Asashosakari

My guess that I nearly forgot to submit: Onosato (Yw 11-4) Y Hoshoryu (Ye 1-4-10) Kotozakura (Oe 8-7) O --- Wakatakakage (S2w 10-5) S Kirishima (S1w 8-7) Takayasu (Kw 10-5) K Aonishiki (M1e 11-4) Tamawashi (M4w 11-4) M1 Abi (M2w 9-6) Hakuoho (M4e 8-7) M2 Oho (M2e 7-8) Atamifuji (M10e 11-4) M3 Gonoyama (M6w 9-6) Hiradoumi (M5e 8-7) M4 Wakamotoharu (M1w 6-9) Kotoshoho (M15e 13-2 Y) M5 Ichiyamamoto (M8w 9-6) Onokatsu (M3e 6-9) M6 Oshoma (Ke 3-12) Kusano (M14e 11-4) M7 Takanosho (M11e 9-6) Ura (M9e 8-6-1) M8 Kinbozan (M3w 4-11) Midorifuji (M12e 9-6) M9 Fujinokawa (M14w 10-5) Churanoumi (M13e 9-6) M10 Shodai (M13w 9-6) Daieisho (S1e 0-0-15) M11 Takerufuji (M6e 5-8-2) Mitakeumi (M16w 10-5) M12 Roga (M10w 7-8) Meisei (M5w 3-12) M13 Tokihayate (M11w 6-9) Sadanoumi (M8e 4-11) M14 Asakoryu (M12w 6-9) Tobizaru (M7e 3-10-2) M15 Shonannoumi (J2e 10-5) Tomokaze (J2w 9-6) M16 Nishikigi (J1e 8-7) Ryuden (J1w 8-7) M17 Hitoshi (J6e 10-5) Shishi (M17w 7-8) M18 --- It sounds like the only difference we might have is the two M11's...?

I suppose the sumo world might have avoided a different scandal during his active days there...

Right, this more general report of that issue slipped through the cracks last year:

Are improvements to the games sites in the cards, too? I would really, really love to see Seki-Toto brought in line with the other games, in particular the addition of an automated banzuke page, and the replacement for anything relevant that's still hosted on Zenjimoto's anasuya.com (mainly because the links on there are dead as they still point back to sumogames.com).

I agree, and consequently I don't really understand this persistent talk of an alleged "disconnect" between the match-making and the banzuke-making that has been a staple feature of these threads for the last year or so. It is much more likely that the "exchange bout" assumption is simply false, and that they made the Daiamami - Kitanowaka match merely because it paired up two rikishi who each had a strong individual incentive to win. No other considerations are necessary to explain it, just like nothing else is necessary to explain why, say, Oshoumi and Shiden were made to fight despite their respective tournament goals (promotion and non-demotion) having absolutely nothing to do with each other. There's no disconnect because no connection was ever intended in the first place.

So three retirements, only Minatoryu will be newly banzuke-gai.

Win for the hypothesis?

Yabugasaki and Kyoda still need the yusho-doten tag in jonokuchi. In addition, Natsu and Nagoya can both use the usual 0-win/0-loss fixes to be queryable.

Many thanks for the new features! I'd like to raise an objection about the new ordering of the query fields though, in particular that it's now impossible to tab from wins directly to losses. (The order is Rank, Year, Wins, Age, Month, Losses, which frankly makes no sense at all.) Wouldn't it be better to have them arranged like this? This would also be a much smaller departure from how it was before and require no un-learning of ingrained navigating habits. 1 Rank 4 Year 2 Wins 5 Month 3 Losses 6 Age Alternatively, if the new visual layout is to stay (I can see reasons for that), the tabbing behaviour really should be changed to the following if possible: 1 Rank 2 Age 3 Year 4 Month 5 Wins 6 Losses Lastly, while we're in feature requesting mode, I'd love to see the addition of Losses as a queryable field in the bout query.

Just a heads-up, my notebook's CPU fan decided to die last night, so I'll be out of commission for anything but short comments for a bit and any "scheduled" postings I might have expected to make over the next few days will almost certainly not be happening.

Juryo down vs makushita up in numbers after Daiamami defeated Kitanowaka and both Shiden and Miyanokaze saved themselves: Down Queue Rk Diff W-L Diff Up Queue Nabatame J10w 0-0-15 6.5 < 15+7 = 22 Asahakuryu Ms3e 7-0 Mitoryu J10e 0-5-10 6.0 < 15+5 = 20 Ishizaki Ms2e 6-1 Shimanoumi J12e 3-12 3.0 < 9+3 = 12 Kyokukaiyu Ms1e 5-2 Otsuji J12w 4-11 3.0 < 7+3 = 10 Asanoyama Ms1w 5-2 Daiamami J13w 6-9 5.5 < 3+3 = 6 Nishinoryu Ms5e 5-2 (none) Kitanowaka Ms3w 4-3 (none) Takakento Ms5w 4-3

Yeah, should obviously have been conditional on him defeating Takayasu. It looks very silly now. And that's almost certainly why they awarded him the gino-sho in the first place.

