Gurowake

6: Kotoshogiku

Now that I've actively looked for an issue in this setup, I see the credit-to-rank curve as poorly constructed. For instance, the top of Sandanme should not have less ranks per credit than the bottom of Makushita, and the bottom of Makushita shouldn't have the same rate as the bottom of Jonidan (I didn't even look at the curve before, just took it as what it was). The curve should be very steep at the top of Makushita and gradually shallower as one goes down the ranks. Like, say, have one credit separate Ms1-2, Ms3-5, Ms6-9, Ms10-14, Ms15-20 and so on down the entire banzuke. Mayube change the pattern at some point, but at least start from that sort of basis. All Jk should probably be worth the same, and that amount should be at least 5, probably 10, in order to prevent a rapid gain on a small investment and to cause significant loss should the rikishi decide to quit. These suggestions combined would make them much riskier investments and hopefully focus people on promotions that matter more. As for sekitori, I don't think it's appropriate to double the spacing in some places when the promotion considerations are practically identical for every step throughout both divisions up until Sekiwake, but that's a different issue.

Well, the thing with the new recruits is they really can only go up in value, and picking anyone with experience still in Jk doesn't seem like a wise choiice.

Let's try again; still too much of a toss-up at this point. 5: Kotoshogiku

Very first match of the proper tournament Day 3, thanks to Araibira. Something interesting (to me at least) happened, spoilered below.

For those interested (like me) in such information before the official update: Break point for Hakuho is at 13/14, with 8/7 entries. Kakuryu - 10/11 with 6/9 Goeido - I don't know. I recall some sort of tie breaker procedure in reading this thread in the past when two break points made equal sense, but I have no clue. 4 entries for 8 or less, 7 for 9, and 4 for 10. Subject to input errors and Excel possibly deciding to randomly change my data.

Yeah, I highly recommend this match. I was astonished to see such a move at the Jonidan level.

It's interesting that we all knew they'd go with Harumafuji Day 3, yet the rest of the torikumi is so weird compared to previous basho it's really hard to say where they'll go next. Looks like there's going to be a few days of random guessing as the possibilities are still wide open. 4: Kotoshogiku

I don't agree with having your picks in one game affect what you pick in other games. You may say that "spreading them out" is different, but you'd be wrong. I don't intentionally plan on being high-variance, I make my picks from each game using the same information I have for each game and taking into consideration each game's attributes as well as my feelings regarding which way a match will go. If I end up being wrong on what I thought was the most likely outcome, on what basis could one say that making other picks would have been better? They're in general just as likely to fail, and according to my analysis, *more* likely to fail. That one match makes or breaks my entire day is not particularly relevant because I'm not relying on it for anything important. Diversifying your retirement stock portfolio makes sense. Eating a wide variety of healthy food makes sense. Buying life insurance to protect your family's future makes sense. Real Life Important Examples abound where you will give up expected value in order to increase the likelihood of a minimum payment. Making sure you don't get completely hosed by a single match? Not a big deal. There's no minimum payout I'm looking for - I want to maximize my expected value. There's different considerations at play with each daily game, and one should contemplate those considerations disconnected from whatever decisions are made for other games. Now, hinging all of that on a guy coming off injury, that's another story and perhaps a lesson learned.

I'm worried Osunaarashi will go down in history hated for just beating the crap out of his opponents legally. I've always thought that the rules of Sumo allow people to theoretically dish out much more brutal strikes than anyone usually attempts just because everyone knows that it's not part of "real Sumo". So you can't hit people with a closed fist; what about with the base of your palm at your thumb while your hand is wide open? It's pretty much the same thing: the entire forward motion of the arm and twisting of the body being focused on one small striking location. I see people do open-hand slaps a lot, but nothing that really tries to mimic a punch by using the whole body -- it's just the arm that's powering the slap. I'm sure it's a road they don't want to go down, and I'm thinking the shimpan might just say a certain technique is clearly illegal without it being directly prohibited in the rules; the fouls are there to force people to grapple and push, not strike, and it's possible that blatant striking techniques regardless of manner should be called fouls. Unfortunately, who's to say the difference between a push and a strike? They already are calling too many controversial hair-pull fouls. What Osaunarashi did to Tamawashi on shonichi certainly isn't blatant enough, but if it keeps working and no one chastises him for it, I'm worried about where it will go.

