At this time of year it’s reasonable to expect close contests, but in the West Coast v Melbourne Preliminary Final the Eagles’ venue advantage is only narrowly offset by the Dees’ underlying superiority. At least that’s what the MoS twins think.

Not that it’s of any predictive value, but history shows that teams finishing lower than third on the ladder at the end of the home-and-away season have relatively poor records in Preliminary Finals since 2000.

Even teams finishing third have only a slightly better than 50% winning rate, with 25 of the 36 available Grand Finals spots have previously been taken by the teams finishing first or second on the ladder.

Let’s get everyone’s opinions.

TIPS AND PREDICTIONS

Amongst the Head-to-Head Tipsters, there’s unanimity in the Tigers v Pies game, but four Tipsters opting for the underdog Dees in their clash with the Eagles.

And, those four do not include our resident contrarian Home Sweet Home, but instead comprises the MoS twins and the RSMP twins who, while not dominating the competition, have generally acquitted themselves well.

ENS_Linear and Bookie Knows Best are in complete alignment, however, so we can now declare ENS_Linear the winning 2018 Head-to-Head Tipster.

For the Margin Predictors, it's C_Marg forecasting the narrowest Tigers win, and Bookie_3 forecasting the widest margin. In the other game, the forecast margins range from Bookie_9’s 5-point Eagles victory to MoSHBODS_Marg’s 5-point Dees victory.

The mean absolute deviations (MADs) for both games are again this week small and the ranges just 20 and 10 points, which suggests that Margin Predictor rankings won’t see much movement this week.

In comparison to the current leader, Bookie_Hcap, a best set of results for MoSSBODS_Marg would see it move from about 79 points behind to about 72 points behind, while a best set of results for MoSHBODS_Marg would see it move from about 213 to about 201 points behind.

Turning lastly to the Head-to-Head Probability Predictors, we find C_Prob assigning the lowest victory probability estimate to Richmond, MoSHBODS_Prob assigning the lowest victory probability to West Coast, and Bookie-LPSO assigning the highest probabilities to both Richmond and West Coast.

C_Prob has driven up the MAD and the forecast range in the Richmond v Collingwood game but, overall, the probability estimates are sufficiently similar that we’re unlikely to see any dramatic moves on the Leaderboard this weekend.

WAGERS

MoSHBODS’ relatively high estimates of the underdogs’ chances in both games mean that Investors face head-to-head wagers in both, the larger coming in the Saturday game where a price of $2.05 has been secured for Melbourne.

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

Again, there’s no need for a Ready Reckoner this week, as the maths on these two wagers is fairly straightforward.

For the first game, we have:

• If Collingwood win, the impact on the Combined Portfolio is 35% x 0.8% x 2.1, which is +0.6%

• If Collingwood draw, the impact on the Combined Portfolio is 35% x 0.8% x (3.1/2 - 1), which is +0.2%

• If Collingwood lose, the impact on the Combined Portfolio is 35% x -0.8%, which is -0.3%

  For the second game, we have:

• If Melbourne win, the impact on the Combined Portfolio is 35% x 1.6% x 1.05, which is +0.6%

• If Melbourne draw, the impact on the Combined Portfolio is 35% x 1.6% x (2.05/2 - 1), which is effectively breakeven

• If Melbourne lose, the impact on the Combined Portfolio is 35% x -1.6%, which is -0.6%

Overall then, the swing from best win to worst loss is just over 2% (from +1.2% to -0.9%).

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.