Ryoshishokunin

8/20 is remarkably bad--indicating to me that most of these guys just got lucky (and are thus overranked) rather than are actually showing skill and getting rewarded for it. Thanks as always for the game.

14. shohozan

13. Shohozan

11. Chiyotairyu 12. Shodai (if not 11), else Chiyonokuni (I'm hoping to be online by day 13. It may not work.)

10. Abi

9 chiyonokuni

7 Kakuryu.

If you look at the sumodb's banzuke page, there's a link to the 'W/L matrix'. (http://sumodb.sumogames.de/scgroup_matrix.aspx?b=201807 for Nagoya 2018.) You can mostly do the matchups just from that--they seem to mostly just find a reasonable opponent for the #1 guy on the banzuke (Kakuryu), and then the #2 guy, and so on. There are some guidelines to intra-sanyaku matches, juryu exchanges and so on, but once you get down to about M4 there's lots of choice: there are, after all, 42 people in makuuchi and they only need 15 bouts each. Someone reasonable exists to pair them up with. They managed it even in the 30s when east guys only could face west guys and vice versa (also Dewanoumibeya had most of the east side): (http://sumodb.sumogames.de/scgroup_matrix.aspx?b=193005)

6. Still Takayasu

Sure. But you can change six bouts or something--it's obvious that they completely started over, rather than just re-pairing people as they found new opponents. They also 'had' to reduce the number of intra-sanyaku bouts from 2 to 1, which presumably complicated matters. Still don't understand why Kakuryu's opponent changed...

With the late withdrawal of Hakuho from Day 5, we get to see how volatile the torikumi really is--of the 20 makuuchi matches scheduled for day 5, only three of them remained the same after they re-did the torikumi. Often when there's a withdrawal after the torikumi is made they try to 'patch' it, but this time it looks like they just started over, though there are some weird things in the new version: I assume they were rushed. (In particular, Kakuryu's opponent got changed away from the usual pattern for the top Yokozuna, I assume to bodge something else.)

Sorry, changed my mind when I looked at the db: 5. Takayasu

5. Ichinojo

4 Ichinojo

Yet another way to see how far Hakuho is ahead of the field. I don't suppose career-ending totals are available for historical rikishi? (Also, has the system of awarding them varied over time?)