All five of this week's Saturday games are expected by the bookmakers to be won by less than a goal, though the average for the whole round is blown out somewhat by the 44 points plus expected margins for the three Sunday games and the 21.5 point expected margin in the Friday game.

Altogether, the average expected margin has come in at 19.9 points per game, which is exactly equal to the all-season average and quite low for a Round 20 in all but the most-recent past. With just three rounds and 27 games to play in the home-and-away season, it seems possible that we might have the second successive year with a sub-20 average expected pre-game margin.

It helps, of course, that there are still 12 teams with legitimate hopes for playing in the Finals.

Let's see what the MoS forecasters think.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

There's a bit of dissension about amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters this week, especially in the Hawthorn v Essendon game where all but MoSSBODS_Marg and, by definition, Bookie Knows Best, have opted for the narrow underdog Hawks.

In other games, we have four dissenters in the Lions v Roos game, four more in the Sydney v Collingwood game, and one or two dissenters in three other of the contests. Home Sweet Home has the highest Disagreement Index this week with underdog tips in four games, but Consult The Ladder, MoSSBODS_Marg, C-Marg and - a bit oddly - Bookie Knows Best, also have unusually high Index values of around the 25 to 30% mark.

Across the Margin Predictors, C_Marg once again has the highest mean absolute deviations (MAD), this week at 6.1 points per game, with the MoS twins coming in 2nd and 3rd even though MoSHBODS_Marg has the extreme forecast in only two games and MoSSBODS_Marg in only one.

Looking across the matches, only the Carlton v GWS game has a MAD over 5.0 points per Predictor. In that game the MAD is 5.6, though the forecasts span only a 3-goal range.

In comparison to the current leader, Bookie_Hcap, a best set of results for MoSSBODS_Marg would see it move from about 39 points behind to about 9 points ahead, while a best set of results for MoSHBODS_Marg would see it move from about 144 to about 85 points behind.

The mean expected margin across the nine games and all Margin Predictors is 18.5 points per game, which is about a point and a half below the TAB Bookmaker's average.

Turning lastly to the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors, we find four moderately high MADs and a very high MAD in Friday's Richmond v Geelong game where it is 6.0% points per Predictor and where the estimates span 25% points from C_Prob's low of 54% to MoSHBODS_Prob's high of 79%.

C_Prob, again, has the round's largest MAD, this week at 5.8% points per game, ahead of MoSHBODS_Prob's 4.2% points per game. MoSSBODS_Prob, the current leader, is most different from the immediately pursuing pack in its estimates for St Kilda (higher) and Sydney (lower).

WAGERS

We've four wagers from MoSHBODS in the head-to-head markets this week with sizes ranging from about 1% to 4%, and three wagers from MoSSBODS in the line markets, with only one sized larger than 1%.

(Please click on the image below to access a larger version.)

The seven bets span only four games, however, so there is some concentration of risk, as we can see in the Ready Reckoner, which appears below.

Because of the concentration, all four of the games wagered on have swings in about the 2% to 3% range, highest in the Lions v Roos game where a Lions win would add 1.7c to the Combined Portfolio's price, and a loss by a goal or more would strip 1.4c from it.

In total, just under 5% of the original Combined Portfolio is at risk and the maximum upside is 5.2%. 

To finish, here are MoSHBODS' and MoSSBODS' opinions about likely team scoring.

Commentary about these forecasts will come in the week's Overs/Unders blog.