NRL Round 12 Wrap

A shortened week this week due to Origin 1 (see our special).

We always wondered how our model would go with its first Origin, and the impact it has on teams, but were quietly confident, that given our approach to predicting results, that the model would actually improve against the market (as we assign scores to every player and ins and outs are directly accounted for).

Early evidence suggests the model works quite well. And when we say quite well we actually mean it's F#CKING AMAZING!!!!!!!!

H2H returns for the week where a phenomenal 183%. That's right, the 2 bets we recommended returned 5.65 (based on published odds on Tuesday). In fact the market moved so far, that if you delayed your bets until Friday you have had closer to 7.00 returns for your 2.00 outlay.

The big win, and our BoTW was the Wests win over Brisbane. As we detailed in our weekly tips, a full strength Broncos team was predicted to talk care of the Wests, and easily. But with 6 of their starting 13 away on Origin duty we thought the game was in the balance and expected a tight one. The Bookies thought the Wests were a 25% chance or there abouts (odds at 4.00) so we suggested this was excellent value - indeed the second highest value of the year (1.77) after the Dragons in Round 3 (1.90 value against the Bunnies - they won too!). Then the odds just starting climbing and climbing. All of the TBP team got on at between 4.60 and 5.00, and the margin of +14 then started looking very tasty too. So it would be fair to say some degen behaviours went on Friday night and thankfully we were right!!! Our single biggest win of the year and a massive start to the Origin week.

The second game was also predicted to be a close one - we had St George winning by 4 (confidence of 54%) which wasn't too far off the bookies, who had reacted to the Cowboys player losses to Origin (which is more puzzling why they didn't for the Broncos). So we said no bet and were fairly pleased when the margin came in, at you guessed it, 4 points!

Roll on game 3 - by this stage we all had a lot of money on the Raiders - multis, doubles, line and straights were all of a sudden on one team. Exposure was great, nerves were high, and some followers were asking for strategies to lay-off, or even go for the dreaded cash-out. 60 minutes in, even I was thinking of a couple of live bets on the Bulldogs to offset some of the pain (thankfully live betting was down on a competitor to Sportsbet - shame on them). So we had to let it roll, and how did it roll, and roll. The Raiders stormed back to win by 12, confirming the model had done well again, and racking up another win.

The last game of the week was the Eels, and on this we had a line bet. This was before the loss of big Junior to the Raiders (who all of a sudden look like they can challenge, maybe not the top 4, but definitely finals contenders). This bet didn't come in but a win did (several multis depended on it!), so a great week!