Gurowake

As for Hakuho vs. Kisenosato, in my memory the latter seems to relish in the mind-game aspect of the tachi-ai and ends up participating on both ends of a matta far more often than anyone else does. Hakuho has a pretty much set routine, and with both mattas there was nothing that he did that should have indicated to Kisenosato that he was about to put his other hand down. Hakuho is normally pretty slow at putting that second hand down, but Kisenosato was just too anxious to start and get the jump on Hakuho, which is really a cheater's mind-set. I watched the replay carefully and every time Hakuho's left arm did not budge before Kisenosato started, or in the last case hesitated without going. There is no good reason besides trying to pre-empt the other rikishi that you should constantly be starting before the other guy even moves his second hand, and that shouldn't be a part of the sport.

I agree with Kintamayama in his video that while there likely was a hair pull by Goeido, Kakuryu was already on his way down. Yes, he pulled the hair before the yokozuna hit the clay, but it seemed evident in the replay that he was not going to be able to recover from the position he was in and the hair-pull had no effect on the outcome of the match. However. The fouls are there to prevent injury. It doesn't matter if your opponent is on the way down, you still can't punch him or kick him above the knee or box his ears or bend back his fingers or gouge hi eyes or whatever else I'm forgetting is illegal, because that stuff can be dangerous. An incidental hair-pull is not as dangerous as some of those, but it is still a foul. If a wrestler commits a foul during the match, they lose. Period. Nevertheless, I agree that most of the incidental stuff that gets called is really hard to avoid when trying a legitimate technique, as opposed to the others that you basically have to intentionally commit, and so perhaps they need to think about relaxing their judgments on when exactly a hair-pull is a foul. It is pretty ridiculous that someone can lose in the way Goeido did, but it's certainly the "correct" decision for how things stand currently. Maybe this will be a motivation to try to come up with a better standard for when incidental hair-pulls can be ignored. Edit: I would be surprised if other rikishi even bother to watch the matches before them instead of mentally preparing for their own fight. Hakuho though derives so much of his dominance to understanding the weakness of his opponents that it makes sense that he'd be watching them intently. As for conspiracy theories, (1) Goeido is nowhere close to becoming Ozeki; even if he could win his remaining matches (still doubful), he'd still need at least 11 wins (now 12) in Nagoya, and (2) the benefit to a Yokozuna for any win not in competition for the yusho is marginal (their running account gets a slight bump, but they already make plenty of money compared to that) and if that match ends up mattering for the Yusho, it would only be to Hakuho's detriment. He was just calling what he saw, and the judges had to make the final decision anyway; it's not like Hakuho himself called the foul.

When I looked at the Ms situation I definitely was wondering myself if they were going to put up Tochinoshin against that guy in the bottom 4th of the division for the Yusho. I can certainly sympathize that it seems to be a complete mismatch unworthy of deciding the Yusho, but for Aki 2013 6-0 Arawashi at Ms10 was put against a 6-0 at Ms59. And lost. So it certainly looks like they're willing to a guy at 6-0 that only would get promoted with a win against someone at the bottom of the division, and it's not automatically a foregone conclusion. Unless there's been some change in philosophy since last year, precedence would seem to call for him to face the low-ranked 6-0.

Heh, I picked someone different for each wave; one was bound to do well!

I find it somewhat amusing how much they like pairing Endo and Osunaarashi. They clearly are looking to push match-ups that people will be excited to see instead of following some rote procedure. It somewhat de-legitimizes the sport in the sense of a pure competition with match-ups following strict rules, but it's overall healthy for the sport in the sense of maintaining interest.

Day 13 - Toyonoshima

Easy mistake to make, but these guys are Makushita, not Maegashira.

Day 12 - Toyonoshima

Do you have any examples from the past to confirm that assumption? Ozeki are more likely to get the Maegashira that are doing exceedingly well; recent examples are Kotoshogiku in Hatsu 2014 against Endo and Kisenosato current basho against Ikioi. Also, Kisenosato in Haru 2014 faced M5e Chiyootori instead of M3e Kaisei on Day 14 for no apparent reason other than the former was doing better. While one might say that it was merely a scheduling issue, consider that the original plan for Kisenosato was likely to get Kotooshu that day before the ex-Ozeki withdrew; if so, Kisenosato would still not have faced Kaisei but had already faced both M4s. So I suppose what I suggested is not completely accurate and I was conflating one thing with another; sometimes the Ozeki will face some other Maegashira instead of one the top 16 ones, but it's usually not at the expense of the 16th ranked one but one nearly at random.

I wonder how many guys have gotten more wins in their Makuuchi debut than in their previous basho. Off to the database.... edit: There's actually quite a lot; most recent was Aoiyama with 11-4 in his debut. Other current Makuuchi rikishi with 11 win debuts with 10 win previous basho are Tochiozan and Toyohibiki. Hakuho had 12 in his debut, but had 12 the previous basho as well.

By virtue of being on the east side of the banzuke, he is considered to be higher ranked and ends up being #16 overall. Since the Yokozuna generally fight the 15 highest ranked rikishi other than themselves, this makes Endo automatically on their slate but Toyonoshima manages to avoid them, although he still managed to fight Harumafuji on account of there being a rikishi in the top 16 that are from his heya (2 actually, which is why he even fought down to m5e). What is a bit odd though is that Endo has had to also face both Ozeki, where one might expect that they would give Ozeki different schedules and take the load off Endo by having Ozeki fight the 17th ranked rikishi. However, they probably just wanted to have Endo fight everyone at the top on account of his popularity. Additionally, they may have it in their plans to give Endo an easier week 2 schedule, where he perhaps fights mainly people ranked lower than himself, while Toyonoshima fights more of the k1-m3 folks.

