Certified Legendary Thread Squiggle 2017

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Yep! It's very hard to beat the market:

Tipping-dots-2015.png


Source: http://figuringfooty.com/2016/03/13/2015-tipping-performances-of-fans-experts-and-analysts/

And those are only bookies' opening odds. They're more accurate by close, at least while I've been watching.

Even more sobering, the bookies perform like this every year, while I bet most of those dots that beat them in 2015 didn't do so the year before or afterward.
year of the cat 143 and 142 in 2015 for us respectively.
At least we can say at one point we were clever :D
 
Sep 15, 2007
50,371
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Where i need to be
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Geelong
start of finals series the three highest on the flag pole were adelaide, sydney and port adelaide. one didnt even make it to the second week of finals and the other didnt make it to the final four. if you just ranked flag favouritim at the same time based on ladder position then the top 3 you would of picked have all made it to the last four with two having home finals.

squiggle has performed dramatically worse then the 6 year old who could read the ladder results in the paper. good job squiggle. its not like this is a one off either.

Keep falling for the pretty charts guys. Homeopathy statistics is awesome.
 

Iron

Norm Smith Medallist
May 26, 2014
7,170
15,280
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Adelaide
start of finals series the three highest on the flag pole were adelaide, sydney and port adelaide. one didnt even make it to the second week of finals and the other didnt make it to the final four. if you just ranked flag favouritim at the same time based on ladder position then the top 3 you would of picked have all made it to the last four with two having home finals.

squiggle has performed dramatically worse then the 6 year old who could read the ladder results in the paper. good job squiggle. its not like this is a one off either.

Keep falling for the pretty charts guys. Homeopathy statistics is awesome.
Still getting angry about numbers? A strange hobby.
 

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Final Siren

Mr Squiggle
Aug 18, 2009
4,229
17,495
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Richmond
Looking at the Flagpole at the moment: why is Geelong ranked so much higher than Richmond despite Richmond being ranked ahead of them in both offence and defence?
Because Richmond is in an area of the chart where good teams go to not win premierships.

Over the last twenty years, only three teams have done it from there: Bulldogs 2016, Sydney 2012 and Sydney 2005. All were upsets. Two were huge upsets, part of a series of other upsets.

Meanwhile, it's been a graveyard for otherwise strong teams who failed to go all the way: Sydney 2016, Sydney 2015, Richmond 2015, Fremantle 2015, Sydney 2014, Fremantle 2014, Fremantle 2013, Sydney 2013, Fremantle 2012, St Kilda 2011, St Kilda 2010, Adelaide 2010, St Kilda 2009, Adelaide 2009, Sydney 2006, Adelaide 2006, Adelaide 2005, Sydney 2004, Geelong 2004, and Carlton 2001. I suppose I should add Sydney 2017 now, too.

Flagpole is different to the regular squiggle algorithm because it's slanted to favour teams that look like past premiership winners, and not like teams that win games but not flags. That basically means it prefers teams with a strong attack, and dislikes teams that look like they're being coached by Ross Lyon.

This is all done without any special reasoning; i.e. squiggle offers no theory on why, exactly, defensive specialist teams have done poorly in finals after successful regular-season campaigns. It just notes that they have, and expects the trend to continue. The landscape today may look very different if St Kilda had snagged a couple of flags in 2009 and 2010 and if Fremantle had managed it in 2013. But they didn't, so this is the historical reality, which Richmond need to overcome.
 
I think this is one weakness in your (generally amazing) analysis, in that you presume that low scoring sides are low scoring because they play a defensive gameplan. The worst scoring team in the league is not necessarily the most defensive team, that implies that coaching means everything. Some years that may be true but I'd say for many years there's no perfectly clear correlation between the amount a team scores and their overall gamestyle.
.

Freo fans were dissing the squiggle for the same reason when they were good.

'But but but we ease up when we are in front which is why we don't score as much'

Squiggle will prove itself right when it matters to you most.
 
May 29, 2013
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Because Richmond is in an area of the chart where good teams go to not win premierships.

Over the last twenty years, only three teams have done it from there: Bulldogs 2016, Sydney 2012 and Sydney 2005. All were upsets. Two were huge upsets, part of a series of other upsets.

Meanwhile, it's been a graveyard for otherwise strong teams who failed to go all the way: Sydney 2016, Sydney 2015, Richmond 2015, Fremantle 2015, Sydney 2014, Fremantle 2014, Fremantle 2013, Sydney 2013, Fremantle 2012, St Kilda 2011, St Kilda 2010, Adelaide 2010, St Kilda 2009, Adelaide 2009, Sydney 2006, Adelaide 2006, Adelaide 2005, Sydney 2004, Geelong 2004, and Carlton 2001. I suppose I should add Sydney 2017 now, too.

Flagpole is different to the regular squiggle algorithm because it's slanted to favour teams that look like past premiership winners, and not like teams that win games but not flags. That basically means it prefers teams with a strong attack, and dislikes teams that look like they're being coached by Ross Lyon.

