Kozaru

Oh, my initial comment about the yaocho was supposed to have been taken as sarcasm. Didn't actually expect a response.

Nice. You edited my comments to cut out my statement that I don't believe any of it (very strongly so), and that the last 15-0 basho resulted in yaocho accusations (the consequences of which are still being fought in court). Need me to be perfectly clear? "I do not believe that Asashoryu has ever paid anyone to lose any match to him, nor would he ever need to." If that isn't relevant to a new 15-0 possibility, then I guess..... never mind.

Wow, ummm... I'm not saying that it's fixed. I'm suggesting that some might accuse him of it. I don't buy it for a second. And it's not unrelated to this thread. It's relevant because he could go 15-0. Remember the last time he went 15-0? You're a warehouse of sumo knowledge, so I know you remember. What happened? Yaocho allegations. P.S. It takes more energy (ie. fuel) to shoot somebody into the Sun than to shoot them off to infinity. I suggest infinity as your target. It will save money and weight of your launch vehicle. (aerospace engineering degree)

I wouldn't imagine any. His sumo speaks for itself - strong, smart and speedy as during his heyday. Wasn't he in his heyday the last time these accusations came up?

How long until the accusations surface that he bought at least 12 matches this basho?

I'm behind Asa all the way tomorrow. I'll be on his left, actually. I don't know if he can hit the 30-yusho mark, but I'd love to see him plant himself firmly in sole possession of the third-place slot.

Didn't he fight to a KK on a badly injured knee/leg about a year or so ago?

No additions yet to the kyujo list in Makuuchi. Aren't they usually up at exactly 12:00? Looks like Dejima is going to continue?

It's OK to believe, as long as there's reason. The second Kotooshu sends one of the senior Ozeki to their retirement, I'll convert.

Hey Jejima, if you don't believe the Ozeki theory, perhaps you'll tell us when was the last time that an Ozeki who needed a win in the final days lost to one who didn't. You're right that one win by Harumafuji tomorrow doesn't prove anything, but it would be the 12th or so data point in an obvious pattern that some choose to deny. I had Kaio as my #1 pick against Chiyotaikai, and Haruma as #1 against Kotomitsuki. It's amazing how safe that is. If Haruma loses tomorrow, then he either isn't in the club, or no such club exists. That doesn't get us anywhere either. But shall we begin to take bets on how nicely it will work out for the kadoban Ozeki next basho (assuming they make it to the final days in striking distance of KK)? If it comes down to it next basho, I can create a market on the needy Ozeki losing to the KK-Ozeki in Sumo Market Game. You can bet all you have on it. There's also a good reason that nobody took last basho's bet on Ama beating Hakuho in the playoff, even though I set the odds on Ama at 5%. You'd think a guy who wins 50% of matches against an opponent could get some support at 5%, right? It seems somebody bet a small amount of money on it, but nothing substantial. A bet of a few thousand would have won the game, had Ama won. In reality, it was a sucker's bet and everybody knew it. There was no way that Ama was going to win that match.

Thanks Jonosuke! I love these threads.

I used to think absences were announced at 12:00PM Japan time on the day of, but now I guess that's only on the English site, as some Day 3 absences are already announced. At what time (Japan time) do Makuuchi absences usually appear on the Japanese site? Is there typically any other way to find out who has filed papers, before the Association's announcement? The answer will affect my game (Sumo Market Game), as we currently have a bet about Asa withdrawing, and I have to make sure nobody finds out the answer while I have betting open.

Because the scope does not prove anything. If it happens now, why didn't it happen before? It's not as if these two guys became ozeki a couple of years ago. That's why we are not going to get very far. You can say, OK, such and such rikishi bouts are pretty strange in such and such time period, then I have no problem saying based on the numbers you presented it's one sided or there is a certain trend. But your thread is titled OZEKI co-operation and you don't specify the time period. Then read beyond the title. Unfortunately, I couldn't fit my entire argument into the title of the thread. In the example above, if 3 of my brothers are arrested but I am not, could the media not call it the "Kozaru brothers case"? You're right, the scope of an argument cannot prove anything. The scope is the boundaries of the argument, not evidence. Why didn't it happen before? Maybe it did on a smaller scale, maybe it's because they now require it as they're too old to hold the rank legitimately, but that isn't even relevant. If I rob a store tomorrow, why wasn't I a criminal today? Do you know what a straw-man argument is? It's no shame if you don't, and I only learned the term earlier this year. You've set-up many of them in this thread. And that's why the discussion has deteriorated beyond any usefulness.

