Matter of Stats

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2017 - Round 18 : Overs/Unders Update

This week, it's MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS that are a little more bullish about the prospects for higher Totals, though even they expect the average Total to come in at under 180 points per game.

All four forecasters have Essendon scoring more than 100 points, and all but MoSHBODS have Sydney doing likewise. The MoS twins also have Adelaide registering a three-digit score. None of them have any of the Away teams achieving this feat.

MoSSBODS has Adelaide, scoring 107, as its high-scoring team, while MoSHBODS, the TAB and Centrebet all have Essendon as their choice and scoring between 103 and 109 points. For low-scorer, MoSSBODS has Fremantle scoring 74, and MoSHBODS, the TAB and Centrebet all have St Kilda scoring around 73 or 74.

The high-scoring game of the round is most likely to be the Dons v Roos game according to all four forecasters, with the Totals finishing somewhere in the 193 to 196 range. MoSSBODS and MoSHBODS both have the Fremantle v Hawthorn game as the low-scorer, while the TAB and Centrebet have the Richmond v GWS game.

WAGERS

MoSSBODS has ventured four wagers again this week, three overs and one unders, with overlays ranging from 10 to 15 points.

The biggest overlay is in the Richmond v GWS game, where the bet is an overs bet, the venue is the MCG, and the weather forecast is for a "shower or two" (for what that's worth, given that it's a Wednesday forecast for a Sunday game).

Other overs bets are for games at the Adelaide Oval where the forecast is "sunny" (literally, and figuratively for overs bettors), and and Cazaly's Stadium where the forecast is "mostly sunny".

The lone unders bet is in the Pies v Eagles clash where MoSSBODS has the Pies as scoring 5 points more and the Eagles as scoring 15 points fewer than does the TAB. Small wonder then that Investors also have head-to-head and line wagers on this contest.

Last week saw MoSHBODS out-forecast the field, it recording the lowest mean absolute error (MAE) for game margins (21.3 points per game), Home team scores (13.2), and Away team scores (11.9), missing out only on game Totals to MoSSBODS (10.1) by a fraction of a point per game. 

That left MoSHBODS still with the best season-long performance on game Margin (29.1) and Away team scores (17.2), Centrebet still 1st on Home team scores (18.2), and the TAB still 1st on Totals (21.2).

The numbers at the foot of the middle section of the table above are interesting in that they reveal that all four forecasters have, on average per game across the season so far:

  • Over-estimated Home team scores by about 2 to 3 points
  • Under-estimated Away team scores by about 0.5 to 2.5 points
  • Consequently, over-estimated game margins (from the Home team's perspective) by about 2.5 to 5 points
  • Over-estimated Totals by about 2 points

Returning our focus to last week, MoSSBODS racked up 7 from 9 performances against both the TAB and Centrebet last week to move to 79 from 144 (55%) season-long records against both TAB and Centrebet Totals. MoSHBODS recorded 5 from 9 performances against the TAB and Centrebet, and now has a 77 from 144 (54%) record against the TAB, and a 78 from 144 (54%) record against Centrebet.