This is all done without any special reasoning; i.e. squiggle offers no theory on why, exactly, defensive specialist teams have done poorly in finals after successful regular-season campaigns. It just notes that they have, and expects the trend to continue. The landscape today may look very different if St Kilda had snagged a couple of flags in 2009 and 2010 and if Fremantle had managed it in 2013. But they didn't, so this is the historical reality, which Richmond need to overcome.
Oh. That's a real pickle.

images (8).jpg
 

Final Siren

Mr Squiggle
Aug 18, 2009
4,229
17,495
AFL Club
Richmond
I think this is one weakness in your (generally amazing) analysis, in that you presume that low scoring sides are low scoring because they play a defensive gameplan. The worst scoring team in the league is not necessarily the most defensive team, that implies that coaching means everything. Some years that may be true but I'd say for many years there's no perfectly clear correlation between the amount a team scores and their overall gamestyle.

If you look at Fremantle under Ross Lyon, which is often used as a benchmark for an overly defensive side which tried to win the flag and lost because of said gameplan, the dockers finished 11th for inside 50s in 2012, then went 9th in 2013, 8th in 2014, 7th in 2016, last in 2016 and third last this year. And that's including finals.

Richmond on the other hand is third this year for inside 50s, and while inside 50 counts can be caused by a lot of things, generally sides who have a lot of inside 50s are either playing attacking football or playing good football. The side averages around just 2-3 less inside 50s per game than Adelaide which is also a very attacking side.

Don't get me wrong, I suspect that Richmond's lack of scoring will hurt them much for the same reason it hurt Fremantle. But the reason why this team doesn't score much is different. Whilst Fremantle looked to clamp down on teams and played a cautious style of game with players behind the ball, Richmond is basically playing the Steve Nash suns run and gun "f*** it we'll do it live" style of play. The reason why Richmond is hard to score against is because their defensive players are good and Richmond sets up well. The reason why Richmond doesn't score much is because it doesn't have a good forwardline.
Yes, I do use the word "defensive" loosely, just to mean any team that tends to generate low-scoring matches.

What I think they all have in common, though, is that if the opposition manages to break through the wall, even for a short period, it can be all over. To be successful, they need to shut down every single avenue to goal, and keep that up for the entire game. Even then, they won't usually get more than a few goals in front, so they're never quite out of danger. While for a high-scoring team, there's not quite so much dependence on Plan A. If things partly go right, a defensive (low-scoring) team can be in real trouble, while an attacking team is probably fine.

Both are important, of course, and both depend on what players do in every position on the ground. But I suspect that one reason defensive teams have disproportionately failed in flag campaigns is that they need everything to go right and stay right, and sooner or later it doesn't.
 
SEASON PREDICTOR



FINALS: WEEK 2

FINALS: WEEK 3

Adelaide.png
Adelaide 89 - 69 Geelong
Geelong.png

Win likelihood: 70.1% - 29.9%

Richmond.png
Richmond 85 - 63 Greater Western Sydney
Greater%20Western%20Sydney.png

Win likelihood: 71.9% - 28.1%

2017 AFL GRAND FINAL

Adelaide.png
Adelaide 93 - 61 Richmond
Richmond.png

M.C.G. (VIC)
Win likelihood: 80.4% - 19.6%


I agree
strongly
 

Final Siren

Mr Squiggle
Aug 18, 2009
4,229
17,495
AFL Club
Richmond
2017 Finals Week 2​

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Animated!

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Geelong were so impressed by the 90 to 40 thing that Richmond did that they tried it on the Swans. And it worked!

This was a wild upset in the most obvious sense, because Sydney haven't looked like losing a game for a long time, unless they were playing Hawthorn. But it was also something of a typical 2017 performance for Geelong, who have spent the year backing up weak performances with strong ones, and vice versa.

What that means, I'm not sure. But it was a real shocker for the Swans, who have been so good, they're still ranked #1 on regular form even after that pasting. But it's time to lower their flag:

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The Giants looked a different team as well, after trialling a new game style where they actually look interested in football. This is a bit alarming because they were pretty good even before they got interested in football. The Eagles, however, retreated back to their squiggle nest where they've spent the entire season. This could really be the least squiggling from a starting point ever.

Still, both the Giants and Cats are positioned quite a way outside the premiership area, with only two games to make up ground. Richmond aren't much closer, but are lower-scoring, which, as discussed above, has proven problematic for teams in the past.

With Sydney out of the way, it looks like Adelaide in a canter.

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That said, it's worth remembering how probabilities work, and that a 70% chance of a win followed by an 80% chance of a win sounds like something approaching a sure thing, but in truth it's close to a coin flip (0.7 x 0.8 = 0.56) as to whether Adelaide takes out the flag or not.

Also, while Adelaide have been ranked #1 by flagpole non-stop since Round 1, they haven't gotten to the heights reached by teams like Hawthorn, Geelong and Collingwood of years gone by. They've been the best team all year, but not by a whole lot. It would be a real surprise for the Crows to lose from here, but not a shock.

Adelaide Crows vs Geelong Cats
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Richmond Tigers vs GWS Giants
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