I've brute-forced it. Since 1958 since I don't trust the promotion/demotion metrics to have been sufficiently comparable with fewer annual basho (and it also conveniently gets rid of all the "Dewanoumi is the überstable" years): 1964.11 Tokitsukaze x4 1974.11 Kasugano x3 1976.03 Kasugano x3 1976.09 Kasugano x3 1978.01 Dewanoumi x3 1979.07 Sadogatake x3 Nothing since. The Kasugano ones are pretty amazing since that's actually 8 different rikishi.

Didn't manage to get this written up yesterday, but I hope it's still interesting/relevant...the culmination(?) of the lower division yusho races. Day 13 Results Videos Makushita (2 > 1) 7-0 Ms3e Asahakuryu (Takasago) 6-1 Ms40w Yago (Oshiogawa) Sandanme (2 > 1) 6-1 Sd15e Mineyaiba (Shikoroyama) 7-0 Sd42w Kobayashi (Kasugano) Jonidan (3 > 2) 6-1 Jd5e Kazuma (Kise) 7-0 Jd57w Tatsuosho (Tatsunami) 7-0 Jd98w Gonowaka (Takekuma) Jonokuchi (1 > 0) 6-1 Jk21e Kaki (Oitekaze) 6-1 Jk3e Kyoda (Futagoyama) 5-2 Jk13e Kakusho (Otowayama) 5-2 Jk16w Naniwamusashi (Musashigawa) 6-1 Jk20w Yabugasaki (Yamahibiki) List without the defeated rikishi: I'll start off with the only 6-0 bout that didn't have any sort of upset, Asahakuryu's victory in makushita. Yago gave it a good shot, but I would say the bout was perfectly reflective of the power difference that we would normally expect to see when a top 5 guy goes against someone from the lower half of the division. This is going to give Yago the sort of quick boost up the rankings that fellow injury returnees Shimazuumi and Bushozan have only been able to dream of so far, but I'm still finding it hard to get invested in the idea of him actually making it back to juryo. Asahakuryu for his part has managed to cap off a fairly long and winding road through the makushita upper ranks; he has been above Ms30 for the last 12 tournaments, above Ms15 for the last eight, and has never scored worse than 3-4 in all that time. The sandanme yusho went to Kobayashi after he put himself in a superior position with a semi-henka and followed up with strong and accurate thrusting to oust favourite Mineyaiba in short order. 21-year-old Kobayashi has certainly announced himself as a prospect to watch for with this, although I doubt he's going to have the proverbial rocket strapped to his back; he will probably have his hands full around Ms30 next time. Mineyaiba might well be someone to watch out for in the lower half of makushita from around Ms40, though, as that's still quite a way off from where he was pre-injury. There have been intermittent comments about returning Kazuma looking "bored" by his inferior competition both last basho and this time, and one has to wonder if he might have underestimated Tatsuosho. He's still going to be a major favourite for the sandanme yusho in September, though. Smart sumo by the Tatsunami-beya winner, in any case, and a deserved victory. It wasn't the yusho yet, however, as... ...mid-sandanme caliber Gonowaka proved to be clearly better than newcomer Kaki and broke open the jonokuchi yusho race while securing himself a playoff spot in jonidan. He should be the underdog against Tatsuosho, but I don't think it's a foregone conclusion. The two 6-1 pairings in jonokuchi had already taken place by that time so the participants didn't actually know it would be for playoff qualification, but it didn't matter a whole lot as the two winners Yabugasaki and Kyoda were massively stronger than their opponents in any case and ended both matches quickly. Yabugasaki's loss came against Kaki back on Day 2 and was a match that was over in a blink with Kaki pulling a shitatenage right off the tachiai. Kaki and Kyoda were both defeated by Gonowaka. I suspect 18-year-old high school rookie Yabugasaki will find it the most difficult to win two matches here; between 23-year-old university graduate Kaki and makushita-experienced 22-year-old Kyoda it's a much harder call as to who is the favourite. I'm inclined to expect Kyoda to win, though. In any case these two playoffs will take place between the juryo and makuuchi division matches tomorrow, before the winners are coming right back to the stage alongside Kobayashi, Asahakuryu and the yet to be crowned juryo division champion to receive their winners' certificates. The juryo division itself may in fact add to the playoff proceedings as a tie between two or three rikishi is still possible there; 11-3 leader J11w Mita (Futagoyama) is trying to hold off 10-4 pursuers J6w Daiseizan and J14e Kotokuzan (both Arashio).

Yap, hence "interesting" outcome. In a similar-but-reversed vein, after posting I've started wondering if Nishinoryu at Ms2e might have a shot at replacing Miyanokaze at Ms1w based on some sort of "Miyanokaze already got too lucky last time" clause that would override the pure numbers. It would be quite the Houdini act to survive in juryo from J13e with 6-9 -> 7-8. (Although Chiyosakae did it from J14e less than two years ago so...)