2013 : Round 24 (Week 1 of the Finals) - Wagers & Tips

Well, Investors have a wager in all four of the games from the first week of the Finals, but none will make much of a difference to the season tally since they're all SuperMargin wagers and are all, as foreshadowed in the last posting on this journal, small.

I get the sense right now, as I have done for a few weeks, that the Head-to-Head and Line Funds are playing for the final siren. As all sportslovers know, that doesn't always end well ...

To be fair though, the Head-to-Head Fund had only two games to consider as wagering candidates this week, the home team being priced at under $1.50 in the other two contests and thus unavailable to the Fund.

The Line Fund had no such excuse but, instead, assessed the 2-and-a-bit goal start offered by the Hawks and the Tigers, the roughly 3-and-a-half-goal start offered by the Cats, and the roughly 4-and-a-half-goal start offered by the Pies as being, in each case, excessive. Frankly, I can't argue with that, especially when you consider the relatively parlous record of underdogs in Finals, a topic that I plan to cover on the Statistical Analyses journal in the next day or so.

For the most part, and certainly for those SuperMargin wagers attributable to Bookie_9, which are all price at $7, the Margin Fund's wagers are towards the conservative end of the spectrum, the boldest of the Fund's wagers being associated with Combo_NN2's view that the Pies will win by 50 to 59 points, an opinion deemed worthy only a $9 price tag by the TAB Sportsbet Bookmaker. So, we're not exactly talking "longshot" here.

With so little at stake, the week's Ready Reckoner required something of a magnifying glass to reveal the detail of the win/loss profile of each contest.

Even in an apocalyptic universe, Investors stand to lose under 1c of value and, in the utopian opposite, stand to gain just under 2c. In aggregate that's the equivalent swing that might have been associated with a single game in recent weeks.

TIPSTERS & PREDICTORS

There's not a great deal of controversy to talk about in this week's tips and predictions either.

Amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters, which this week are without the services of the Heuristic Tipsters (BKB aside), none have found reason to side with other than the home team favourites.

The Margin Predictors are similarly aligned, though the margins by which they expect the favourite to win in each game does vary somewhat. In the Hawks v Swans clash these margins range between 0.3 and 29 points, in the Cats v Dockers clash between 7 and 40 points, in the Pies v Power clash between 26 and 55 points, and in the Tigers v Blues game between 7 and 20 points.

You'll also find little argument about the outcome of each game amongst the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors, although WinPred went very close to siding with an upset Swans victory.

The Pies v Power game has generated the widest diversity of opinion across this group, with victory probability assessments for the Pies ranging from 77% to 97%. That's really more of an argument of degree than one of fundamental ideology.

Finally, turning to the Line Fund we see that its algorithm has determined that the starts imposed for the Pies and the Tigers look about right - as demonstrated by the near-50% assessments for those games - while those for the Hawks and, especially, for the Cats look manifestly excessive.

So, I'm afraid, Investors are constrained to cheering only for victory margins this week, the price we pay for aligning ourselves with a socially unaware set of algorithms. Still, those same socially-inept algorithms are also the reason we're ahead so far this season ...