Gurowake

This brings up a question that I've thought about before briefly but was distracted by other things and/or didn't have good context to ask it: Does each stable have satellite locations in the 3 other cities on a permanent basis, or do they rent out different places depending on what's available? It would seem quite an expense to rent a location in the 3 other cities that you only use for one month a year, but then how else can you guarantee that you're going to find the kind of space that you need? I guess there's a lot to the economics of the entire sport that I have absolutely no clue about.

Muslims have come up with all sorts of rules for living in the upper reaches of latitude, especially now that Ramadan is occurring at the time of the year with the most daylight. Those that live north of the arctic circle will generally fast by the daylight hours of the nearest major city at a more reasonable latitude; I see Winnipeg is a popular choice for those in northern Canada. Apparently here in the Detroit area (which has a huge Arab population, although with significant percentage of Chaldeans) where the light situation isn't too bad, someone figured the prophet didn't know about the effects of latitude on the length of daylight and as such would not have expected fasting for any longer than the days would be in the holy cities, and thus some use the daylight hours of Mecca to frame their fasting hours. Personally, I would advocate local clerics setting a particular local time for fasting that corresponded to the 12 most sunlit hours and not adjusting that from year to year based on the astronomical changes in order to have a regular Ramadan schedule to follow that need not be recalculated each year. But I'm not religious, so what do I know? Also, Osunaarashi didn't appear to be fazed by last year's fast, going 10-5 in his Juryo debut; his debut this year in the Makuuchi joi will definitely be a real challenge and I see him getting thoroughly schooled on an empty stomach.

Jk23w Fudano

Jd62w Nakamurayama edited to reflect correct side of banzuke

Jd73w Shonannoumi

Jk21e Enshunada

Jd11w Narumi

If 49/4 with 10+ was an additional performance criteria on top of the current one instead of an alternate criteria, that is, jun-yusho with playoff at minimum would be required in two straight tournaments with at least one win, the following would result: Type A delays: 2 yusho equivalent did not meet alternate requirements immediately, additional basho required in order to do so. Type B delays: Did not have consecutive 2 yusho-equivalent on historical promotion, did so (or not) later as noted. As noted before, Kakuryu, Harumafuji, and Wakanohana66 would be Type A, never promoted. Futahaguro and Onokuni would not have been promoted under either criteria. Hakuho: no change Asashoryu: no change Musashimaru: Type A, 2 basho Takanohana: strictly according to criteria would have been promoted earlier; assuming he would have been passed over at that opportunity, no change Akebono: Type A, 2 basho Asahifuji: Type A, 2 basho Hokutoumi: Type A, 2 basho, Type B, 10 basho Takanosato: Type B, 1 basho Chiyonofuji: Type B, 5 basho MIenoumi: Type A, 2 basho, Type B, 3 basho Wahanohana56: Do two consecutive playoff losses with a previous career win count? If so, no change. If not, Type B, never promoted. Kitanoumi: no change Wajima: Type B, 3 basho Kotozakura: Type A, 2 basho Kitanofuji: Type A, 1 basho Tamanoumi: Type A, 1 basho, Type B, 5 basho Sadanoyama: Type B, 18 basho, but then Type A, never promoted, sorta. That is, met alternate criteria on date of historical promotion, but did not meet today's criteria originally and did not do so until 18 basho later, at which time he did not meet alternate criteria. Then he retired. Tochinoumi: Type B, never promoted Taiho: no change Kashiwado: Type B, never promoted Asashio: Type B, never promoted Wakanohana45: Type A&B, 3 basho Tochinishiki: Type A, 2 basho Further previous Yokozuna retired previous to 6-basho era. Current criteria would drop about just as many Yokozuna (accounting precisely for it is tricky with Sadanoyama's and Wakanohana56's situations), but the ones dropped are so long ago that I don't know if any of us have good opinions regarding whether they should have been promoted compared to those recently who have been sources of consternation. Additionally, the promotions would have been recognized on average earlier by the alternate criteria. My personal belief is that the focus on two tournaments is stupid stupid stupid stupid, and by promoting Kakuryu they seemed to imply any Ozeki making two yusho-equivalents would be promoted regardless of previous record. Not to say that it happened in the recent Yokozuna promotion, but there's definitely room for win buying/trading with that narrow focus. I really have high hopes for Kakuryu to do well, but in the case he averages less than 10 wins like he did as an Ozeki (actual number: 9.92 to nearest hundredth, 9.1 excluding the last two Ozeki basho), they definitely need to rethink how they evaluate the current criteria with respect to the rikishi's overall career. It is my hope that I have explained through historical data why their current criteria is unappealing with respect to historical continuity, and have offered a criteria somewhat more aligned with history that would help prevent the Kyokai needing to get their feathers ruffled by under-performing Yokozuna that should have been left at Ozeki.

