And Now The Contest Begins

This weekend, for Investors, everything changes. All Funds are now active and, as it happens, all Funds are active. New Heritage has four bets; Prudence has three; Chi-squared, Hope and Line Redux have two each. Only two games are wager-free - Port v Adelaide and Melbourne v Geelong - the first because Chi eventually opted for Port rather than Adelaide by 1 point, and the second because not even a MAFL Fund could hold its nose long enough to wager on the Dees at $11 up against the Cats.

In aggregate, a little over 15% of funds are in play for those with the Recommended portfolio.

West Coast and Brisbane, in particular, will carry the hopes of those with the Recommended portfolio. To a lesser extent, so too will Sydney and Hawthorn, the Roos and the Bulldogs.

Before I move on from wagering considerations I feel duty-bound to note that the Dees have now moved to $13 and the Cats to $1.01. In terms of the data I have, no team has ever previously been as slender-chanced as the Dees. Even at the original offer of $11, imagine what the Heritage Fund would have thrown at the Dees this weekend had this Fund still been active. (For old times' sake - whatever that means - I ran the Heritage Fund algorithm on the current round. It would have wagered almost 15% on the Dees as well as 7% on the Roos and 2% on the Bulldogs. I don't really miss the Heritage Fund.)

On the line market the Dees are only being given 58.5 start, which I think is a tad underdone when you consider that they received 75.5 points start last year in Round 3 when they were away to the Cats and at $12 and, more relevantly, 60.5 start in Round 19 when they were at home to the Cats and priced at just $10.

On tipping:

* Collingwood are favoured 12-1 over the Roos, and only Home Sweet Home is opting for the Roos. That said, both ELO and Chi have the Pies as only 2 point favourites, in ELO's case making this its Game of the Round.

* Carlton are 11-2 favourites over last year's premiers, Hawthorn. BKB is opting for Carlton because, with the Blues and the Hawks equal favourites at noon on Wednesday, BKB aligns itself with CTL's Carlton tip. (A couple of weeks back, when Freo and Adelaide were equal favourites, I forgot to apply this tie-breaking rule for BKB. I've since corrected this, giving BKB an Adelaide tip for this game - as it turned out, a correct tip.)

* West Coast are 8-5 favourites over Freo. All of our top 5 tipsters except STM II are with the Eagles.

* Essendon are 9-4 favourites over the Lions. BKB is the only top 5 tipster opting for the Lions.

* Port Adelaide are 7-6 favourites over Adelaide. Chi has vacillated over this game all week, swapping between Port by 1 point (with a 10%+ wager) and Adelaide by the same margin (but without a bet). Despite not having a wager (perhaps because of it), Chi has this as his Game of the Round. Amongst the top 5 tipsters only Silhouette is tipping Adelaide.

* Sydney are 8-5 favourites over Richmond. Amongst the top 5 tipsters only STM II is tipping Richmond.

* Geelong are 12-1 favourites over Melbourne. Once again, only Home Sweet Home feels compelled to support the underdog.

* St Kilda are 12-1 favourites over the Dogs, where, yet again, it's HSH that's out on its own.

On line betting, Chi's with the Roos, Carlton, West Coast, Essendon, Adelaide, Richmond, Melbourne and the Dogs; ELO's with the Roos, Hawthorn, West Coast, Essendon, Port Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and the Dogs.

Good Wagering, Hard Tipping

It'd be churlish to be disappointed about our wagering performance this weekend though it was only a stray goal from the Hawks that stood between our actual 3-2 performance and a far more impressive 4-1. Speaking of stray, the other losing bet was the Dogs, but no amount of alternative futuring could readily turn their performance into a victorious one.

So we finish the weekend with no Investor in the red and all but MIN#017 comfortably in the green.

Though we made money on the Funds' implicit tips, it was a tough weekend for our official tipsters, with 5 favourites losing. Our best tipsters - Silhouette, ELO and Home Sweet Home - managed just 4 from 8. (This week please note that I've added another column to the tipster performance summary on the right. It's headed "Return" and reflects the return that would have been achieved from a 1 unit wager on that tipster's tips.) 

