Parker's Pythagorean Playbook

Round 3 Tips Western Bulldogs v Brisbane (57%, 9pts) Collingwood (59%, 12pts) v Richmond Hawthorn (58%, 11pts) v North Melbourne GWS v Carlton (58% 11pts) St Kilda (58% 12pts) v Essendon Port Adelaide (68%, 26pts) v Adelaide Gold Coast v Geelong (65%, 22pts) Melbourne v Sydney (55%, 7pts) Fremantle (73%, 35pts) v West Coast Hawthorn being favourites over North Melbourne is a big surprise based on what we have seen in the early rounds of 2023. However there was quite a big elo gap between the two at the end of 2022 that this outcome isn't too shocking compared to if they should play later on in the year where more data would be available. A slight surprise for me is St Kilda to be two goal favourites against a seemingly in form Essendon. I would say this game has to be match of the round, with two teams both 2-0 and both looking to firm up their finals chances. I would also think Geelong should win by more than 22 points against a somewhat disappointing Gold Coast but in saying that...

Where is the Model Looking? After back to back underdog victories under the lid of Marvel Stadium, it is safe to say the model now LOVES St Kilda. Jack Steele being added to their long list of injuries does not help them in real life but the model looks past that and has them with a massive 67% chance of making the finals. This week's game against Essendon (another club the model rates with a 57% finals chance) on Saturday night, looks to be a huge one for both clubs and one which can make a big difference to the finals outlooks of both sides. The model looks to be incredibly bearish on Melbourne and Geelong in particular, rating their finals chances at 59% and 53% respectively. Melbourne's low rating can be attributed partly to a bad loss in Brisbane and also to a win against Western Bulldogs which now does not look that impressive after their loss to the hands of St Kilda. Geelong are 0-2 starting both matches as favourites which does not bode well for them. They'll look ...

How Did the Model Perform? Round two threw up arguably more inconsistent results than the week previous, with no Squiggle model earning more than 5/9 tips, the mean being just above 4. North Melbourne cut deep into many tipsters bits and hurt a lot of performance metrics, ensuring no one would bank the perfect round, only assisted by brilliant performances by Carlton, Brisbane, St Kilda and West Coast who all won as underdogs. The PPP model only copped four tips this week, with the best result being a complete fence sit on the Western Bulldogs - St Kilda match up, resulting in no lost bits and a lesser mean than any other Squiggle model.  Bits The model lost 0.57 bits this week and had a MAE of 36.22, not a good week by anyone's standards but a "less bad" week than most other models. On the Squiggle leaderboards we now would sit 8th with -0.64 bits, just above the s10 model, which is a combined model of the previous year's top 10 models. The s10 is more-or-less the b...

Round 2 Tips Carlton v Geelong (62%, 17pts) Brisbane v Melbourne (54%, 5pts) Collingwood (62%, 16pts) v Port Adelaide Adelaide v Richmond (62%, 18pts) Western Bulldogs (50%, 0pts) v St Kilda Fremantle (77%, 43pts) v North Melbourne Sydney (80%, 48pts) v Hawthorn Essendon (57%, 10pts) v Gold Coast West Coast v GWS (62%, 17pts) The only real surprises here for me is the Bulldogs Saints game with the model predicting a 0.05 difference in score, slightly in favour of the Bulldogs. The model does not take into account any player injuries which can explain a little bit of the margin.  St Kilda are also helped by their win at Marvel Stadium against Fremantle, a boost to their rating by beating a more favoured opponent and for winning at the ground they will play at this week. Suggested Bets for Round 2 Season performance so far: -0.07 bits, 29.61 MAE, 4.5/9 tips (50%), -2.00 units, -100% ROI Yesterday I wrote about the futures bets to take before round two, with a massive 10.5 units bein...

How Did the Model Perform? Throughout 2023 I will be comparing my model to those in the Squiggle model competition with hopes of competing in it next year.  The Squiggle competition is a very well respected group of modellers who all predict the outcome of every match in the AFL season and then analyse their performance using various methods. In this post  I explained how these were but for those in need of a refresher we have bits (confidence based picks), MAE (the average of how many points you were wrong by) and just general tips (how many games did you pick the winner). On Squiggle the top models by bits are The Footycast  who leads the way with 0.79, Elo Predicts  who is second on 0.59 and AFLalytics  a close third on 0.58. My model finished round one in a would be 17th place with -0.07 bits. Not to worry, 23 rounds of AFL football to go. Looking at MAE now and we have  The Footycast   again in first with 27.13, The Cruncher in second with ...

Round 1 Review Round 1 is run and done with a few suprises and some potential upsets that we did not expect. Thursday couldn't have been a worse opening game right until the final siren with a draw to pre season finals favourites Richmond and Carlton. Friday produced an absolute cracker with two top four stalwarts Collingwood and Geelong and from there the season proper was underway. For the most part Round 1 provided us with what we expected we would get, a few upsets and a couple teams significantly improved with a couple falling behind. The most impressive teams, above our preseason expectations, were Collingwood, Port Adelaide, Melbourne, St Kilda and Essendon. The most unimpressive were both Richmond and Carlton, Brisbane, Western Bulldogs and Fremantle. Hawthorn have their own special spot on a special list of the teams that were just impossibly bad. Futures Look Ahead Monday morning always throws up some unexpected odds on the futures market and after running our sims for ro...

Where is the Value? On my previous post about the 2023 AFL season, I outlined some probabilites of what I expect could happen this season. In this post we will explore where the value lies in some futures markets as well as my tips for the round 1 head to head matches and the value in those games. Odds are being taken from a mixture of BlueBet, Unibet and Topsport to attempt to find the greatest value across the three sights. I cannot use Sportsbet, Bet365, Neds, Ladbrokes or any other as I have been banned from most if not all of them. My method for the season is to place wagers every week where there is value on futures and have them all add up towards the end of the season where we hopefully land a big pay out all at once. This does mean you are without the cash for up to 6 months but we hope the value is enough to keep us going. Usually I will not take any odds below $1.30 or above $30 to take some of the extremes out of it as my model isn't as up to date as these betting site...

2023 Initial Ratings and Model Explaination The 2023 footy season is upon us and it's time for wannabe modellers to break out their coding skills and put their brain and football knowledge to the test. I have refined and improved my previous models for sports like rugby, baseball and tennis to come up with what I believe to be an accurate and realistic model for the AFL season. My model works mainly from elo as its base rating system but includes variables like a fluid home ground advantage multiplier, expected score (or xScore) and previous head to head results to skew the probabilities one way or the other. The Elo Rating System Elo works on a couple main principles. Firstly is that it is a zero sum rating system, which means whatever points you add to one team you must take the same number of points away from the other team.  Secondly there is no "perfect" rating for each team as it is fluid and changes after every game.  For this reason two teams may play 10 matches a...