Yes, thinking more about it, designing an algorithm that could fluidly make reasonable guesses as to potential ways the torikumi could go, and then verify that it's consistent across the whole thing is somewhat dependent on the situations that need addressing being isolated enough from each other; while the torikumi for the lower divisions for Days 1 and 2 have been consistent at breaking the pairing of the match lower in rank of one that would be initially scheduled between heya-mates and pairing 1v3 and 2v4, I can see once you get to considering the 3rd and successive matches there things might get quite complicated. And of course sometimes they just do weird stuff. Day 2 of the current basho in Juryo, there would have been 9e v 10w had they not been in the same heya, causing the bottom part of the torikumi to no longer be as regular as the top part. Looking at it, there's a duplicated pattern in the last 6 matches: Ne v N+2e, Nw v N+1w and N+1w v N+2w for N = 9 and 12, but wouldn't Ne v N+1e, Nw v. N+2e, N+1w v. N+2w make more sense in terms of keeping people against those closer ranked to them? Differences in rank are (2, 1, 1) vs. (1, 1.5, 1). I guess I haven't looked as records, and since (I think) they do the torikumi after the Juryo matches they might take the results into consideration and go with the alternative that matches people up best, but given how regular and disrespective of record the rest of the schedule is it seems unlikely. So yeah, probably not a great idea to look into further; but it certainly has made me more interested in how they do the lower division torikumi, as simple as it normally is.

I got totally destroyed by Toyonoshima's loss; 3 others had him in Chain Gang so it wasn't a completely unique thought that it should have been in the bag for him, coming down off a poor basho against a relative newcomer that may have been pushed up too high. I think I had him picked to win for every other daily game as well, but at least in those I have a chance to continue.

Is it really worth the one basho head start on starting back up from the bottom to make a mockery of the process by embarrassing some poor 0-6 or 1-5 kid on Day 13? The Kyokai should use their special torikumi powers to put Ryuden up against someone who will actually manage a serious fight with him. And it's almost 2 years since he's fought a full basho; how does anyone think he can recover if he hasn't by now? Did the one basho he had 3 matches in cause a different injury, or severely aggravate his original one to the point that it's required over a year of healing? It seems entirely dishonorable.

Well, the opening clause of my post conditioned the entire analysis on the database being accurate, and indeed the bout database is not nearly as complete as I assumed it was. Now that I've looked through Terao's record, I see that there are basho where his record has been entered and it is known on which days he won and lost, but there's no knowledge of who he fought and thus the bout is not in the bout database. The database is a great resource that I forget the limitations of; I just had assumed all the data was there from any time period during my lifetime given how I could see which days they won and lost (which I do know stops sometime like in the 60s), but now it looks like they just remembered that information and not who they fought. It's possible there's enough information for basho like Kyushu 1979 in the days each rikishi won/lost to reconstruct the actual torikumi for the lower divisions using knowledge of how it would have been constructed, being able to distinguish from different possibilities based on the win/loss pattern of successive days. If I get really bored some day I might try it, but it definitely would be better suited to computer analysis due to the sheer amount of data. I could probably write pseudo-code given enough effort and desire, but I know absolutely nothing about actual coding. I understand that even if one could make out a consistent set of torikumi for all days that looked reasonable there's no guarantee that it's the one that they actually used; it would be an interesting project regardless.

Yeah, I suspected there was more to Bench than just the competition website given the level of interest for it compared to other games. Thank you all for your assistance.

That link doesn't help one bit. All it does is give me a bunch of disabled icons. And I'm pretty sure I'm *not* on the list of registered players, despite receiving an email confirmation.

Do you have a direct link to the daily entry for Bench? I tried a few reasonable URLs and got 404s or other errors. The link from SB only goes to the basho entry form, which is only telling me that the entries are closed for the basho. I looked at the code my computer was sent to try to find a hidden URL among them, but to no avail.

There is something strange going on with Bench Sumo, and I'm guessing there's something about it that I'm not aware of. I had to click on the Enter link from the SuperBanzuke list in order to submit my entry, as the buttons on the site appear non-functional (at least to me). After submitting it, I received an email notifying me of my entry, but where my name would be in that email there is nothing (and there was no place for me to put a shikona regardless as is alluded to in my pre-basho interview.) My sumogames.de username does not appear on the list of Bench Sumo, nor is there an entry on that list with a timestamp anywhere near the timestamp in the email message.

Day 3 - Harumafuji

1. Hakuho 13-2 2. Kakuryu 10-5 3. Terunofuji MK 4. Amuru KK 5. Onosho MK 6. Goeido 10-5 7. Sadanoumi MK 8. Tatsu KK 9. Kotokensei MK 10. Ikeru KK 11. Keitenkai KK 12. Musashikuni KK 13. Koike MK 14. Komatsukasa MK 15. Hiroshima KK 16. Sotairyu MK 17. Tosayutaka KK 18. Wakanoshima MK 19. Kizenryu MK TB: 13

Jd64w Yahagi

Jd63e Asakanai

Jk22e Takiguchi

Jk21w Ishii

Jd74w Kitadaichi