Chi performed admirably on line betting, bagging 5 from 8, but this takes him to a no-better-than-chance 20 from 40 for the season. ELO slipped again, scoring just 3 from 8 this week, but remains profitable for the season with 23 from 40. (By the way, ELO has generally been profitable in seasons past if line wagers were placed only on those teams  predicted to win by 13.5 points or more after the handicap is taken into consideration. Following that strategy this year would have produced a 3.3 unit profit so far.)

If you're curious about the latest MARS Ratings, these are available on the MAFL Stats site. You'll see there that the 8 highest-ranked teams are, in order, Geelong, St Kilda, Hawthorn, Western Bulldogs, Collingwood, Sydney, Adelaide and Carlton. Six of these teams are also in the top 8 of the competition ladder (which, by the way is also available on the MAFL-Stats site), the two differences being the inclusion of the Hawks and the Swans in the MARS Top 8 at the expense of Port Adelaide and Essendon.

Losing Does Lead to Winning But Only for Home Teams (and only sometimes)

For reasons that aren't even evident to me, I decided to revisit the issue of "when losing leads to winning", which I looked at a few blogs back.

In that earlier piece no distinction was made between which team - home or away - was doing the losing or the winning. Such a distinction, it turns out, is important in uncovering evidence for the phenomenon in question.

Put simply, there is some statistical evidence across the home-and-away matches from 1980 to 2008 that home teams that trail by between 1 and 4 points at quarter time, or by 1 point at three-quarter time, tend to win more often than they lose. There is no such statistical evidence for away teams.

The table below shows the proportion of times that the home team has won when leading or trailing by the amount shown at quarter time, half time or three-quarter time.

It shows, for example, that home teams that trailed by exactly 5 points at quarter time went on to win 52.5% of such games.

Using standard statistical techniques I've been able to determine, based on the percentages in the table and the number of games underpinning each percentage, how likely it is that the "true" proportion of wins by the home team is greater than 50% for any of the entries in the table for which the home team trails. That analysis, for example, tells us that we can be 99% confident (since the significance level is 1%) that the figure of 57.2% for teams trailing by 4 points at quarter time is statistically above 50%.

(To look for a losing leads to winning phenomenon amongst away teams I've performed a similar analysis on the rows where the home team is ahead and tested whether the proportion of wins by the home team is statistically significantly less than 50%. None of the entries was found to be significant.)

My conclusion then is that, in AFL, it's less likely that being slightly behind is motivational. Instead, it's that the home ground advantage is sufficient for the home team to overcome small quarter time or three-quarter time deficits. It's important to make one other point: though home teams trailing do, in some cases, win more often that they lose, they do so at a rate less than their overall winning rate, which is about 58.5%.

So far we've looked only at narrow leads and small deficits. While we're here and looking at the data in this way, let's broaden the view to consider all leads and deficits.

In this table I've grouped leads and deficits into 5-point bands. This serves to iron out some of the bumps we saw in the earlier, more granular table.

A few things strike me about this table:

* Home teams can expect to overcome a small quarter time deficit more often than not and need only be level at the half or at three-quarter time in order to have better than even chances of winning. That said, even the smallest of leads for the away team at three-quarter time is enough to shift the away team's chances of victory to about 55%.

* Apparently small differences have significant implications for the outcome. A late goal in the third term to extend a lead from say 4 to 10 points lifts a team's chances - all else being equal - by 10% points if it's the home team (ie from 64% to 74%) and by an astonishing 16% points if it's the away team (ie from 64% to 80%).

* A home team that leads by about 2 goals at the half can expect to win 8 times out of 10. An away team with such a lead with a similar lead can expect to win about 7 times out of 10.

We Now Have Hope

This week we ratchet up another level as the Hope Fund comes on stream and starts out with a couple of bold bets - 5.42% on Essendon @ $2.90 and 4.6% on the friendless Freo @ $2.25 - and one apparently safer bet of 2.59% on the Dogs @ $1.68.

