Gurowake

The Wikipedia article also notes the issues with her having to officially renounce her US citizenship. Most people when they become Japanese citizens only have to say to the Japanese authorities that they renounce their other citizenships, but the process for officially renouncing US citizenship is a bit more complex. For most people, this is completely irrelevant and no one probably cares if you do it or not, but when it comes to politicians...

The only way it happens in my mind is if WMH ends up as Komusubi, which I think is at least within the realm of possibility (not that I think anyone would actually go that way with their pick) given https://sumodb.sumogames.de/Banzuke.aspx?b=201607&heya=-1&shusshin=-1&spr=on&sps=on having them promote to Komusubi someone with sanyaku experience over someone without when there was a full rank separation by the numbers. It's not entirely the same, as in that case it was more of the same kind of thing as with Aonishiki - Mitakeumi was extremely new and not in the joi, and they didn't want to give him the promotion most likely. Hakuoho has many more Makuuchi basho and now has multiple KKs in the joi, so I don't think they're as biased against him to promote someone with a slightly weaker claim with sanyaku experience, but obviously the lack of sanyaku experience is often a factor in these things and it's hard to know exactly how much.

As mentioned above, there is a prize for those one-day tournaments that is quite a large amount of cash for someone that doesn't typically win honbasho Yusho. Those events tend to at least have some people trying reasonably hard, but the relative size of the prize for those who already make a ton of cash tends to mean that the top dogs are not interested in competing at full speed. Maybe when they're still young and have yet to accumulate that many Yusho the top ranks might be interested in the prize, but as with everyone in the event they need to weigh the risk of injury and losing income that way against the prize the tournament offers. The fact that there wasn't any prize pool announced for this one makes it much more likely to be scripted, as they're just getting paid to show up like any other jungyo.

So it looks like they're doing this Swiss style, which with 40 people participating and assuming no one gets hurt gives them after three rounds 5 3-0 and 0-3 and 15 2-1 and 1-2, after which they'll have to do at least some cross-record matches with a 3-0 vs 2-1 and 1-2 vs 0-3 presumably. There could be either 1 or 2 people undefeated after the fifth day, which is good compared to doing the pairings more unstructured which could have led to a huge 4-1 playoff, as there was an indication that there would be a playoff if there was a tie. Which makes me wonder - why 40 rikishi then? I can imagine that there's a cost/benefit tradeoff with how many people they're sending, plus the amount of time that they want the exhibition to last, but why 40? Because that's the number they had last time, and that's the number of Makuuchi rikishi there were at that time? Are they trying to say here: "These guys are all Makuuchi*, they're the entire division, and the division size hasn't changed since last time", all of which are untrue? *Even if it counts people promoted on the unreleased banzuke, the likelihood Kotoeiho was promoted seems quite slim.

Oho looks poised to start a second stint at Sekiwake without having ever been Komusubi. This has also been done by the following rikishi in the 6 basho era: Asahikuni Kotokaze Tochiakagi (actually managed THREE stints at Sekiwake before ever being Komusubi) Daijuyama Terao Takanosho (who also was the last rikishi to make Sekiwake just once before ever being Komusubi prior to Oho doing it recently) And technically Terunofuji, though due to being promoted rather than being demoted in between. At first I thought it was going to be much rarer, as the nearly the first page of results of all the Sekiwake promotions in this time period had no one promoted to Sekiwake while having highest prior rank maegashira had done it, but then the first four on the list all did it with no one else in this situation not doing it. So now that we've had two in a row, it looks like a rather streaky phenomenon, with only Terao not part of a streak among those whose first stint ended in demotion. https://sumodb.sumogames.de/Query.aspx?show_form=0&showhighest=on&form1_year=>1955&form2_rank=s&form2_debutr=on&offset=50

I can understand why they didn't bring the raw material for the dohyo all the way from Japan, but how much research did they do in terms of trying to get the right material locally? "Central England" is a bit vague, and I guess means somewhat north of London, so presumably they're not just picking some local dirt but managed to find something close to what's normally used - perhaps from the same place they used last time they were there.

