Yet another frustrating week of wagering with only a single collect to show for it, a line wager on the Giants buried amongst two other unsuccessful line wagers, a forlorn head-to-head wager, and 10 whiffs in the SuperMargin markets.

The Margin Fund has now gone 22 games in succession without a win, its 4 and 54 record leaving it down now by 36c on the season and with liquidators circling it. The Line Fund's record is a little better at 13 and 14 but finds itself also in the red, in its case by just under 4c. Thankfully, the Head-to-Head Fund remains in profit even after landing only 6 of its 16 wagers this season. It's up now by just under 3c which, combined with the losses in the other two Funds, leaves the Recommended Portfolio down by a little over 8c on the season.

Still, we persist - though with only six chances to make amends in each of the next three shortened rounds, reparations are likely to be slow. On the upside, we've never once lost money on a bye.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

Two upset victors were sprinkled within a weekend's collection of otherwise predictable winners, the two surprises being the Dees, who toppled the Crows, and the Suns, who felled the Roos. Many of the Head-to-Head Tipsters missed only those two upset results and so finished the round with a score of seven from nine. None did better than seven.

Amongst the scorers of seven was Bookie_9, who thereby retained its one tip lead on the MatterOfStats Leaderboard. The trailing pack of BKB, Bookie_3, Combo_7 and Combo_NN_1 all also scored seven to remain jointly in second place. The all-Tipster average for the week was 6.5 and the low score of 3 belonged to Home Sweet Home, its lowly performance for the round reflecting a season in which home teams have won less than half the time. We soon might need to find another term for Home Ground Advantage.

Hawthorn's 145-point demolition of the Saints, Sydney's unexpectedly large 79-point win over the Lions, along with Gold Coast's 43-point upset win over the Roos, all contributed to enlarge prediction errors this week.

Bookie_LPSO navigated the surprises best, but even it could only manage a Mean Absolute Prediction Error (MAPE) of 37.3 points per game. Other Margin Predictors to do relatively well were Bookie_9 (37.4 points per game), RSMP_Simple (37.7), Bookie_3 and ProPred_3 (37.8), and Combo_7 (37.9).

Combo_7's performance was good enough to leave it atop the Leaderboard, albeit now by only about 11 points over RSMP_Simple. Bookie_9 sits in third place, a further 8 points adrift. C_Marg remains resolute in last place on the Leaderboard but also persists as one of only six Predictors with a profitable line betting record for the season. In fact, C_Marg, along with Win_7, has the best overall record for correct line betting pronouncements amongst all the Margin Predictors, having called correctly 59% of the time.

Profitable line betting performances have not, however, translated into profitable SuperMargin wagering performances for any of the six Predictors just referenced, nor in fact for any other of the Margin Predictors except Combo_NN_1.

It predicted the correct bucket in one game this week (the GWS v Port Adelaide game which, by the way, saw Port Adelaide score exactly 5.3 in each of the four quarters - a pleasingly symmetrical if less profitable result than we were hoping for). Only the two Really Simple and the four H2H-based Predictors did better, each identifying the correct bucket in two of the weeks' games. That's left H2H_Adj_7 on the verge of joining Combo_NN_1 in SuperMargin market profitability.

Returning to the earlier table and reviewing the performances of the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors, note that C_Prob ended the round still placed in a very creditable fourth position having risen to third at various points during the weekend. Bookie-OE remains top after producing the round's best probability score, ahead of Bookie-RE and then Bookie-LPSO, who produced the second- and third-best scores, respectively. These three Bookmaker-derived Probability Predictors and C_Prob all returned positive probability scores for the round, the second round in succession and the fourth time in total this season that the four have done this.

The Line Fund algorithm this week recorded its best probability score of the season by far (I suspect of all time) and so now sits on a +0.0154 score for the year. With such a score its no shock to discover that Kelly-staking the algorithm's predictions on all games this year has produced a 32.6% ROI, 17% from wagers on home teams and 42% from those on away teams. Shame then that we're only Level-staking its suggestions - and then only doing that on its home team win predictions ...