On a per game basis this week we're investing more than we have in any other single round this season despite wagering in only four of the six games available and despite having no disturbingly large single wager. That's not to say though, as my clients in the risk industry might phrase it, that our risk is "fully diversified". We do have a fairly significant dependence on the performance of a single team.

Looking across the Funds we find that the Head-to-Head Fund has a 2.2% bet on Port Adelaide at $1.62, an 0.5% bet on the Dees at $2.95, and a 0.2% bet on the Swans at $2.90. These same three teams, Port Adelaide amongst them, are also the recipients of the Line Fund's only wagers, all of them sized, as they must be at this time of the year, at 2.5% of the Fund. And the Margin Fund has opted for a couple of standard 1.25% SuperMargin wager pairs, one pair on - there's that name again - Port Adelaide and the other on West Coast.

Combined that means we've 5.6% of the original Recommended Portfolio at risk, 2.4% on Port Adelaide alone thanks to the interest it's received from all three Funds, 1.4% on the Dees, 1.3% on the Swans, and 0.5% on West Coast.

With action comes risk and reward, so Port Adelaide are unsurprisingly the team carrying the week's greatest upside (+3%) and greatest downside (-2.4%) for Investors. The three other teams on which we've wagers all carry roughly equivalent upside of around 1.3% each, but West Coast has a much smaller downside at just -0,5% compared to the Swans' and the Dees' approximately -1.4% downside.

It's perhaps a little hard to see in the chart above, but the maximum possible single-game return for the week requires that Port Adelaide win by exactly 9 points, which would be sufficient to land wagers for all three Funds. If Port Adelaide lead by exactly that amount deep into time-on in the final quarter, I want to be somewhere else other than listening to the live stream of that game.

The final result for Round 7 will be somewhere in the range from +6.9c to -5.6c, not quite enough should things go as well as we could hope to move us back into profit for the season, but sufficient to drag it back into our headlights. 

Incidentally, the combined MARS Ratings of Sydney and Hawthorn at 2,059.4 is the second-highest aggregate for a game this year, behind only the 2,065.3 aggregate for the Cats (1,028.7) v Hawks (1,036.6) game in Round 5. Also, the 1,942.1 aggregate for the Dees v Dogs game is the second-lowest aggregate this season, eclipsing the 1,922.2 for the Giants (962.4) v Dees (959.7) blockbuster in Round 3.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

It's the Saints v Blues game that's attracted the highest levels of disagreement this week amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters with nine of them opting for the underdog Saints, their supporters skewing slightly towards the less well-performed of the Tipsters.

Other games in which there's dissent from other than Home Sweet Home - who can surely by now fairly be diagnosed as having chronic dissentry - are the Dees v Dogs clash where six Tipsters have sided with the Dees, and the all-avian Swans v Hawks game where five have plumped for the Swans.

In other news, it's the Brisbane v Essendon game where Home Sweet Home is Home Alone, which leaves to discuss only the Port v Freo and West Coast v GWS games where we find that the Tipsters are of one voice.

Our Margin Predictors are similarly united in all but one contest, Combo_NN_1 spoiling the perfect record by selecting the Saints to defeat the Blues by a bit less than half a point in their Monday game at Docklands.

Measured, instead, in terms of the difference between the minimum and maximum predicted margins, the Eagles v Giants game has generated the greatest level of disagreement within Margin Predictor ranks. In that game the range is almost six goals. The next highest ranges are seen for the Saints v Blues and Lions v Dons games where they're about four goals. In the remaining games the ranges are all roughly about two or three goals.

Win_3, Bookie_3, Combo_NN_1 and Combo_NN_2 are each high or low Predictor in two of the week's games, while C_Marg, ProPred_3, H2H_Adj_7 and Win_7 are similarly positioned in just one game each.

The Head-to-Head Probability Predictors are unanimous in all six contests this week, C_Prob bringing them nearest to disagreement with its 48% assessment of the Saints' chances. That assessment, along with C_Prob's above-average assessments for the Lions' and the Dees' chances have led it to recommend three wagers this week.

ChiPS' margin predictions are again this week highly aligned with its assessment of the competing teams' relative abilities, despite the fact that four of the weaker teams are playing at home.

Returning, lastly, to the previous table to review the Line Fund algorithm's line betting opinions reveals that it has again made bold assessments this week, rating the Swans, Dees and Blues as about 70% or better chances to prevail on line betting, and rating Port Adelaide as 56% chances to do the same. Only the Lions v Dons, and the Eagles v Giants games does it assess as virtual coin-tosses.

Here's hoping its confidence in Sydney, Port Adelaide and Melbourne is well-founded.