fwuzzle23

Honestly I'm somewhat glad there doesn't seem to be a consensus on the komusubi number, and I wouldn't be surprised by any of the plausible choices. I'm not posting my full guess but I went down the middle and did three, promoting Daieisho but not Hokutofuji. My justification is Daieisho had a 4-2 record against sanyaku opponents last basho (compared to 1-4 for Hokutofuji). I feel like a big part of these judgement-call promotions is showing through their results that they deserve the promotion, and having a winning record against sanyaku opposition does that for me. Daieisho's also been slightly more successful at sanyaku level than Hokutofuji has (11-4 a few basho ago at K vs. Hokutofuji never having recorded a KK there). Finally, if nothing else, 3 Ks is my way of hedging my bets to avoid being too badly hurt if it's 2 or 4. But again, they could go any way with it and I wouldn't be surprised. You guys having Midorifuji and Akiseyama so far down when I have them in the M13-14 area is definitely giving me some anxiety, though....

I think the argument is more that the virus restrictions are keeping them from getting adequate practice with other top-rankers through degeiko, which leads to the injuries. The closest thing they've had to degeiko since this started was that joint practice last month, and that was probably too far away from the basho to really be of use.

For what it's worth, expulsion is not retirement... no intai-todoke was filed in Sokokurai's case. Theoretically the same could have happened for Hoshikaze since those were the only two caught in the match-fixing scandal that didn't put in their retirement papers, but he lost his court case.

Nope, once the papers are handed in and accepted, there's no going back. It's for that reason that stablemasters frequently delay handing in retirement papers for runaway deshi for months, because sometimes the deshi, given enough time to reflect on things, might decide to come back.

At the very least it's the interpretation I've always gone with, a practical reason for why the sanyaku needs to be balanced but makuuchi as a whole doesn't need to be.

The only way Daieisho would be placed in the west is if there were an odd number of either yokozuna or ozeki. Balancing only happens if there's more than one sanyaku rank with an odd number of rikishi. In that 3Y/3O/2S/2K example Jakusotsu gave you earlier, the third yokozuna was left in the east while the third ozeki was shifted over to the west. Remember that the sanyaku-ranked rikishi are written on the banzuke in wider characters so the balancing is more of a way to prevent overcrowding of names in the east column. On the other hand, the maegashira ranks can be squeezed together a bit more given their names are written with narrower characters, so the balancing doesn't need to extend to them.

Nope, banzuke is getting released on the 27th as scheduled, so the GTB deadline is still a week before that on the 20th.

The last rank you had before retiring doesn't matter in the least, it's your highest rank that matters. Everyone who makes it to ozeki, whether they retire while still ozeki or drop to juryo or even further, is treated as an ozeki on retirement. They're still referred to as "former ozeki (shikona)" and given the appropriate retirement benefits of a former ozeki.

37 by my count, tied for my lowest-ever GTB score. I also went back and counted my guess using an alternate-universe banzuke where only Hokutofuji got promoted (putting Asanoyama at M1e and everyone else shifting half a rank lower), and got 49 in that. Still not great but that's par for the course for me at this point.

No, Okinoumi's kanto-sho is unconditional, he'll just get a shukun-sho as well if he gets the yusho. Mitakeumi seems to be the either/or situation, shukun if he does and kanto if he doesn't.

52 points, would have been 60 but I accidentally labeled Chiyotairyu as 7-8 on my prediction sheet instead of 8-7 so he ended up being off two ranks and the Ryuden-Shimanoumi-Myogiryu-Kotoshogiku sequence behind him was half a rank too high. Entirely preventable on my part but I didn't realize it until after the submission deadline...

Takanohana was in the hospital at the time with a high fever. Otherwise, yes, he likely would have been the one doing it instead of Akebono.

I know, plenty of naturalized citizens do pick a Japanese name, I'm just saying it doesn't seem to be a requirement in order to naturalize:

At least from what the wiki page on Japanese citizenship (here) is saying, that's not a requirement. Entirely possible Badarch Dashnyam/ バダルチ・ダシニャム is his Japanese legal name.

No, both of them retired but the DB didn't pick up on it and marked them banzuke-gai for the Natsu banzuke. Doitsuyama fixed that.