Betting with the Brain

A classic example of gambling with the heart and not the brain.

In the year 2000, league leaders and reigning premiers Essendon played one of the most remarkable games in Australian Rules History verses the Kangaroos who were sitting in the lower half of the ladder. Essendon came back from the greatest ever losing margin to defeat the kangaroos by a mere 8 points. At one stage in the second quarter they were down by a staggering 69 points.

Essendon (obviously now incorrectly) hailed last year as the greatest ever team in Australian rules history reconfirmed this media misconception by recording the greatest ever comeback in a game. They remained on top of the ladder, a few games clear, despite only scraping through the last few games by under two goals. The kangaroos’ season was over as they had lost too many games to make the finals.

Everyone reclaimed Essendon as the greatest. But interestingly the statistics said that they only just managed to win. If a team so good played a team on the bottom half of the ladder and just won, then we declared that their "rating" actually decreased and had been decreasing over the past few weeks with Essendon winning but only just.

Their next match the following week was verses Port Adelaide who were sitting 6th on the ladder. Essendon were playing away and everyone was tipping another premiership effort from them. The herald-sun tipsters all tipped Essendon and the bookmakers gave them odds of $1.16. Port Adelaide had to settle for $4.50, and bookmakers prior to the event said that all money was on Essendon.

The fact that Essendon had won one of the truly most memorable games ever took shine off the fact that Port Adelaide had thrashed their opposition by more than 50 points three weeks in a row. Put this together with Essendon’s winning but poor form, and we the statisticians using the computer came up with a probability of Port to win at 57%. We said that Port were in fact the favorites and tipped them to win by 7 points. We placed a considerable amount of money on what most perceived as being the underdogs.

As it turned out, Port Adelaide won, by 8 points. Unfortunately we were one point off, but a lot more than one dollar extra in the hip pocket. Even the professionals in the industry were stunned. Mark Williams, the coach of Port Adelaide said in the post match media interview that it was undoubtedly the best game that Port Adelaide had ever played in their entire history.

Even the coach is biased by the heart. Was it the best game by Port Adelaide ever? Well we say no….because….well it was expected. Mathematically expected.