Gurowake

Jk14e Kokuryunami

Jk13e Imaizumi

Jk12w Shodai

Is this happening for Natsu?

How fluid is the seating arrangement during the lower division bouts? I don't see any separate rates for the non-sekitori matches or anything, and would like to think that the Kyokai doesn't hate their fans so much that they won't let general admission people wander down into seats that are bought by someone else that no one is going to use for hours. The ring-side seats one can see from footage of lower division matches are practically empty, but there do seem to be *some* people there.

So looking at old torikumi on the database it's pretty clear that there's a general rule that each person goes to the same side they are on banzuke, and if they're both the same side the higher ranking one goes to his side. Thus, for a very long time Hakuho always lined up on the east side as he was the only Yokozuna, and then afterwards he was the Yokozuna that performed better when there had been two yokozuna the previous tournament. In January, Hakuho was on the west side of the Banzuke due to Harumafuji winning the previous Yusho, and the latter sat out the tournament due to injury. However, in Hakuho's matches he is listed as lining up on the east side. I don't think this is an error in the database, as to my memory every single bout of Hakuho's I've seen he's been on the left to start. So was he just "considered" to be ranked Y1e for physical placement purposes even though his actual rank was Y1w? edit: I guess Haru 2013 Hakuho was fighting on the west; I guess I just hadn't noticed yet when I watched that basho that Hakuho was on the east side every single fight normally.

There are some rikishi like this guy that seem far more persistent than those on this list. He's had over 800 matches with a winning percentage around 36%, been active for 20 years now and his highest rank is Jd61. This guy would be even a better endurance persistence candidate, having an under 1/3 winning percentage in over 1000 matches and never getting above Jd67, but he retired earlier this year after around 27 years of wrestling. Those two are the only two rikishi with over 500 bouts in Jonokuchi. Another impressively persistent guys include this guy with the most matches at the lowest two divisions of any active rikishi, and will break the corresponding all-time record the previous mentioned rikishi set later next year if he continues to persist; although he did reach Sandanme, he was last there 19 years ago. Other currently active honorable mentions would be this guy and this guy. Interestingly enough, all rikishi with over 750 matches at Jonidan and below were active during the 2010s; were guys this persistent previously kicked out of their heya to make room for newer recruits (the waning popularity of sumo creating an excess of space) or is there something else that fundamentally changed? edit: Of the 222 riskishi with 50 or more basho in the lowest two divisions, the least recent one was intai in 1978. Only one with 60 or more basho was intai before 1990. edit 2: The 3 guys with the most non-sekitori bashos are all currently active (although one made Juryo for 1 basho back in 2005), and all 8 with over 150 such basho were active in the 2010s.

There would have to be a lot of extra bits in the system to handle all the possible things they take into consideration when determining the match-ups. While *most* is automated, someone has to pick the people who get to visit Juryo, and there's no real obvious pattern beyond the first couple days (and even then, it's not 100% consistent). While the mid-basho days might just be programmable as "random", the last 3 days they tend to have those on the border to promotion to Juryo against Juryo who are on the edge of falling out; while this sort of thing could be programmed, it sounds like a complete nightmare to try to prioritize exactly which match-ups you're most interested in. I suppose it's possible, but it's a much different problem than those typically faced by a computerized Swiss system and already pretty much everyone who wants a program to pair their tournament for them has different requirements that need to be met, necessitating a solution specific to that organization; there's no off-the-shelf software that does exactly what you want, so it's probably not cost efficient. Plus, Sumo is pretty heavy on tradition. If it's worked this long, why change it?

I would be interested, but I would prefer to know the rules before committing.

Seeing the compilation thread and its KK line for each basho, the scoring makes a lot more sense. Day 1 - Harumafuji Day 2 - Kisenosato (totally had my mind made up before the previous post came in)

Kintaro(u) is a legendary Japanese folk hero according to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintar%C5%8D

Are the guesses for one's entry posted to this thread? Are scores usually much better than they were last time?

I'm amused seeing the recruits having their eyes tested one-by-one, given that (at least, according to Wikipedia that cites some book) the great Futabayama was blind in one eye.

I'm assuming that the reason is that it is much easier to find opponents with 1 loss than it is with 0 losses, and if you're highly ranked there's less room to search above for an opponent. However, the effect of this is only for those who are high-ranked, and I didn't mean to only look at the Ms1 results - they just were the easiest available and they all showed something of the pattern I was looking for. The factor I was thinking of is that someone who has yet to lose is more likely to be under-ranked than someone who has lost a match. Thus, the actual quality of the opponent would be higher even if the ranks of their current opponents are nominally the same. However, I do admit that the overall effect may be slight; feel free to point out even more of my misunderstandings of how things actually work given that I'm kinda new to this and trying to use analysis that comes from other head-to-head tournament games.

I have to imagine that strength of schedule plays a very important role in exactly how everything shakes out. I'm not going to look at every single result, but from a small sample of 6 win Ms1 rikishi since 2000, there's a general trend that one received a larger promotion the longer one remained unbeaten. I don't want to bother to calculate exact strengths of schedule either, but given the format in Ms it stands to reason that winning the first 6 bouts will give you on average a tougher schedule than losing the first and winning the rest.

How much is known about the use of past results that were not entirely reflected upon by the banzuke of the previous tournament? For instance, Takanoiwa's less than impressive rise up this banzuke may partially reflect the fact that he was not demoted at all for his MK in January. Also, how often does the group of people making the banzuke change?

1. B 2. A 3. A 4. B 5. A 6. B 7. A 8. B 9. B 10. A 11. B 12. A 13. A 14. B 15. B 16. B 17. A 18. A 19. X 20. A 21. A

I'm not going to say that I predicted Homasho at m7 on my "official" prediction*, but I'm totally not surprised to see him there. The only other data point for 14-1 from J2 is up to m10 (with the same number of maegashira as this banzuke), and I put him at m11 due to space issues, but I had a nagging feeling he'd be back up at m7 because that's where he was ranked for the January Basho that he did not compete in. He clearly showed he totally dominates down in Juryo, so they just decided to put him back where he had previously been ranked. I was going back and forth on Sadanoumi vs. Azumaryu for m17e, as the data showed it was just as likely to promote in Sadanoumi's position as it was for Arawashi but demoting Azumaryu seemed a bit steep. There were demotions to Juryo from his position in the past, but the sample of them I looked at didn't have as many Maegashiras and most were to J1; with how much it was a stretch to promote Sadanoumi (1 in 39 I think previously), it didn't seem more likely to happen than not. The biggest other mistake I had was Takanoiwa at m9w, and I'm really confused about where he ended up as no one previously has been promoted so few spaces up the banzuke in his situation. He didn't fight any sankyaku or top 3 maegashira, but he did have wins against an m6, both m8s and an m9. Perhaps the officials thought he didn't look very impressive in his wins? *Got interested in sumo just last week, missed the deadline for the GTB competition.