MAFL 2010 : Team Dashboard for Round 10

Here's the week's MAFL Team Dashboard.

MAFL 2010 : Round 10 Results

When seven of the weekend's eight contests produce the result that you expected - the right team winning head-to-head, the right team winning on handicap, in some games both - I think you've a reasonable expectation of profit.

No such luck.

Port Adelaide just had too much money riding on them, so the triumphs in the other seven contests nevertheless left those with the Recommended Portfolio down a little over 1 cent for the round. MIN#002 fared no better, his portfolio also dropping by about a cent, while the portfolio of MIN#017 did even worse, dropping over 5 cents.

MAFL 2010 : Round 10

At some point earlier today, for reasons I expect we'll never know, TAB Sportsbet felt comfortable in reopening the Saints v Crows markets, pricing them exactly where they'd been a couple of days previously when the allegations broke and attracting wagers from four of the five head-to-head wagering MAFL Funds. Among them only Hope abstained, as in fact it has on all eight games this round.

The ELO-Based Fund also chose not to bet on this game, deeming the 27.5 points start that the Saints were required to give just 1 point too many.

MAFL 2010 : Round 10 (Coming Soon to a Browser Near You)

Well normally I'd be posting this week's pre-round blog, but, as I type this, the Saints' alleged player sex scandal is still unresolved, at least to the satisfaction of the TAB Sportsbet bookie. As a consequence all St Kilda v Adelaide markets are suspended.

So, we've no ability to back the Saints, which we probably will both on the head-to-head and line markets once we're able. I'll wait 24 hours and see what happens.

Introducing the MAFL Team Dashboard (Round 9)

In the previous blog I promised to provide another dashboard, this one devoted to information about team performance.

Try as I might, I couldn't come up with any charts for this dashboard that seemed to be of any interest, so the final dashboard is, I admit, something of a festival of text and digits with nary a relieving picture in sight. If Gordon Gecko had been a quant jock, I'm sure he'd have proclaimed that "Charts are for wimps" anyway.

MAFL 2010 : Round 9 Results

For the third week in succession, those with the Recommended Portfolio were let down by the Saints' performance in the last game of the round. In Rounds 7 and 8 it was the Saints' ineptitude that caused the disappointment; in Round 9 that ineptitude was nowhere to be seen when Investors most needed it.

Not that the weekend's losses can be entirely attributed to the Saints' victory on Sunday evening. Collingwood, the Roos, Sydney and Carlton all did their bits too, offset only - and not completely - by Essendon, Melbourne and Adelaide victories.

This week I'm trialling a new way of presenting the various pieces of information about wagers, tips, team ratings and margin prediction. I call it the MAFL Dashboard.

Should We Have Been Surprised About the Season So Far?

Surprisals, you might recall, are a way of measuring the likelihood of the result of a chance outcome. They're measured in bits, and one bit of surprisal is the amount of surprise that you should feel in correctly predicting the toss of one unbiased coin.

So, 1 bit of surprisal is equivalent to an even money outcome, 2 bits to a 3/1 outcome, 3 bits to a 7/1 outcome and, more generally, n bits of surprisal is produced by a result with odds of (2^n-1)/1.

MAFL 2010 : Round 9

Just when you get into a routine, someone has to go and change something.

This week the TAB Sportsbet bookie decided to post the line markets a day early, leaving me with the dilemma of deciding whether to follow the time-honoured strategy of placing bets around noon on Wednesday or, instead, to follow the other time-honoured strategy of placing bets just after the line markets go up. In the past, save for those weeks where there's been a Thursday game, these two events have coincided.

Is the Home Ground Advantage Disappearing?

Home teams, as a whole, have not fared particularly well this season, which is one of the reasons that most of the MAFL Funds - all but one of which bet exclusively on home teams - have been testing Investors' patience.

Teams playing at home - truly or notionally - have won only 54.7% of contests so far this season, which puts them on track for the worst aggregate home team performance since 2001 when only 49.4% of home teams were successful. In the 25 seasons preceding this one, home teams have won at a rate lower than 55% on just two occasions: in 2001 as just mentioned, and way back in 1985.