This doesn't make any sense. You continue to come forward with arguments that have absolutely no relevance to the accusation. It's no wonder that a few posts back I thought you were referring to Haru 2007, not Kyushu 2004, because Haru 2007 is actually within the scope of my accusation. Talking about an old possibility of Chiyotaikai's Yokozuna promotion from 2002? Arguing that the Ozeki shouldn't pay each other? The straw-men are running wild. To me, that's a sign that my case is strong. For whatever reason, you refuse to accept that it could even be possible for some but not all Ozeki to co-operate in some but not all years. I have 3 brothers. If they were all arrested as part of some plot, should the jury acquit them because the 4th brother was not involved? Should they see it as impossible to believe that my brothers were plotting for the last 3 years, but weren't plotting before that? Things start, things end. Some people participate, others don't. 5 Ozeki, 3 years. Nothing more. If you can't discuss my accusation within its own scope, we're not going to get very far, are we?

This didn't strike me as strange until just now.... With every argument you put forward, I become more and more certain that you are either not properly reading my posts, or not giving my argument the proper consideration. I didn't say that the odds are 50-50, and in fact, in post #3 of this thread, I gave the minimum odds as 60-40 in favour of the needy rikishi! This was to account for the extra motivation. Let me show you how the percentages work here, for 11 matches to go in one direction (I've never considered the 40% and 50% odds previously in this thread): 40% on needy Ozeki (handicap due to likely injury and better basho of opponent) ------> 0.004% 50% on needy Ozeki (extra motivation cancels handicap mentioned above) ------> 0.05% (Note that this works out to 1/2000, and might be good enough odds to prove a case in a court of law, as they are beyond most people's level of reasonable doubt) 60% on needy Ozeki (this is quite a big advantage for a guy having a bad basho) ------> 0.4% 70% on needy Ozeki (huge advantage!) ------> 2.0% 80% on needy Ozeki (a real stretch) ------> 8.6% 90% on needy Ozeki (so ridiculous it shouldn't even be considered) ------> 31% 95% on needy Ozeki (*cough*) ------> 57% I hope you see that at any reasonable odds at all, it's still unlikely that those 11 matches were all legit. We only even break the 1/3rd barrier when considering individual match odds higher than 90%. Your argument about me assuming the odds are 50-50 in order to make this theory work, doesn't hold up. I can give them 70% or 80% and it still looks like something's not right. P.S. I think you're underestimating Yoshikaze, but time will tell. I expect him to get killed when he's higher up next basho, but think he has become too good to be ranked as low as he was this time around.

Jonosuke, Here's the thing. As I've said before, we cannot prove anything with these numbers. But we can make things look bad. Most people think that you prove things with DNA or fingerprints, but it's not strictly true. DNA and fingerprints only provide odds which are overwhelmingly against the suspect being innocent. If you wanted to be on a jury and say, "Just because the DNA matches, does not exclude the possibility that another person has the same DNA at the locations sampled", you'd be technically correct. However, at some point in any given situation, most reasonable people decide that the odds are too out-of-whack to be coincidence. We can all draw the line in different places, and you seem to be one who has placed a stricter standard on the odds in this Ozeki case. At 60% odds for motivated rikishi, I've given a 0.4% chance of all 11 matches turning out this way. At 70% odds, it's 2.0%. If you want, you can say you believe it's all legit and you're going to go with the low odds. But what most people on this thread have done is to at least acknowledge that THIS LOOKS REALLY BAD. I won't say 100% that these guys are throwing matches, but I will say with 100% certainty that it doesn't look good. You can end any disagreement we have here by coming out and writing that it looks highly suspicious, but that you're going to go with the coincidence possibility. So I ask you: How does this look?

I know this discussion doesn't belong in this thread.... but oh well. People can watch sumo for all kinds of reasons. My reasons are not the traditions. If yours are, that's fine. As for the alcohol, it isn't a simple moral urge. It's watching a good portion of my family destroy themselves on alcohol, watching the fist-fights, the financial problems, and all kinds of other crap, some of which has just hit the fan in the last few days. Alcohol has an extremely detrimental effect on society, which I think outweighs its main benefit of people liking it. I don't mean to prohibit alcohol now, that's not possible. But if we could have never invented/discovered the stuff in the first place, we'd probably be better off. And I have arguments with Japanese people all the time about this, but fact is, marijuana is less physically harmful and less addictive than alcohol. I knew this from experience and intuition, but the study in The Lancet helped me to quantify and confirm it. I think if society were to make a straight trade, marijuana to replace alcohol, we'd see a net benefit. Here's the study I'm talking about summarised in the news: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17760130/ So yeah, Wakanoho got booted because of the laws on these substances, but the law doesn't make any sense at all from a scientific point of view. It only makes sense from the standpoint of public policy and practicality. It's an unfortunate mix-up that goes back too far to correct now.