The Line Redux Fund adds two more games to the list of those in which Investors have a financial interest by lobbing 5% at Hawthorn giving 22.5 start to West Coast, and another 5% at Geelong giving 38.5 start to Brisbane.

In total then, much as I'd foreshadowed on the site earlier in the week, we've about 12.6% of the Hope Fund and 10% of the Line Redux Fund at risk.

On tipping, the favourites are more heavily supported by our tipsters in just five of the eight matches. The details are as follows:

* St Kilda are favoured over Port Adelaide 10-3. ELO is tipping the Saints by just 2 points making this its Game of the Round.

* Collingwood are favoured over Essendon 8-5, though Chi and ELO are tipping only about a 1 goal margin.

* West Coast are favoured over Hawthorn 9-4 despite heavy Hawk victories being predicted by BKB, ELO and Chi.

* The Roos are favoured 13-0 over Richmond.

* Sydney are favoured 12-1 over Fremantle though Chi predicts the Swans by just 3 points making this his Game of the Round.

* Geelong are favoured 12-1 over the Lions, Easily Impressed II being the sole Lions adherent, a consequence of its successfully tipping them last weekend.

* The Bulldogs are favoured 12-1 over Carlton. In this game it's Easily Impressed I that's the outlier, here because Carlton won and the Dogs lost last weekend.

* Melbourne are favoured 7-6  over Adelaide.

Chi bagged 5 from 8 on line betting last weekend to take him to just 15 from 32 from the season. ELO managed just 4 from 8 but remains at a healthy 20 from 32 for the season. Chi's and ELO's Mean Absolute Prediction Errors reflect this difference in line betting performance: Chi's on 34.6 points per game and ELO's on 31.3 points per game, just 0.8 points behind BKB.

Chi's Line Bets are: Port Adelaide (probably - we've no market yet), Essendon, West Coast, Richmond, Fremantle, Brisbane Lions, Western Bulldogs and Melbourne.

ELO's Line Bets are: St Kilda (again, probably), Essendon, Hawthorn, Kangaroos, Sydney, Brisbane Lions, Western Bulldogs and Melbourne.

Pick the Teams' Finishing Order Competition

A while back I mentioned that we'd be running a competition this year in which the aim will be to predict the finishing order of all 16 teams. The winner will be the person whose predictions are closest to the actual ladder positions at the end of the home and away season.

Here are the logistics of the competition:

* Entry is free. (I was considering charging a nominal entry fee and using this to create a prize pool but I thought a free competition would encourage higher levels of participation.)

* To be eligible, entries must be received by me by midnight on Wednesday, May 6th. That means you'll be able to use the ladder as at the end of Round 6 as the basis for your predictions.

* An entry comprises a finishing order for all 16 AFL teams.

* Only one entry is allowed per person.

* Order will be determined by the Kendall's tau measure as described below.

* The final ladder positions for the teams will be those published on the www.afl.com.au site at the end of the home and away season.

* The prize? You'll gain the people's ovation and fame forever (with apologies to Iron Chef).

 

Okay, so that's the logistics. Now for some detail. (You can safely skip the remainder of this blog if you're not interested in how we'll decide on a winner.)

To judge the winner we need a measure of proximity for two rankings so that we can compare each entrant's predicted ranking with the ranking provided by the competition ladder. The statistical community has a number of such measures in its armoury, one of which is called Kendall's tau and this is the measure that I'll be using to determine whose predictions are closest to the final ladder.

Kendall's tau is based upon the notions of concordance and discordance. Imagine that, in my predictions, I've placed Team A above Team B. Then, if the end of season ladder has Team A finishing above Team B (with any number of teams in between), my rankings of Team A and B are said to be concordant with the final ladder. If instead, Team B finishes ahead of Team A, my rankings of Team A and B are then said to be discordant with the final ladder.

Now imagine that I considered every possible pair of teams and I counted the number of concordances and discordances in my rankings compared to the final ladder. Kendall's tau is defined as the difference between the number of concordances and the number of discordances, divided by the total number of possible pairs of teams.

