2016 Round 22 : Dons - Quixotic?

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There's a far less-balanced feel to the wagering portfolio this week as the Head-to-Head Fund has backed-up on the Dons, this time priced at $11 and facing the Dogs.

Added to that is a same-sized wager by the Fund on the Blues at $3.25, and another - this one, mercifully, on a favourite - on the Pies, taking on the Suns and priced at $1.36.

Those three bets are stapled to three more from the Line Fund on the same three teams and of sizes ranging from about 1% to 2% of the Fund, and one more bet on the Lions receiving almost 10 goals start.

Combined, they seven wagers represent just under 5% of the original Overall Portfolio, and so can't do irreparable damage to it. They can, however, add handsomely to it, capable as they are of adding over 14c to its value.

As the Ready Reckoner shows, however, more than two-thirds of that upside belongs to the Dons, as does over 30% of the downside.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

With seven of the week's nine favourites offering more than 3 goals start it's unsurprising that disagreement levels amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters is, again, quite low.

Friday's Eagles v Hawks game has generated the most dissent, the Tipsters there ultimately splitting 6-5 in favour of the Hawks. In the only other game where there's more than a single minority vote, St Kilda enjoys 8-3 favouritism over Richmond.

Home Sweet Home is the week's bigger dissenter, ENS_Linear and ENS_Greedy the only other Tipsters finding themselves contrarian in more than one contest. They both opted for the Eagles and the Tigers. C_Marg and ENS_Linear_MoSS have both gone rogue with just one of their tips, favouring West Coast over Hawthorn.

The Margin Predictors have collectively produced a 5.1 points per game mean absolute deviation (MAD) for the round, that figure driven up by C_Marg's 8.6 MAD, Bookie_9's 6.9, ENS_Greedy_MoSS' 6.5, MoSSBODS_Marg's 6.4, and ENS_Linear_MoSS' 6.3.

Looking across the games, it's the Port Adelaide v Adelaide game where the margin predictions are most spread, though the MADs for the Lions v Cats, and Dons v Dogs games are also quite high.

Turning next to the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors we find extremely divergent opinions for C_Prob and MoSSBODS_Prob in the Eagles v Hawks, and Pies v Suns games, where the differences in probability assessments are both over 25% points.

Those differences have contributed to the relatively high MADs for these two Predictors this week but the much lower MADs of the three bookie-based Predictors have served to contain the all-Predictor MAD to a quite low 3.2% per game per Predictor.

MoSSBODS DETAILS

Net Venue Effects this week are largely inconsequential, MoSSBODS' favouritism being firmly established in every contest on the basis of underlying Offensive and Defensive Ratings.

In Scoring Shot (SS) terms, in no game is the underdog expected to get within about 3 SS of the favourite, and in four games the expected difference is over 10 SS.

Four teams are expected to score more than 100 points, Geelong (122), Adelaide (117), GWS (110), and Collingwood (105), though only one, Essendon, is expected to score fewer than 70 points.

The round's high-scoring games are expected to be the South Australian derby and the Lions v Cats games, while the low-scoring games are tipped to be the Blues v Dees, and Dons v Dogs matchups.