The Game Within the Game Your Ultimate Guide to The

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME

YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO THE 2019 BROWNLOW MEDAL INTRODUCTION

Betfair has collaborated with Data Scientists, a Statistical Professor and Pro Punters to predict the 2019 Brownlow Medal.

The collective intelligence and experience make this one of the deepest Brownlow resources ever created.

Inside this eBook, you’ll find:

• Seven Brownlow Medal leaderboard predictions. • Two data models, including a walkthrough to help you build your own Brownlow model. • A collective leaderboard with our weighted Brownlow Medal predictions to provide a wisdom of the crowd rating. • A breakdown of team by team votes. Not only will you get the individual and weighted vote predictions, we’ve even got data science tools to help you build your own Brownlow model.

Whether you’re a data novice or an expert, you can customise the script to predict your own votes. This year, we’re also running a Brownlow Medal Datathon with over 5k of cash prizes up for grabs.

If you’re not interested in modelling data, we’ve got expert predictions.

All the insights and data will help you answer your Brownlow questions.

• Should you lay, or back, the favourite in Patrick Dangerfield? • Did Carlton win enough games to give Patrick Cripps a chance of winning? • Can either Marcus Bontempellli or Jack Macrae win with Josh Dunkley stealing votes off them? You can use these numbers to predict the top three, leader at round 10, most team votes or any of the other Brownlow market on the Betfair Exchange. We hope you enjoy these predictions and this eBook.

Gamble Responsibly.

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME Think! About your choices. You know the score. Stay in control. Gamble responsibly. Call Gambling Help 1800 858 858 www.gamblinghelponline.org.au. THE PROFESSOR

Associate Professor, Michael Bailey, has worked as a biostatistician for 20 years and has published over 400 manuscripts in peer reviewed medical journals that have been cited more than 14,000 times.

In 2005 he completed a PhD which outlined a statistical approach to predicting sporting outcomes and with a specific chapter dedicated to the Brownlow. He is the only known person to be awarded a PhD for the prediction of the Brownlow Medal winner.

Bailey has exclusively teamed up with Betfair again to predict the 2019 Brownlow Medal. Looking at his outputs, we see a tie atop the count between 2015 winner, Nat Fyfe and 2016 winner, Patrick Dangerfield.

THE PROFESSOR’S TOP 20

POSITION PLAYER PREDICTED VOTES T1 Patrick Dangerfield 27.0 T1 Nat Fyfe 27.0 3 Lachie Neale 24.0 4 Marcus Bontempelli 23.0 T5 Jack Macrae 21.0 T5 Dustin Martin 21.0 T7 Tim Kelly 20.0 T7 Patrick Cripps 20.0 T9 Adam Treloar 18.0 T9 Travis Boak 18.0 T11 Zach Merrett 17.0 T11 Brodie Grundy 17.0 13 Scott Pendlebury 16.0 T14 Josh Dunkley 15.0 T14 Dayne Zorko 15.0 T14 Luke Shuey 15.0 T14 Andrew Gaff 15.0 T18 Shaun Higgins 15.0 T18 Luke Parker 14.0 T18 Matt Crouch 14.0 T18 Max Gawn 14.0 T18 Mitch Duncan 14.0 T18 Tim Taranto 14.0 T18 Elliot Yeo 14.0

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME Think! About your choices. You know the score. Stay in control. Gamble responsibly. Call Gambling Help 1800 858 858 www.gamblinghelponline.org.au. THE PROFESSOR

Michael Bailey has also graphed the timing of his predictions in figure 1 below.

This information can help you decide:

• When to back and lay in-play on Brownlow night • The Round 10 leader • When to expect Patrick Dangerfield to make a late charge • If any of the major players are under/over polling throughout the count

Figure 1. How the count will progress for leading 10 players

We strongly recommend you check out all of Bailey’s predictions here.

You’ll see his predictions from the last five years too. In 2017, he predicted the trifecta in order. In 2015, he predicted the top 7, with five of them in their exact position.

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME Think! About your choices. You know the score. Stay in control. Gamble responsibly. Call Gambling Help 1800 858 858 www.gamblinghelponline.org.au. BETFAIR LEADERBOARD

The Analysts, a collection of pro punters, have been sharing their Brownlow Medal Predictor all season on The Betfair Hub.