The closer is Kendall's tau to 1, the closer my predictions match the final ladder; the closer it is to 0, the more random my predictions are relative to the final ladder; and the closer it is to -1, the closer my predictions are to a reverse ordering of the final ladder, an outcome that would surely be far more embarrassing than registering a zero. The winner of our competition will be the person with the greatest Kendall's tau.

A small example might help to clarify all this. So, let's assume that there were only six teams in the competition, imaginatively named A through F. Then, say I predicted they'd finish B, F, D, A, C, E but that they instead - with a commendable sense of order - actually finished A, B, C, D, E, F. 

Now, there are 15 possible pairs of teams that we can consider, and my predictions are concordant with the actual finishing order for 8 of these pairs (A&C, A&E, B&C, B&D, B&E, B&F, C&E and D&E) and discordant for 7 of them (A&B, A&D, A&F, C&D, C&F, D&F and E&F). My Kendall's tau would therefore be (8-7)/15 or about 0.07, which is barely better than the chance score of 0.

Somebody else who predicted a finishing order of B, A, D, E, C, F would, instead, register a Kendall's tau of 0.6, having just 3 discordances and 12 concordances. I think it's fairly apparent that this latter ordering is far closer to the actual ordering than was mine.

One of the nice properties of Kendall's tau is that it has a probabilistic interpretation. If the Kendall's tau calculated for your predictions is K then the probability of concordance between your predictions and the ladder for any two randomly chosen teams is (K+1)/2. So, for the example just presented where K was 0.6 this probability would be 0.8, which could also be derived by noting that there were 12 concordances in the 15 possible pairings and 12/15 = 0.8.

Not As Good As Last Week (or the Week Before)

What to make of all that then?

Firstly, the Line Redux Fund has stumbled for the first time this season, winning just 1 of 3 bets, but still leaving all Investors with exposure to this Fund in profit. This weekend's results take the Line Redux Fund to 6-4 for the season, perilously close to a chance result.

And it's not as if I can claim 'near-thing' status since the Lions lost by 26.5 points and the Hawks lost by 53.5 points on handicap betting. Not even the most tenuously tenured of coaches has attributed a 9 goal loss to nothing more than the proverbial 'bounce of the ball'.

Thank heavens for the Swans. For the second time this season they've won outright when we've backed them with start.

Investors with Hope Fund exposure please note that things warm up next weekend as the Hope Fund joins the Line Redux Fund and goes live. Over the past 4 weeks, had I given it its head, the Hope Fund would've made 2 or 3 bets each week (with, if I'm honest - which I'm pathologically inclined to be, often regardless of the consequences - only marginal success).

On tipping, the bag was also decidedly mixed. No tipster managed better than 4 from 8 and only 3 favourites saluted the judge, which leaves us in the very odd position where 3 tipsters - Shadow, Silhouette and Short Term Memory II - lead BKB by a tip and a half. How strange to find a tipster underpinned by a mindless heuristic and dedicated to a non-existent dog leading one of the finest football minds on the planet. Clearly in a post GFC, climate-changing world, all the normal societal rules have been suspended. Or something.

Please note that we're now only a couple of weeks away from the Pick the Finishing positions competition. Look out for details this week.

From One Year To The Next: Part 2

Last blog I promised that I'd take another look at teams' year-to-year changes in ladder position, this time taking a longer historical perspective.

For this purpose I've elected to use the period 1925 to 2008 as there have always been at least 10 teams in the competition from that point onwards. Once again in this analysis I've used each team's final ladder position, not their ladder position as at the end of the home and away season. Where a team has left or joined the competition in a particular season, I've omitted its result for the season in which it came (since there's no previous season) or went (since there's no next season).

As the number of teams making the finals has varied across the period we're considering, I'll not be drawing any conclusions about the rates of teams making or missing the finals. I will, however, be commenting on Grand Final participation as each season since 1925 has culminated in such an event.

Here's the raw data:

(Note that I've grouped all ladder positions of 9th or lower in the "9+" category. In some years this incorporates just two ladder positions, in others as many as eight.)

