MAFL 2010 : Round 1

We're on.

From a wagering viewpoint, this season has started like most others, with the TAB Sportsbet bookie posting head-to-head odds more than a week before the first game and then leaving them unchanged for over a week. It's as if punters haven't yet realised the season's about to start. Indeed, as I type this, the odds are still what they were Monday a week ago.

MAFL, for its part, has also followed the early season script, wagering lightly, unwilling to risk much until the season's patterns have been established and calibrated. Only one Fund is active and only four bets have been made.

And so the cycle begins again for another season.

This year I've decided to do away with the need for readers of this blog to download PDFs to find out the details on wagers and results, so here instead are this week's wagering details, in-blog as it were:

As foreshadowed on the MAFL Online Twitter feed last week, we've four bets each of 5% of the Heuristic-Based Fund, tying most Investor's fates to the success of the Cats, the Lions, Port and the Dogs. The Cats are the shortest-priced at $1.18 and the Dogs are the longest-priced at $1.60, so there can be no suggestion that the Heuristic-Based Fund has subjected Investors to any substantial risk.

Amongst the remaining Funds, Hope will be released to wager commencing in Round 5 and all other Funds will be allowed off-leash one round later. Since all the Investors who've assembled their own portfolios this year have decided to weight the Heuristic-Based Fund zero, this week's Ready Reckoner is a simple one:

Clearly, no-one's going to be quaffing Moet on the strength of this weekend's results, but nor will anyone be stripping the lounge chairs to find loose change for food.

Investor profitability requires that at least 3 of the 4 wagered upon teams are successful and the Bulldogs must be among them.

Turning next to tips, you'll notice that HAMP and LAMP have been added to last year's cavalcade of heuristic tipsters.

As you can see, it's pretty much wall-to-wall consensus (the most common variety, of course), with almost every tip a nod to the favourite. The exceptions are Home Sweet Home, which has gone all contrarian in half of the games, and Chi, who's tipped the Roos to topple Port by a point, making it his Game of the Round.

HAMP and LAMP agree with Chi's game choice for Game of the Round but not with his tip for the winner. Bravely, ELO has plumped for the Hawks v Dees clash as its Game of the Round, oblivious to the fact that the TAB Sportsbet bookie has installed the Hawks as almost 5-goal favourites. That same bookie - and hence BKB - has opted for the Fremantle v Adelaide game as his Game of the Round (assuming that, when the line market posts, it's with one team or the other receiving 6.5 points start or fewer).

That leaves only one more set of predictions to reveal - those of the new HELP model.

I've decided to include the probability estimates alongside HELP's tips as I hope that tracking the calibration of HELP's tips will provide an interesting subject for discussion during the season ahead. To ensure that I can't be accused of blinding hindsight I'll put it on record now that I don't expect HELP to do well this year; on balance, I think it's probably been overfitted to previous data.

Well that's it for this blog. Remember that the first game of the season starts Thursday, not Friday, night. Investors can enjoy watching this game unfettered by financial considerations. Enjoy.