They allocate between 0.5 and 3.0 votes to the best players, depending on the number of players that stood out. The Analysts watch every game, analyse the statistics and seek out the media awards for even more opinion.

If you want to read a deeper explanation of their method, read their article on managing your own Brownlow spreadsheet.

Please enjoy The Analysts’ Top 20 leaderboard below.

You’ll notice that although a lot of the top five matches The Professor’s, the order is slightly different. The Analysts still have Dangerfield as a clear top selection. However, their count identifies Marcus Bontempelli as the main threat, with Nat Fyfe a close third.

THE ANALYSTS TOP 20

POSITION PLAYER PREDICTED VOTES 1 Patrick Dangerfield 28.0 2 Marcus Bontempelli 24.0 3 Nat Fyfe 23.5 4 Dustin Martin 22.5 T5 Lachie Neale 21.0 T5 Patrick Cripps 21.0 T7 Jack Macrae 20.5 T7 Tim Kelly 20.5 T9 Adam Treloar 18.5 T9 Scott Pendlebury 18.5 10 Brodie Grundy 18.0 12 Shaun Higgins 17.5 T13 Zach Merrett 17.0 T13 Josh Dunkley 17.0 15 Lachie Whitfield 16.0 T16 Travis Boak 15.0 T16 Dayne Zorko 15.0 T16 Luke Parker 15.0 T16 Stephen Coniglio 15.0 T16 Bachar Houli 15.0

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME Think! About your choices. You know the score. Stay in control. Gamble responsibly. Call Gambling Help 1800 858 858 www.gamblinghelponline.org.au. FAT STATS CHARLIE

Liam Webb is the creator of chaRlie, the most interactive Brownlow Medal interface you’ll find. Liam uses data science for his predictions and has been refining his model for the past four years, although his predictions stretch back to 2010.

For 2019, every AFL player has a mean vote prediction after Webb ran 100 iterations of his model. Plus, there is even a skew function that tries to correct historic under and overestimations by the model. For example, Marcus Bontempelli’s predictions skew up because he historically outpolls his statistics.

For this eBook, Liam’s predictions do not include the historic skew function.

The Fat Stats model also has Patrick Dangerfield winning. However, this count has a different Bulldog finishing in second place in Jack Macrae. His teammate, Marcus Bontempelli barely scrapes into the top 20 and is expected to poll just over 15 votes. Adam Treloar’s prolific ball accumulating year rounds out the podium.

Fat Stats Charlie is a brilliant website for your team vote betting too.

FAT STATS TOP 20

POSITION PLAYER PREDICTED VOTES 1 Patrick Dangerfield 28.9 2 Jack Macrae 27.1 3 Adam Treloar 26.4 T4 Lachie Neale 26.1 T4 Nat Fyfe 26.1 6 Andrew Gaff 22.0 7 Tim Kelly 20.8 8 Brodie Grundy 20.3 9 Dustin Martin 19.5 10 Shaun Higgins 19.3 11 Josh Dunkley 18.2 12 Matt Crouch 17.6 13 Travis Boak 17.3 14 Zach Merrett 16.9 15 Jake Lloyd 16.9 16 Mitch Duncan 16.9 17 Josh Kelly 16.4 18 Dom Sheed 15.9 19 Dion Prestia 15.9 20 Marcus Bontempelli 15.6

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME Think! About your choices. You know the score. Stay in control. Gamble responsibly. Call Gambling Help 1800 858 858 www.gamblinghelponline.org.au. BETFAIR’S MACHINE LEARNING MODEL

Betfair has its own team of Data Scientists who have created a machine learning model for the 2019 Brownlow Medal.

The model uses two data sets from FitzRoy, so that it includes every valuable statistic. Beyond kicks, handballs and goals, it also contains Supercoach scores, historic Brownlow votes, winning margin and any other valuable statistic you can think of.

Once the data is collected and cleaned, the model uses an ensemble of gradient boosted machines to create predictions.

You can find the predicted top 20 below. Plus if you’re data minded you can find the model (and all its outputs) on Betfair’s Brownlow GitHub.