A few things are of note in this table:

* Losing Grand Finalists are more likely than winning Grand Finalists to win in the next season.

* Only 10 of 83 winning Grand Finalists finished 6th or lower in the previous season.

* Only 9 of 83 winning Grand Finalists have finished 7th or lower in the subsequent season.

* The average ladder position of a team next season is highly correlated with its position in the previous season. One notable exception to this tendency is for teams finishing 4th. Over one quarter of such teams have finished 9th or worse in the subsequent season, which drags their average ladder position in the subsequent year to 5.8, below that of teams finishing 5th.

* Only 2 teams have come from 9th or worse to win the subsequent flag - Adelaide, who won in 1997 after finishing 12th in 1996; and Geelong, who won in 2007 after finishing 10th in 2006.

* Teams that finish 5th have a 14-3 record in Grand Finals that they've made in the following season. In percentage terms this is the best record for any ladder position.

Here's the same data converted into row percentages.

Looking at the data in this way makes a few other features a little more prominent:

* Winning Grand Finalists have about a 45% probability of making the Grand Final in the subsequent season and a little under a 50% chance of winning it if they do.

* Losing Grand Finalists also have about a 45% probability of making the Grand Final in the subsequent season, but they have a better than 60% record of winning when they do.

* Teams that finish 3rd have about a 30% chance of making the Grand Final in the subsequent year. They're most likely to be losing Grand Finalists in the next season.

* Teams that finish 4th have about a 16% chance of making the Grand Final in the subsequent year. They're most likely to finish 5th or below 8th. Only about 1 in 4 improve their ladder position in the ensuing season.

* Teams that finish 5th have about a 20% chance of making the Grand Final in the subsequent year. These teams tend to the extremes: about 1 in 6 win the flag and 1 in 5 drops to 9th or worse. Overall, there's a slight tendency for these teams to drop down the ladder.

* Teams that finish 6th or 7th have about a 20% chance of making the Grand Final in the subsequent year. Teams finishing 6th tend to drop down the ladder in the next season; teams finishing 7th tend to climb.

* Teams that finish 8th have about a 8.5% chance of making the Grand Final in the subsequent year. These teams tend to climb in the ensuing season.

* Teams that finish 9th or worse have about a 3.5% chance of making the Grand Final in the subsequent year. They also have a roughly 2 in 3 chance of finishing 9th or worse again.

So, I suppose, relatively good news for Cats fans and perhaps surprisingly bad news for St Kilda fans. Still, they're only statistics.

Three More: It's Getting to be a Habit

The Line Redux Fund has so far this season acted with restraint and discernment. This week we've more evidence of that first characteristic; let's hope we also witness more of the second.

All of which is a cryptic way to introduce the fact that we've three line bets this weekend:

* Brisbane, giving Collingwood 9.5 points start on Friday night at the Gabba

* Sydney, receiving 8.5 points start from Carlton on Saturday afternoon at the SCG

* Hawthorn, giving Port Adelaide 23.5 points start on Saturday at the G

The latter two of these bets represent our 2nd bets on Hawthorn and on Sydney (both of the previous bets were winners). 

Moving next to tipping, we have:

* Unanimous support for the Lions over Collingwood, though ELO has only a 3 point margin, making this its Game of the Round

* Carlton tipped 11-2 over Sydney

* Port Adelaide tipped 9-4 over the Hawks, with the 9 including all the top-ranked tipsters bar BKB

* Unanimous support for St Kilda and the prediction of a blowout by BKB, Chi and ELO

* Geelong tipped 11-2 over Adelaide

* Essendon tipped 9-4 over the Roos, with the 9 once again including all the top-ranked tipsters bar BKB, and Chi tipping the Roos but by only a point, making this his Game of the Round

* Melbourne tipped 7-6 over Richmond, with Easily Impressed II the only top-ranked tipster siding with the Tigers and even then only doing so because they were more lightly flogged last weekend than were the Dees

* The Western Bulldogs tipped 11-2 over West Coast

(Note that we're once again waiting for the line market to go up for one game. I'll include the details in Monday's results.)