I'm slightly inclined to believe that his fellow Mongolians laid down for him just long enough, and they could do this without (much) murmuring about the possibilities just because the time period being studied was so short. Maybe he did just up his game for those basho, and he just didn't have the time to prepare after his promotion ceremonies and we'll see him back in Hatsu/Haru form for Nagoya. I certainly have been rooting for him since he was the reason that I got interested in the sport in the first place, but his Natsu performance made me as angry as the NSK. Perhaps there really is something with all the modern social activity that goes on following a new Yokozuna promotion that wasn't really part of things even 20 years ago, and that hoopla can also explain Harumafuji's 15-0, 15-0, 9-6, 15-0. But it doesn't explain the next 4 performances that wouldn't even have gotten him promotion to Ozeki. Neither of them have really shown themselves to be particularly worthy Ozeki (Harumafuji slightly more so with his few scattered Yusho); they had no jun-yushos between them as Ozekis outside of Kakuryu's first qualifying tournament. They had plenty as Sekiwakes (or lower), which suggests that part of the reason that they were so boring as Ozeki is that they hit their 8 wins and stopped caring unless they were in the hunt for the Yusho. Such an attitude would clearly change with the 49/4 and 10+ win criteria (although again, I'm not particularly expecting to change anything, just making conversation). edit: Kotoshogiku, Kotooshu and Baruto have/had 1 Jun-Yusho among them as Ozeki with plenty as Sekiwake. No Ozeki had a jun-yusho between 2009.07 and 2013.05, right as Kisenosato got 4 in a row. Note that Asashoryu "retired" 2010.01, so there weren't two Yokozunas for most of that time, and there were up to 6 Ozeki.

I can't, and that's why he wasn't promoted in reality. The purpose of this was to suggest that the quality and consistency of performance necessary for consideration as Yokozuna should be determined over a period of time greater than that for Ozeki, and that setting the criteria as I did would result in pretty much nothing but positive changes from the historical record. The only reason that Konishiki's record was not conducive to promotion is the reliance on the current metric, one that has promoted Ozeki without a significant history of Yokozuna-quality performances due to the concentration of attention on a mere two tournaments. Changing to a metric that allows one to exclude those Ozeki with 2 consecutive freak occurances that got them unduly promoted in many eyes while still allowing the remaining Yokozuna to have been promoted would lead to a situation where Konishiki looks more than worthy solely judging the record. I don't know what the point of posting this was, but after the discussion about Yokozuna promotions that occurred after the previous basho, I figured I might as well gather some statistical data with regard to at least one easily determinable metric and analyze the suggested changes. Make of it what you will, I'm not expecting anything to change; I just was curious after making the off-hand suggestion of 48/4 during that discussion and felt others might be interested in what the ramifications would have been if the Yokozuna promotion was viewed more similarly to a super-Ozeki promotion rather than the odd creature that it is now. Just some inter-basho boredom satiation.

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

No rank debuts for any Makuuchi rikishi. Osunaarashi, Terunofuji, Sadanoumi had KKs at career highs in the Maegashira ranks and thus are again at career highs, and are the only Makuuchi rikishi to be hitting new career highs. Kagamio, Azumaryu, Sokokurai, Kyokushuho, Jokoryu, Ikioi and Aoiyama are promoted back to ranks that were already their career highs. Quite odd how many of them ended up like that.

Yeah, I didn't even bother looking at anything above Komusubi because I thought everything above it was pretty much rote decisions. It took me a second run through to total up all my points for GTB that I noticed the Sekiwake situation. It's baffling.

Maybe it has to do with something that happened here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama,_Fukui

http://sumodb.sumogames.de/Query.aspx?show_form=0&shusshin=202&form1_year=2014&form1_month=5 42. Also, I had no clue Orora was a foreigner. He was born in Russia, but (I assume) ethnically a member of a indigenous Siberian group related to the Mongols, the Buryat.

Thank you! I switched the delimiters in the options, pasted in a bit of the table, and the data was read as being numbers correctly; I just had to switch back to make it display "proper" for me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousands_separator (actually goes to decimal mark, but whatever) Different countries have different rules about how to separate digits in large numbers. It is especially annoying when trying to copy tables of such numbers into Excel because I've not found out a way to tell Excel that it should treat commas and periods in the data differently than normal. edit: I've now read that French Canadians follow the French style and English Canadians follow the English style, so one might say that if you're writing numbers accompanying English text, you should follow the English style for writing numbers. But I'm sure most people will just say the way they originally learned is clearly the correct way.

So I figured out a fast way of inserting all those fiddly table elements using excel, so I might start posting a bunch of stuff I consider interesting in a tabular format. We'll start with something I wondered about after seeing on old banzuke in the DB with career high rank displayed: what percent of rikishi eventually manage each rank? So, here is a list of all the career high ranks for all rikishi who hit career highs in 1958 (when the 6-basho system was started) or later. While not an absolutely perfect way of picking up all people from a certain time forward, it's reasonable. Column 1: Career high rank. Column 2: Number of rikishi that had that career high rank. Column 3: Number of rikishi that had a higher career high rank (that is, they were promoted out of this rank) Column 4: % of rikishi making this rank to be promoted eventually. Column 5: % of rikishi considered that have this career high rank. Column 6: % of rikishi that made with this career rank or higher. # # higher % promoted % total cum % Yokozuna 27 0.34% 0.34% Ozeki 31 27 46.55% 0.39% 0.74% Sekiwake 71 58 44.96% 0.90% 1.64% Komusubi 72 129 64.18% 0.91% 2.55% Maegashira 239 201 45.68% 3.03% 5.59% Juryo 261 440 62.77% 3.31% 8.90% Makushita 1553 701 31.10% 19.72% 28.62% Sandanme 1929 2254 53.88% 24.49% 53.11% Jonidan 2581 4183 61.84% 32.77% 85.88% Jonokuchi 1112 6764 85.88% 14.12% 100.00% Total 7876

That's like counting an accountant's hours by how long it takes him to fill in the data on your tax return and not counting all the research into tax law and pouring over the records of your business that went into coming up with all the figures for it. There's no way you can be in the ring without doing the work outside of it.