And that reflects badly on the Kyokai why exactly? The answer is that I didn't say it does. I'm annoyed at the NSK for taking marijuana so seriously while the rikishi binge drink in public, but I do understand the laws in Japan work that way. I didn't link the manipulation to the NSK, just to one individual possibly within sumo and to a news organisation, as my above quote says. But that's all assuming Wakanoho is telling the truth now, which I make absolutely no claim about.

Not just the way that the NSK handled Wakanoho, but this current stuff. If he's telling the truth now, it would mean that somebody, possibly inside the sumo world, is trying to get him to make false claims, and he also has a 'news' organisation pushing him, for their own purposes. I'm not so new to sumo that I don't even understand that marijuana is illegal in Japan. I do live here. I just needed to vent. (Major alcohol and drug issues going on in my family right now) But in general, I'm what they call a 'free-thinker'. I know many people on this site really value tradition, but traditions have very little value to me, especially if they suck. I try to evaluate everything on its own merits, not based on how long it's been done that way for. In my head, nothing is off-limits to change. So part of the 'newbiness' that you saw in my post was really just me and my way of thinking about the world. Alcohol is very dangerous (marijuana not so much), and if we could put that genie back in the bottle, we probably would (even though that might mean some of us wouldn't exist (Neener, neener...) ).

Is it now that he's telling the truth, or was it before? Or has he never been telling the truth? Who knows? But if he is telling the truth now, then that makes him a pawn being manipulated from possibly multiple directions. Pretty shameful thing to do to somebody who's basically still a kid. But I guess that's the way it's been throughout history. Older people with agendas using young people by sending them off to sacrifice themselves for a cause they don't even understand. And the kid was kicked out over a little marijuana smoking, while Hakuho brags to reporters about how much alcohol he drank after the yusho win. Not that it would matter in most countries, but a study I read recently in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, found that alcohol is much more dangerous than marijuana. This whole situation stinks so bad.

For Jonosuke (with respect to moderator status): "if you keep saying let's restrict this to the four rikishi, then it doesn't cover all" Yes, it doesn't cover all! I'm not even accusing Hakuho, or any Ozeki other than Kotooshu, Tochiazuma, Kotomitsuki, Chiyotaikai and Kaio. I don't know how much clearer I can possibly be on this point, and other readers are probably getting tired of seeing me write it. Hakuho was looking for two things, yusho and Yokozuna promotion. He did not require any charity, and did not give any (or not much, at least). Those who require it, also give it. This is not, and never has been, about ALL Ozeki for ALL time. I used the term "Ozeki co-operation", because all 5 of the people I'm accusing are/were Ozeki. Can we finally exclude Hakuho, and all other Ozeki, from this argument (at least until we find something to suggest they need to be brought into it)? Some other points: 1. You did not acknowledge your previous, and false, objection that an already-KK Kaio defeated Chiyotaikai in Haru 2007. It simply isn't true. 2. You spent 3 paragraphs wondering about why they leave it until senshuraku, which is the core of your new argument, but you ignore the fact that I have covered Days 12-15 in my theory. I think I demonstrated that they don't leave it until senshuraku, they take the opportunity to give the win WHENEVER it occurs, as demonstrated by a total lack of Day 13 or 14 exceptions to the pattern. Of the 11 matches that I'm citing, 6 took place on Day 15, 3 on Day 14, and 2 on Day 13. This is a straw-man argument. 3. "If you need to keep paying to extend your career, it certainly becomes more economical to deal with hiramaku than with other ozeki." Nobody here is accusing anybody of paying anything for anything. Silent understanding is the most likely arrangement. It's another straw-man. I think it's very clear that you have a strong interest in seeing these kinds of allegations discredited, and we all do, we'd love to think it isn't true. Your 3 main arguments so far have been that it doesn't include all Ozeki, that a '10 or 11 win' Kaio beat Chiyo in Haru 2007, and that they are foolish to wait until senshuraku. None of these arguments are true or relevant to my case.