MAFL 2010 : Round 8 Results

Wow. It feels like I'm about to compose a eulogy.

Silly of me really, in hindsight, to hope that the Saints - who, I remind you, should probably be the reigning premiers - could add a mildly cheery note to an otherwise gloomy weekend's wagering. Instead, their failure merely compounded the misery that saw those with the Recommended Portfolio turn a profit in just three of the eight contests, wiping 11.2% off the value of their Investment.

Investors with other portfolios fared no better, MIN#002 dropping 11.8% and MIN#017 dropping 23.2%, leaving them, as those with the Recommended Portfolio, solidly in the red.

Still, it's only Round 8, so there's plenty of time to forgive and forget.

MAFL 2010 : Round 8

Some weeks there's a period where I'm 5 years old again and I hold my breath and close my eyes while I run the Fund scripts and partly fear, partly hope for the worst. This week that apprehension was tied to just how much we'd have riding on the Tigers who were being offered by TAB Sportsbet at $4.50 and taking on the Hawks at the G.

MAFL 2010 : Round 7 Results (Final)

Well at least we weren't left hanging until the end.

There are games that you witness where history's page is rendered inaccurate by the word "loss". When teams play as the Saints did tonight another column is required on the competition ladder, to sit alongside "W" and "L", let's call it "F", for "Failed to Compete" (although other designations also spring to mind).

MAFL 2010 : Round 7 - Results So Far

The round's not yet over as most Investors still have a pecuniary interest in Monday night's Saints v Carlton clash, so this'll just be a short blog to update Investors.

Adelaide's final-term blitz on Sunday evening was welcome relief - apparently there's rarely any other sort if we're to believe TV news anchors - for all Investors, with the profit from the Crows' 50-point victory leaving those with the Recommended Portfolio up 0.64% on the round and 3.24% on the season. MIN#002 and MIN#017 also benefited. MIN#002's portfolio is up 2.25% on the round and now 0.05% on the season, and MIN#017's is down 4.43% on the round and 3.87% on the season.

MIN#002 is the only Investor with no stake in the St Kilda v Carlton game, so he at least can watch the game without the mood-altering effects of a wager. There'll be no such enjoyment though for those with the Recommended Portfolio or for MIN#017 as they all have significant stakes in the outcome.

If St Kilda wins and covers the 15.5 point start they're giving, the Recommended Portfolio will rise by a further 1.63%. If they win but fail to cover the spread then the increase is only 0.68%. And, finally, if the Saints lose, then the Recommended Portfolio will drop by 3.13%, virtually eliminating the season's profit to date. For MIN#017 all that matters is whether the Saints win or lose. A win will trigger a 4.66% increase in portfolio wealth and a loss will inflict a 10.36%-sized hole.

(By the way, I discovered a glitch in the Ready Reckoner calculations over the weekend, so the return for the Recommended Portfolio provided in this blog is slightly higher than what you'd get if you added up the relevant numbers from Friday's table. Errors are always so much more forgivable when they're beneficial, aren't they.)

MAFL 2010 : Round 7

I confess I didn't realise quite how active the six MAFL Funds would be this year once they were simultaneously let loose on the market. This week, their innate tendency to wager has been cunningly exploited by TAB Sportsbet in establishing seven of the home teams as favourites.

So, we have seven wagers from New Heritage (totalling almost 73% of the Fund), six from Prudence (for 25%), five from ELO-Based line (also for 25%), three from Hope (for about 10%), and two each from the currently joined-at-the hip Heuristic-Based and Shadow Funds (for 10% in both cases). In total, Investors with the Recommended Portfolio have about 27.5% of their total funds at risk.

MAFL 2010 : Round 6 Results

Regression to the mean is a bit like unprompted advice from a friend: not always welcome.

But a weekend of regression it ultimately was for Investors with the Recommended Portfolio, as their last-chance Eagles failed to capitalise on their early-game form and eventually went down to the Dockers by over six goals.

With MIN#002 losing also, the only Investor to show a profit on the weekend was MIN#017 who made a 0.55% gain.