From One Year To The Next: Part 1

With Carlton and Essendon currently sitting in the top 8, I got to wondering about the history of teams missing the finals in one year and then making it the next. For this first analysis it made sense to choose the period 1997 to 2008 as this is the time during which we've had the same 16 teams as we do now.

Line Redux Bags another Two from Three

Two more successful line bets from three attempts has the Line Redux Fund now priced at $1.125 and leaves those Investors with Line Redux exposure up by between about 2.2 and 2.5%. Perhaps the best thing about the weekend's performance is that the two winning bets won easily and the losing bet missed out by just a little over a goal.

Investors please note that I've changed the way I'm displaying your portfolio performance (see table at right). Rather than repeating the same number a dozen or so times, I'm now showing a single performance statistic for the Recommended portfolio. If your MIN is not shown separately it's because you have the Recommended portfolio; accordingly, the performance of that portfolio is the performance of your portfolio.

We still have one more week of Line Redux Fund langour before the madness begins when, firstly, the Hope Fund will be unleashed and allowed to fling cash for the first time. I've been tracking the bets that all the currently dormant Funds would have made had they not been in a period of enforced abstinence, and the Hope Fund is one that I'm glad has been kept away from Sportsbet. (The other is Chi-squared.) I'm assuming that this is a 'calibration' period ...

On tipping we have the extraordinary situation whereby BKB trails, albeit only by half a tip. This is down to the sterling performances of Shadow, Silhouette and Short-Term Memory II, each of which bagged 7 from 8 this week (see table at right) missing only the Hawks' win over the Roos. Chi has continued his poor run of tipping and managed just 5 this weekend to leave him tied for last with Home Sweet Home on just 14 from 24.

ELO tipping was acceptable at 6 from 8 but its line betting performance fell away dramatically from last weekend's 7 as it managed just 4 from 8 this weekend, with one of those being Adelaide who were favoured to win on line betting given their 6.5 points start yet even money head-to-head price.

Does Losing Lead to Winning?

I was reading an issue of Chance News last night and came across the article When Losing Leads to Winning. In short, the authors of this journal article found that, in 6,300 or so most recent NCAA basketball games, teams that trailed by 1 point at half-time went on to win more games than they lost. This they attribute to "the motivational effects of being slightly behind".

Naturally, I wondered if the same effect existed for footy.

Round 3 offers another trio

Three line bets again this weekend, giving start in two and receiving it in one, much as we did last weekend.

In Thursday's game - where we've 'corrected' the AFL and listed the Pies as the true home team - we've taken Collingwood with 19.5 points, playing Geelong. This is our second wager on the Pies this season.

Next, on Saturday, we've taken St Kilda giving 20.5 points start to West Coast at Docklands.

Finally, on Sunday, we're on Port Adelaide giving 30.5 points start to the early-season spoon favourites, the Dees.

On tipping we have:

* Geelong favoured 9 to 4, with Chi opting for a narrow Collingwood victory in his Game of the Round. Both of the Easily Impressed heuristics have gone with Collingwood too, each on the basis of Collingwood's sizeable victory margin last weekend.

* St Kilda favoured 12 to 1, with Easily Impressed I the only dissenting voice.

* The Lions favoured 7 to 6, though Sydney's support includes our current top 3 tipsters in CTL, EI I and FTS. ETO also favours Sydney but by only 1 point making this one of its Games of the Round.

* Essendon, the underdogs, favoured 7 to 6. However, two of the top three tipsters are on Carlton.

* Port Adelaide the unanimous choice, though not quite favoured to cover the 30.5 points spread by Chi and ELO.

* The Kangaroos tipped by all but ELO. Chi, ELO and BKB all have it as a less than two goal margin though.

* Adelaide tipped by all but Home Sweet Home and a fence-sitting BKB. ELO has this as its other Game of the Round.

* Western Bulldogs the unanimous tip, but with Chi tipping them to fail to cover the spread and ELO tipping them to cover.