Chiyozakura, yeah, my arguments are sometimes a little strange, but also sometimes I'm not making arguments. I'm only arguing for 2006-present day, because I don't have a fricking clue what I'm talking about before 2005. When I started watching sumo, Asashoryu was a Yokozuna. So I'll find the patterns in historical statistics, and open it up to the rest of you more experienced people to explain why such things happened. So thanks for that. I was trained in math and science, and I think we have enough data over the last few years to see a pattern emerging that wouldn't be there if it were totally legitimate. For 11 matches to all go a specific way, even with 60% odds on the motivated rikishi, would only have a 0.36% chance of occurring. As I said before, you can't 'prove' something with this method, but you can make things look suspicious and make theories look convincing. The only way for me to prove it would be to put on a crapload of weight, grow my hair, and sneak into the sumo locker room with a microphone and recorder hidden in my mawashi to catch them in the act of planning. But as some have mentioned above, this likely has no planning involved at all, just a silent understanding. And yeah, I think it's time to put an end to the Kaio-Chiyotaikai thing.

You're right, that is pretty damn interesting. So I decided to take a look at it. The results surprised me. I'm trusting that the good ol' Sumo Database is reliable, so here goes. Open this link in a separate tab and follow along with me: http://sumodb.sumogames.com/Query_bout.asp...amp;show_form=0 OK, so we see that during the 1950's, such a possibility arose only 3 times in the entire decade! From 1960 to 1968, we see it happening much more frequently, but no suspicious pattern is noted. But look at what happens from 1969 to 1989, a span of 21 years! That is completely suspicious, with total domination, 32/38, for needy Ozeki. This is not even considering things like yusho and Yokozuna runs, which could eliminate some matches from being throwable. Those guys must have had a game theory textbook hidden under the bed. Also notice some of the gaps.... Whereas these matches take place very frequently in some years, there are periods, for example, 1981-1983, in which it doesn't even occur once. Then it happens 11 times in 1986-1987. Then note that from 1993-1999 (7 years!), not even one match under this scenario took place! I guess that means Ozeki used to get their KK's early on a regular basis. From 1992-2003 (remember the big gap mentioned above), the matches appear to be legit. Then there is a gap during 2004-2005 where no matches took place, then the current pattern that we see today begins in 2006. I've only been watching sumo since 2005, so I can't describe the attitudes of past eras, but maybe somebody else can enlighten us. When were the current Ozeki demotion rules created? What were the rules before? That could go a long way to explaining the trends we see over the years.

I'm going to throw more fuel on the fire. In the time-frame that I've been discussing, there were two matches between Ozeki in which one was already KK, but one had 6 wins, on Days 12-14. Both of the needy Ozeki won, and both went on to KK. So I'm now going to claim that it's 11 of 11 predictable outcomes. Interestingly, Hakuho had another chance in this category, and won again. But once again, he was 11-1 before the match, obviously in the yusho hunt. Also once again, the pattern completely collapses if you go back earlier than 2006, this time showing the needy Ozeki getting beaten badly from 2004-2005. http://sumodb.sumogames.com/Query_bout.asp...amp;show_form=0

Well, I guess most of us want (apparently) to believe that they would always be thinking they could be starting a yokozuna run so every win counts. If its true that they really just want to spread the only 32 wins they think they can get around the four of them to avoid too many kadobans and certainly kadobans in a row then well, it would just be very sad and not worth watching which is why I'm trying not to think about it too hard. Now, with older ozeki perhaps thinking there will never be a yokozuna run I might see it but Kotooshu and Kotomitsuki already sandbagging? Just hard to accept. They only have so many years of youth and wasting any of them playing "8 is enough" just doesn't sound believable. Who decided it was Kotooshu's turn to get a yusho? Did Ama just get an ozeki run because Kaoi wasn't there and they would spare some extra wins this basho, only needing 24 to keep the other 3 afloat? Oh, it is just terrible even thinking like this... which is why I said I wouldn't... but I am... so... Wow, I need to cut this off before it explodes. :-) I am NOT suggesting that it goes this deep. I am merely looking at 9 matches over the last 3 years. It's best not to think about things like are Maegashira throwing matches to needy Ozeki, or Kotooshu's stablemaster buying the yusho without Kotooshu's knowledge in an attempt to motivate him. (Clapping wildly...)