I also have my Juryo hope not showing up, and I also received an email indicating that I chose Kawabata.

Day 11 - Chiyotairyu

Yeah, the problem people have with henkas is that it makes for unexciting matches. I personally don't have a problem with them seeing as I can only watch them on my computer screen well after the fact, but to the average fan, or even worse the people that pay for the close box seats, they want to see something more exciting for their money. If the best guys in the business are pulling off moves that make their opponents nervous about charging fully at them it might make them win more matches, but it will make people less interested in shelling out the big bucks for those ring side setas. There's a reason why American football is the biggest sport in the US; fans like seeing athletes slam into each other as hard as possible. I can only think that Kakuryu is intentionally doing what he's doing using unexciting moves to develop a reputation in the basho that no one expects him to do well in just so he can go full speed next basho and catch everyone off guard. Maybe he's just saving his effort for ones he think he can win. While he may have been handed the last two by his Mongolian brethren at least in part, he still was far more energetic against everyone else in those events.

day 10 - Aoiyama I briefly contemplated Ikioi, but I'm thinking they'll give him to Kisenosato.

Suddenly got better a few minutes later after running poorly for at least an hour. Maybe someone saw it, or maybe complaining just causes things I complain about to fix themselves to make me look stupid.

Something is ailing the sumogames.de server. It responds to ping requests fine, but it's very difficult to get anything to load. I managed to get in my pick for ISP and started looking at Odd Sumo, but now I can't connect. The normal database pages load eventually, but any queries end up taking too long to resolve and time out.

You could have things like "Pick to maximize tiebreakers", "Pick to minimize tiebreakers", "Pick rikishi fighting up/down in rank the most" and "Pick rikishi that are closest to losing/winning records.", "Pick the lowest ranked eligible rikishi". I'm not sure how difficult it would be to implement those things automatically; certainly it could be a lot of work to figure those things out manually, but given that kind of information is readily available and a player-selected order of application it should be able to be auomated, down to a random selection is necessary.

Not that it matters, but the leader board shows me with the 2 absences properly belonging to Adonishiki. Day 9 - Kisenosato

Interestingly enough, Taiho's kinboshi rate was significantly lower during the years he was older than Hakuho is today compared to the previous years. After Nagoya 1969, he went 55-4 against Maegashira in actual bouts, for a loss rate of round 6.8%. Chiyonofuji's kinboshi rate while younger than Hakuho is today was 5.6%.

Pre-Natsu Kinboshi rates for all post-WWII (I think that was my criteria at least) Yokozuna. There may be mistakes, but attempts have been made to remove all fusen wins and the one disqualification loss of Asashoryu which supposedly does not grant a kinboshi. I was going to update the data post-basho, but I figured since y'all are discussing them.... It's difficult to figure out just how good Hakuho's numbers are here, because he's still clearly very dominant whereas I would guess most Kinboshi come near the end of the Yokozuna's career. I might try to get similar numbers from the other sub-10%ers in their prime, although I'd say Asashoryu was at his prime or not far off when he was forced to quit. Yokozuna total wins losses rate Hakuho 271 263 8 0.02952 Tamanoumi 61 58 3 0.04918 Chiyonofuji 357 328 29 0.081232 Taiho 335 307 28 0.083582 Asashoryu 275 250 25 0.090909 Kitanofuji 137 120 17 0.124088 Takanohana 311 272 39 0.125402 Wakanohana I 171 149 22 0.128655 Kitanoumi 410 357 53 0.129268 Wajima 294 255 39 0.132653 Hokutoumi 156 135 21 0.134615 Akebono 259 224 35 0.135135 Haguroyama 162 140 22 0.135802 Wakanohana II 193 166 27 0.139896 Kashiwado 233 198 35 0.150215 Tochinishiki 204 173 31 0.151961 Musashimaru 170 144 26 0.152941 Sadanoyama 122 103 19 0.155738 Harumafuji 55 46 9 0.163636 Azumafuji 114 94 20 0.175439 Terukuni 116 95 21 0.181034 Takanosato 59 48 11 0.186441 Chiyonoyama 177 143 34 0.19209 Futahaguro 40 32 8 0.2 Kagamisato 152 121 31 0.203947 Onokuni 96 76 20 0.208333 Asahifuji 52 40 12 0.230769 Kotozakura 49 37 12 0.244898 Asashio 78 58 20 0.25641 Mienoumi 36 26 10 0.277778 Yoshibayama 72 52 20 0.277778 Wakanohana III 64 45 19 0.296875 Maedayama 24 16 8 0.333333 Tochinoumi 88 55 33 0.375 edit: managed to construct a table, but the editor messed up some of the links, and I have no clue how to fix them as they were literally copied from the DB into Excel and then into the forum editor without me constructing them.

Day 8 - Hakuho

I recall that there's something specific in the rules to hold a kabu that explicitly says that holders must be Japanese citizens. That's written in stone, and can't be changed, so it explicitly allows naturalized citizens to hold them. The Japanese still regard the naturalized citizens as foreigners for everything else.

??? Did you mean Ikioi? Kaisei is 3-2, won the first 2 days, and lost Day 5.

Day 7 - Hakuho