Kaito

I was pretty impressed by the 70% above average days over 4 basho, but then I realized I've done the same thing over the last 4 while plummeting through the ranks. It's been over 4 years now and I still haven't reached my level. I hope I can win some World Championship points in this game before I die of old age.

My first impression is that this will be a very high-scoring edition with bulls-eyes galore. And hopefully I'll return to form.

I dunno. I do think they test some different skillsets. Maybe I'm just saying this because I've had a bad year, and arguably a bad "career" at the pre-basho games, but it feels like a bit of a lottery with how little information and practice footage we get. I've done well over the years at GTB and the more comprehensive pre-basho games (Oracle/Norizo), but so many are variants of picking a few wrestlers you think will do well, and if you do well in one, you have a good chance of doing well in all of them. You whiff on one hunch, and they all fail to score. The active/not active stuff in Norizo often puts me out of the running there as well. Personally, I prefer predicting the daily stuff where I can react and adapt to what I'm seeing on the dohyo each day.

Congrats Oska! Looks like I badly need to improve my pre-basho picking for next year. Ganbarimasu!

Sign me up, daddy.

Missed my last chance to win Odd yesterday when Asanoyama couldn't pull the upset to finish a 60-pointer. All 10 of my bets were to move into first. 6 of them missed by a single leg. The story of my Odd career. If my luck ever evens out, I'll win it 3 times some year soon.

My incredible year of Chain Gang came to end in lame fashion yesterday, as I picked Onosato, knowing there was a great risk of Chiyomaru pulling out, and failed to check the kyujo list before the deadline. I've unfortunately been too busy this tournament to prioritize sumo. I'm already in the dumpster in many games, so I don't think I'm gonna get far without those points.

Time to assess the damage, I suppose... Disappointing basho for me. Halfway through, it felt like I had a lot of yusho chances and was contending for the Green Mawashi again. Then I faded hard in the games where I was doing best and came up empty. Without the Roto mistake, I would've had 8 top tens, but all small change. Most everything else was close to that level. I could see Oskahanada was crushing in every game though. Impressive showing, to be sure. I'll need to gambarize to the best of my ability in Kyushu.

Sign me up. Hopefully for someone that's not boring and bad next time.

Seems my "leaving Wakatakakage in my lineup" blunder did cost me World Championship points, though not as many as it would have thanks to a putrid last day.

Also true of Daieisho.

In Bench, we're already meant to get an extra maegashira when no Yokozuna competes, but apparently the system wasn't set up to accommodate that. I doubt there's any plan in place for a Nokozuna situation.

Sounds like a personal problem. My dumb comments are working fine.

I would've thought today was one of the easiest of the basho with Abi or Ichiyamamoto, but I suppose people were still jockeying for tiebreaker position. I gave up on that on day 10 and lost with Kirishima vs Nishikigi, after having a sense of dread about my choice all day. Grats Gerno.

If you watch Kotonowaka's feet, he too drags the top of his foot over the clay before stepping out. But I thought this call was pretty surprising even without that. The position in the above image is very common, and the tops of the attacker's feet dragging is routinely ignored.