BETFAIR’S MACHINE LEARNING TOP 20

POSITION PLAYER PREDICTED VOTES T1 Jack Macrae 23.0 T1 Adam Treloar 23.0 T1 Nat Fyfe 23.0 4 Patrick Dangerfield 22.9 5 Brodie Grundy 20.1 6 Dustin Martin 19.8 7 Lachie Neale 18.2 8 Tim Kelly 17.9 9 Josh Dunkley 16.9 10 Andrew Gaff 15.9 11 Travis Boak 15.4 12 Jarryd Lyons 15.3 13 Marcus Bontempelli 15.1 14 Patrick Cripps 14.9 15 Zach Merrett 14.1 16 Clayton Oliver 13.4 T17 Mitch Duncan 13.2 T17 Dayne Zorko 13.2 T19 Jake Lloyd 13.0 T19 Dom Sheed 13.0

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME Think! About your choices. You know the score. Stay in control. Gamble responsibly. Call Gambling Help 1800 858 858 www.gamblinghelponline.org.au. COLLECTIVE LEADERBOARD

As we don’t know which prediction is the most accurate, we have created a collective average. This is consistent with The Wisdom Of Crowds, a popular book by James Surowiecki.

It’s also why the Betfair Starting Price is such an accurate prediction tool. When there is enough information, or weight of money, the probabilities in a market are true.

Using the principles of Betfair, please enjoy our collective Top 20. The weightings are:

• The Professor: 30% • The Analysts: 30% • Fat Stats: 15% • Betfair’s Machine Learning Model: 10% • Before You Bet: 5% • AFL.com.au: 5% • King Punters: 5%

COLLECTIVE LEADERBOARD TOP 20

POSITION PLAYER PREDICTED VOTES 1 Patrick Dangerfield 27.5 2 Nat Fyfe 25.1 3 Lachie Neale 23.0 4 Jack Macrae 21.8 5 Dustin Martin 21.5 6 Marcus Bontempelli 21.1 T7 Tim Kelly 20.3 T7 Adam Treloar 20.3 9 Patrick Cripps 19.4 10 Brodie Grundy 18.7 T11 Josh Dunkley 16.9 T11 Zach Merrett 16.9 13 Travis Boak 16.6 14 Scott Pendlebury 16.5 15 Andrew Gaff 16.1 16 Shaun Higgins 15.9 17 Dayne Zorko 14.6 18 Luke Parker 13.8 19 Luke Shuey 13.6 20 Matt Crouch 13.5

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME Think! About your choices. You know the score. Stay in control. Gamble responsibly. Call Gambling Help 1800 858 858 www.gamblinghelponline.org.au. THE MARKET

How do these numbers compare with the Brownlow market on the Betfair Exchange and the odds from bookmakers?

PLAYER BETFAIR SPORTSBET BETEASY P. Dangerfield 2.95 2.85 2.85 L. Neale 5.58 4.75 5.50 N. Fyfe 7.05 6.50 6.00 M. Bontempelli 7.05 6.00 5.50 P. Cripps 12.21 10.00 12.00 B. Grundy 16.60 15.00 15.00 A. Treloar 33.18 26.00 19.00 J. Macrae 48.78 34.00 29.00

Betfair odds include include 2.5% commission. Odds correct as of 9:30AM 10/09/2019.

Betfair is a marketplace for betting. Bookies don’t set the odds. Punters do. Betfair create the markets and take a modest commission from winning bets (only 2.5% on AFL).

This business model, with these size margins, often means punters get greater value on the Exchange.

If you think Patrick Dangerfield is over the odds, you can back him. If you think he’s underpriced, you can lay. You can even back and lay the same player, which is something many punters will be doing on Brownlow Medal night when the votes are being announced live.

If you’re interested in getting the best odds this Brownlow, join the Betfair Exchange.

THE GAME WITHIN THE GAME Think! About your choices. You know the score. Stay in control. Gamble responsibly. Call Gambling Help 1800 858 858 www.gamblinghelponline.org.au. TEAM LEADERS

We know another popular betting market is most votes for each team. So we’re sharing weighted predictions for these too. The votes can be used for favourite out markets as well (eg Richmond without Martin).

The predicted votes column is another Wisdom Of The Crowd number.

On the far right will be a mean prediction, with equal weighting.

ADELAIDE CROWS BRISBANE LIONS