Last season, whenever the head-to-head markets opened with a slew of Home team favourites, I feared we were in for a weekend of huge risk and minimal reward. This year, to prevent this, I implemented a minimum price constraint on head-to-head wagers, which has served to restrict the Head-to-Head Fund to just two wagers this week, one on the Pies at $1.70 and the other on the Bombers at $1.50.

 

The Line Fund, less constrained, has been more adventurous, making four wagers totalling 20% of the Fund with equally sized dollops on the Pies giving 5.5 points start, the Hawks giving 30.5, the Dons giving 12.5, and the Blues giving 19.5.

But the Margin Fund, constrained only by the requirement that it must fancy the chances of the Home team in any contest on which it wagers, has been the most active of all, dropping love-notes on every game except the Port Adelaide v Kangaroos clash, which also happens to be the only game where the favourite's the Away team.

One consequence of all of this activity is that we have wagers of all three types in two of the games, which makes for especially intricate Ready Reckoner reading.

Such is the interplay between handicaps and buckets the Essendon v Richmond game offers Investors six distinct payout scenarios: a loss, the largest possible, if the Dons lose; a smaller loss if they draw and a smaller one still if they win but by 9 points or fewer; a small profit if they win by 10, 11 or 12 points; a sizeable profit, since all three wagers become collects, if they win by 13 to 19 points; and a smaller but still very acceptable profit if they win by 21 points or more. MAFL Investors must by now be amongst the world's most nuanced - and conditional - barrackers. "C'mon the Dons, bury 'em (*checks sheet*) ... oh, but not by more than another goal, goal and two behinds tops ...".

To head-to-head tipping then where we find majority support for the favourites in every game except Hawthorn v Fremantle where Freo are preferred 7-6.

In three other games the support for the favourite is unanimous (for the Pies, Swans and Dogs) and in one more it's only HSH that begs to differ by preferring Port over the Hawks. For three more contests the favourite has been selected by nine of the thirteen Tipsters, leaving just two games about which there's any significant amount of debate. These two games are the Hawthorn v Fremantle contest, already mentioned, and the Blues v Crows clash where the Blues enjoy the narrowest of majority support.

Yet again though our Margin Predictors find disagreement disagreeable.

They agree not only on the team more likely to win each contest but also, broadly, about the margin by which they'll win it. In every game the standard deviation of the predicted margins is less than 9 points.

Five games are however expected to finish with a victory margin under 3 goals, the narrowest margin being predicted for the Pies v Cats game where the average is only 10 points. The next-closest game is forecast to be the Port Adelaide v Roos clash where the average predicted margin is just a tick over 2 goals.

For the remaining four games the average predicted margins range from about 5 goals to almost 10, this latter potential blowout being foreshadowed for the Sydney v Melbourne game.

Finally, let's review the Probability Predictors, where we find that agreement also reigns, at least in terms of which team should be the favourite in each contest.

Compared to the TAB Sportsbet bookmaker, ProPred, WinPred and Head-to-Head all rate more highly the chances of the Pies, Swans, Dons and Lions. So highly, in fact, does Head-to-Head rate Sydney's chances that its probability prediction has been artificially capped at 99% - another reason to be very grateful for the minimum price floor on Head-to-Head Fund wagers this season.

The Line Fund algorithm is particularly keen about the line betting prospects of GWS (73%), the Roos (67%) and the Pies (63%). Of more concern perhaps is its lukewarm enthusiasm for the Hawks and the Dons, which it rates as only 54% and 53% chances respectively, barely reaching the cutoff at which wagering is triggered.