ELO, as noted previously, has started well on line betting. Its line betting picks this week are: Collingwood, St Kilda, Sydney, Essendon, Melbourne, Roos and the Bulldogs. (There's no line market yet for the Fremantle v Adelaide game.)

Another Acceptable Week

A solid if not spectacular Round 2 for Investors, with 2 wins from 3 line bets once again increasing the wealth of those Investors with Line Redux Fund exposure.

Adelaide, the sole losing bet, never looked like covering the 10.5 points spread, trailed in absolute terms at every change before going on to lose handily. Collingwood also made Investors nervous, taking 3 quarters to provide any sign of solace, and finished at 3QT just one-half a point in advance of the spread before going on to cover by plenty. Sydney, in contrast, were always round about in terms of the spread and looked home on line betting by the end of the 3rd term. In the end, they won outright, making the 16.5 point start pleasingly redundant.

On the tipping front we now have the remarkable situation of three tipsters leading BKB: CTL, EI 1 and FTS (all on 12 from 16). BKB and a range of other tipsters are on 11. Home Sweet Home, which recorded the best score of the round with 7, still languishes on 10 from 16. Chi and ELO are now joint last on just 9 from 16.

Though ELO managed just 5 from 8 on tipping to go with its 4 from last week, it managed an extremely profitable 7 from 8 on line betting, moving it to 12 from 16 on line betting across the first two rounds.

ELO also continues to do well in terms of Mean Absolute Prediction Error. It's now at 30.1, a little ahead of Chi on 34.4 and a little behind BKB on 29.1.

On MARS ratings (see www.mafl-stats.blogspot.com for details), the big moves this weekend have seen Carlton move into the top 8 at the expense of Port Adelaide who, as a result of their loss to the Eagles, have dropped to 10th.

Round 2 - An Entree, A Main Course and A Dessert

Investors with Line Redux Fund exposure can look forward to a little more action this week, with bets placed on Adelaide giving 10.5 points start to the Saints on Friday night, on Collingwood giving 32.5 points start the Dees on Saturday, and on Sydney receiving 16.5 points from the Hawks, also on Saturday.

On the tipping front:

* BKB, Chi, ELO and Home Sweet Home find themselves in the minority in tipping the Crows over the Saints

* There's unanimous support for the Cats who are playing the Tigers. ELO has the Cats as 40 point favourites; BKB has them as 44.5 point favourites

* There's further unanimity in the selection of the Pies to beat the Dees, with ELO and BKB again tipping large margins

* The Blues v Lions clash has split the tipsters, with seven opting for the Blues and six for the Lions. Chi, who's on the Blues, has this as one of his two Games of the Round

* Only Home Sweet Home see the Swans grabbing the points in their game against the Hawks. ELO, however, whilst tipping the Hawks, has them as just 3 point favourites

* All tipsters have the Dons finishing with their noses in front of the Dockers, but none of those tipsters who offer margin forecasts have more than about a goal in it. ELO has this as its Game of the Round; Chi has it as his alternate Game of the Round (he's a dog - he's not good at making definitive choices)

* Speaking of Dogs, they're the unanimous tipster choice in their matchup with the Roos. So strong are the Dogs' chance according to Chi and ELO that this is the only game in which they're both predicting that a favourite to cover the spread.

* Finally, in the Eagles v Port game, everyone except Home Sweet Home is on Port.

Had you used Chi's or ELO's tips and margins for line betting purposes last weekend, you'd have scored just 2 from 8 if you'd used Chi's, but a profitable 5 from 8 if you'd used ELO's. This week, if you were following Chi you'd take the teams receiving start in the first six games of the round, and the teams giving start in the last two. If, instead, you were following ELO, you'd swap Collingwood for Melbourne in game 3 and West Coast for Port Adelaide in Game 8.

In terms of Absolute Prediction Error (the absolute value of the difference between the actual margin and the tipped margin), Chi averaged 35.5 points per game last week, ELO averaged 30.9, and BKB averaged just 28.0. You just have to tip your hat to the bookies ...