Thanks for the replies. With how many tables some people seem to make I thought there was a simple converter, but I guess if you have a template that saves a lot of work.

I see lots of people that make the semi-pretty tables that are offered here, and have made one myself (on Kinboshi stats) but did so manually editing in every single bit of code (mostly copy/pasting but still a lot of work) in order to get it to display properly with rows and columns aligned correctly and such. I'm guessing there's some sort of easier way to input all the data and some sort of tool available that will add in all the necessary code, but I can't seem to find anything. It's quite likely that there's some overall tool that I'm just not familiar with, but I really don't know much about forum software. I can paste something in from Excel and have it look pretty in my edit box, but that nice formatting doesn't carry over to the actual post.

I really don't care if it's changed or not; it's perfectly fair and good enough for its purpose. Asking it to be more realistic in its odds may make the game too serious and too complicated to be worth managing. My issues are more academic and theoretic in nature; I have a nasty habit of dragging my education around whatever hobbies I take up. I probably should just leave this alone.

Oh, I like the strategy the way it is. If it's thought that the way it's set up is totally fine and there are no problems, I have no personal complaints. The game just feels like the odds are set arbitrarily low compared to how they'd be set by an actual sports book. Regardless, what's the reason behind making it so hard to come out with a profit that one needs an additional rule to force people to wager? If the players' actual EV were to become very slightly positive but odds-negative (that is, players would be able to use knowledge not reflected in the odds to profit even though they would lose if the odds were precisely proportionate to the true likelihoods) as would likely happen if the implied vig was set at a reasonable value, the rule wouldn't be needed. (I also have significant issues with the odds calculation method as well, but that would require me doing a significant amount of research to give exact opinions of what's wrong. It may be the case that the method of odds computation is fundamentally based on historical data that gets updated each basho, but from what I recall seeing of it, it seemed pretty arbitrary in comparison. I am not in favor of changing the method personally, I am just concerned that the odds calculation is not particularly accurate. But maybe that's what makes the game interesting and trying to fix it would only make the game less enjoyable. ::shrug::)

If you want to talk about changing the rules of this game, how about giving more reasonable odds instead of ones that make people want to not spend their points? On an even matchup I get a 1.5 multiplier. Supposing I were allowed to only pick one match-up, I would have to win every 2 out of 3 to break even. The fact you have to pick 3 is irrelevant to how the odds work; 3 choices of 1.5 picks would lead to needing to win about 3 out of 10 times, which corresponds to winning 2 out of 3 bouts. If this were real money I were betting, I would get away very very fast; most vig on sports betting is around 10% I think, meaning you need to be right about 6 times out of 11 on a nominal even match-up. Playing the minimum number to get qualified for scoring is a very obvious strategy apparent to anyone oblivious to how the odds work just by looking at old results and seeing pretty much everyone not recouping what they bet. If you just changed the even match-ups to have a multiplier of 2 and basically left everything else the same, there would no longer be any incentive to not play. Given that the way the odds are calculated are often not really in line with the expectations of a match, people should generally be able to have positive expected value this way and as such should be playing as much as possible. Maybe, maybe, maybe tune it to 1.95 or 1.9 to provide a more reasonable expectation of loss as would be traditional in sports betting, but given the nature of the game I don't see any reason why that's necessary. Additionally, if you want to maintain the current terrible odds, for people that don't wager enough credits at least you could just subtract the additional amount of credits that would need to be wagered, assuming they lost whatever bets they would have placed. That would be a fair and reasonable representation of how they would have done, at worst.

So I check Wikipedia's main page for news from around the world quite a lot, and one of the things mentioned there was Kakuryu's recent promotion to yokozuna. Not knowing much about sumo, I decided to read exactly what that meant and why Wikipedia's front page was reporting on it, and after reading about the entire ranking system I was pretty much hooked. I spent quite a while just reading over old banzuke to watch the typical progressions of people up the ranks, not bothering to watch any matches because I didn't really know if they were actually all that interesting. Eventually I did decide to watch some of the matches from the high ranked guys, and I was quite impressed with how the top level matches tended to play out. I might just lose interest after the coming basho as my attention does tend to wander when there's nothing to do, but I've been heavily anticipating watching the basho day-by-day not knowing what's going to happen as opposed to watching everything that's happened well in the past. Major thanks to Kintamayama for his digests of Makuuchi bouts from the last few years.