My compilation of those with the best chance to score the most final points due to having selected a rikishi and rank that ended up very close together. Based on the Juryo projection by Spiffy and my own low effort guesses for Makushita. This might not be 100% complete for those within 10 slots, as I didn't try all that hard to determine all of whom would be in the top of Makushita, so Hoshihitomi with Seihakuho/Ms9w and kuroimori with Dewanoryu/J13w will be at least somewhat close to 10 slots distance depending on where their rikishi end up, though they'll be less likely to take advantage of it since they won't be particularly high in Makushita. Player Rikishi pick Projected rikishi rank Rank Pick Projected Distance Ripe Asanoyama J4w J4w 0 Ronnie/Gawasukotto Shimazuumi Ms2w Ms3w 2 Gurowake Hakuyozan J10e J11w 3 Sukubidubidu Hakuyozan J10e J8w 3 Leoben Asanoyama J4w J6e 3 charliki/Gibuten Kitanowaka J12e J14e 4 LLCoolKay Asahakuyru J4e J7e 6 Yarimotsu Kyokukaiyu Ms1w J12w 6 Obana Kotoeiho J1w J5e 7 Naganoyama Kitanowaka J12e J8e 8 thatsumoguy Hidenoumi J9e J13e 8 Andonishiki Shirokuma J7e J11w 9 I'm impressed by those who picked Asanoyama, as there was no way to know he was even going to still be active, let alone anywhere near the torch.

Assuming that you mean the compiled data as of around 10 years ago for the average movements in the lower division, if you PM me your email address I can send you the data. I don't recall if I posted it here, but it's a lot of data and probably works better in the original Excel file than as a table. I wouldn't trust it very much though, since it's ten years old at this point. I certainly don't have the time that I did ten years ago to compile it again.

Which also highlights why they're building huge data centers and trying to find good sources of electricity to run them, because in their current form they need to be retrained constantly from the ground up any time they want to incorporate new information into an AI system. This just doesn't seem sustainable to me, but given that no one really knows exactly how neural nets actually encode the data, it's impossible with the current paradigm to just simply add information without redoing the entire thing, especially since that new information might change things that it already learned rather than just add to its knowledge. It says a lot about the weaknesses of LLMs and suggests that true general artificial intelligence (I don't like the term "artificial general intelligence" because people then say AGI, which means something completely different to me as a tax preparer - Adjusted Gross Income) will likely have to come from a different paradigm.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks those new shikona are very strange.

My very rough, no thought at all but making a consistent banzuke while trying to keep people in the order that they should be by the numbers as much as possible has Daiseizan at J4e. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying that's what my usual first draft method gives, as he would need to be behind 5 people in Juryo by those criteria, which also means he needs to be behind Kagayaki assuming the latter gets promoted at least one spot (though we've seen them not do it to Hidenoumi sometime sorta recently). Most likely Asahakuryu actually gets Tochinoshin'd, seeing as that situation is almost a direct analog, leaving one more spot above Kagayaki to put Daiseizan, as shown by Asashosakari.

I'm going to expect that Aonishiki will need 13 wins in Kyushu to seal the promotion absent any other strong indicators. First, his run starts as a Maegashira, which I generally discount at one win per rank below sanyaku. At one point I had research to back this up, at least approximately, but that would have been a long time ago and a lot of things have happened since then. The second is that he's still relatively new/young, much like Takakeisho. On a marginal promotion, they are going to want to see if he can keep it up. If he can manage double digits in Kyushu and Hatsu, as long as one of them is at least 11 wins, that should be enough, ala Asanoyama, but it's hard to account for the xenophobia factor.

While I admit that you're probably only translating this and aren't considering what it is that they're trying to say, it's the first *playoff* between two Yokozuna since 2009. There have been other yusho-deciding bouts between Yokozuna on Day 15 since then, most recently in Haru 2020 (the last time we had two Yokozuna face each other at all) when Hakuho vs. Kakuryu as the last match of the tournament was a "championship decider" as both were on 12 wins going in and no one else had at least that many. In an interesting coincidence, Takanosho also had 12 wins that tournament, winning on the last day and so not in contention at that point.

While on Firefox I'm not shown the protocol before the address if it's https, I was able to turn off https through some other means on the address bar, and can confirm that the issue goes away after reloading pages so that the connection is no longer via https.

Sure, there's also a tiny chance that they promote the two extra Juryo guys and demote Meisei and Asakoryu, just because they love being unpredictable. Those seem way more likely than keeping Hitoshi over Chiyoshoma; I'd say it would be more reasonable to suggest if Chiyoshoma were J3 and not J2. None of these are really worth considering; I think the only real uncertain factor here is Meisei being overdemoted for Fujiseiun or Asahakuryu, and either promotion makes some sense. They have an aversion to promoting people from deep in Juryo, so Asahakuryu is likely not really a consideration. It's unlikely that they do either though because it's extremely rare to overdemote from Makuuchi, and requires a Juryo rank/record that is way more compelling than what we have.