Kaito

Tochimusashi vs Tsushimanada had already happened.

Quite a lot of Juryo picking this time. Asashosakari is in line to finish 4th of 5 on tiebreaker and he never picked anyone ranked higher than Daishoho.

There's a lot of complaining online today about a fairly routine bit of judging in the Ura/Kotonowaka match. I wanted Ura to win too, but if it helps anybody, you CANNOT win a match by jumping out of the dohyo before the match is over and trying to land last. If you think you see it happen all the time, you're mistaken. Pay close attention to such attempts in the future and you'll see the pullers are always attempting to keep a foot on the ground in the dohyo until the opponent is down. If Kotonowaka's falling body/hands had touched dirt before Ura leaped back, Ura wins. If Ura's leap was nearly simultaneous with Kotonowaka touching down, rematch. In this case, Ura clearly leaped back way too early and had no chance of even earning a rematch. If a wrestler's feet leave the dohyo and never come down in bounds again, they are dead from the time their feet last touched inside the dohyo.

My thoughts exactly. In thrusting battles, he looks amazing, outreaching opponents and moving them back easily without overcommitting. Against competent belt fighters, he too often steps into their grip and then shows little ability to compete.

I don't feel bad for Kawazoe, since he was unambiguously beaten by Chiyosakae early on and benefitted from a blown call. He produced 3-4 sumo and didn't look ready to me. In the end, Shiden was the only one who did beat Chiyosakae, and they both looked by far the most worthy of moving up. I don't hate Tsushimanada getting another chance, but honestly, I wish they wouldn't hesitate to demote people out of juryo when the results warrant it. Shimanoumi's worn out his welcome.

I think the top and bottom of the maegashira ranks look straightforward, but you quickly have to start placing extremely lenient falls from the joi or extremely generous promotions from the bottom of the division, and once you start interweaving them, it seems hard to avoid giving wildly different treatment to different people from the same groups, made worse by putting Ichinojo and Asanoyama anywhere in the middle of it.

Sign me up, boss.

Ishiura went up with a 6-1 from Ms6W, chosen over a 4-3 from Ms5e. From previous research, it was hard to even say 4-3s from Ms4 were favored over 6-1s from Ms6. There are just so few situations where both records happen simultaneously AND the right number of juryo slots are available for them to be tested against one another. I'm pretty confident Shiden's going up. GTB looks quite tough to me atm. I feel like you can try Ichinojo/Asanoyama anywhere from M5W/M6E to M13W/M14E, and nothing works out quite right.

Don't call it a comeback!

If I had been following yesterday's results on a handwritten page, I'd perform an exorcism on it and toss it into an active volcano.

I'm too lazy to be handwriting all that every day. I usually just keep 3 tabs open, one each for Sumo Game and Bench, and one with my e-mails, so I can follow along with Toto and check TTT/Quad/Odd as needed. In the Sumo Game and Bench tabs, I write the unique wrestlers each side has into the address bar (with how many points they're worth in Bench) then score or delete them as they happen. On the rare occasion I'm not doing horribly in Tipspiel, I may keep a tab open for it. And then day 15, I'm usually high enough in Oracle that I'll keep a notepad window open tracking the matches that affect the relative scores of the contenders.

Yeahhh, gg. I recall I wasn't very modest last time, and I would've been happy to continue playing the heel, but it was tough to feel confident in my victory when I wasn't confident in much of what I'd picked. Good luck the rest of the way!

I didn't like it either, and not only because it cost me 30 points in Odd Sumo.

Seemed respectful enough to me.

When will the sumogames.de games be available for registration? Everything's still stuck on Hatsu basho.