin betting results for the week, selecting the correct bucket in three contests. Not surprisingly then, the ROIs for these three Predictors are all still highly positive.

(Combo_NN2 also managed to select the correct bucket in one game this week, but it was again in a game where it was predicting an Away team victory, so it did Investors no good.)

The TAB Bookmaker was the only Head-to-Head Probability Predictor to accrue a negative probability score for the week, only the fifth time he's finished in the red for a round, and only the second time he's done so when the other Predictors have finished in the black. WinPred's probability score was the highest again this week, making it now four weeks in a row that it has had the best probability score amongst the Predictors. Across the entire season, the TAB Bookmaker still leads, but WinPred, in second, has now established a small break on the other Predictors.

The Line Fund algorithm also enjoyed yet another round of positive probability scoring, the fourth time it's done so in the last five rounds. Every year, it seems, the Line Fund just gets better and better calibrated as the season progresses.