Meanwhile, in ISP..

[Kintamayama 45,490]

158 players, only 25 are 3-2 and upwards. I'm killing this time more than ever, but I still maintain that these one-sided guesses are unreasonable. Day 2 was the only day that the majority won. The rest? Bloodbath.

Edited March 13 by Kintamayama

[Ganzohnesushi 525]

Your talent in picking exactly these one-side guessed bouts is undisputable

Ganzohnesushi

[Fashiritētā 184]

Carnage

[Kintamayama 45,490]

And again, totally one sided. 35-121? Really? Ukrainian derby? Aonishiki is that inferior? Geez.. Now only 13 players with winning records.

Edited March 14 by Kintamayama

[Ganzohnesushi 525]

5 hours ago, Kintamayama said:

Now only the 13 players with winning records.

And to me it is no surprise that among these 13 we find 9 Makushita ranked players.

Ganzohnesushi

[Sakura 1,495]

14 hours ago, Kintamayama said:

Aonishiki is that inferior? 

Not really. I thought it was a great choice on your part, hard to call and I have to pick someone. I thought that Shishi had the slight edge in the bout and if most people thought he also had a slight edge then we'll skew the numbers. 

[Gurowake 4,099]

I'm surprised that there were plenty of people that said "Shishi has a better record so far, so he must be better" compared to the people who actually analyzed how their careers went so far and determined that Aonishiki is probably stronger, at least on a long enough time scale.  Aonishiki's career has gone so much better I find it rather odd to think people thought Shishi would win in general, unless there's just something about their relative styles that suggests Shishi is favored.

[Bunbukuchagama 770]

12 minutes ago, Gurowake said:

Aonishiki is probably stronger, at least on a long enough time scale.

But we are not being asked to decide who will have a better career or even a better basho. We just need to guess who will win today. 

And current momentum is one of the factors in picking the winner of a single bout. 

[Gurowake 4,099]

11 minutes ago, Bunbukuchagama said:

But we are not being asked to decide who will have a better career or even a better basho. We just need to guess who will win today. 

And current momentum is one of the factors in picking the winner of a single bout. 

I'm not discounting the fact that some people are heavily influenced in their picks by momentum.  I'm just quite surprised that it was that much more of a factor to people than career record to date to cause such an imbalance in that direction.  If someone told me that the picks for that match were imbalanced and asked which side I thought it went, I would have been wrong.

Edited March 15 by Gurowake

[Bunbukuchagama 770]

1 minute ago, Gurowake said:

I'm not discounting the fact that some people are heavily influenced in their picks by momentum.  I'm just quite surprised that it was that much more of a factor to people than career record to date to cause such an imbalance in that direction.  If someone told me that the picks for that match were imbalanced and asked which side I thought it went, I would have been wrong.

Let's face it: Aoinishiki had a very disappointing start of the basho. From the beginning of his pro career, he was rising on Takerufuji's schedule, but is looking quite vulnerable at the moment. On the other hand, most fans always saw Shishi as a clumsy ogre owing his measure of success only to his big body; after a 4-1 start, he was suddenly considered a pleasant surprise. 

The balance of picks we have gotten on that day was a result of an intersection of these two sentiments.