Kaito

The early reports also haven't altered my assumption of whether Kotonowaka is going to komusubi. As far as I know, it was one article, written before the banzuke meeting, where the author made an offhand assumption that Kotonowaka would be komusubi, with no apparent inside information. The article concludes with something to the effect of "Regarding the ranking, (Kotonowaka) said, "I don't know until I wait for the announcement." My fear is that you'll take that author's assumption as fact, confidently predict Kotonowaka at komusubi, and be right for the wrong reason. I hope credible information does leak this time, but I at least want you to suffer in uncertainty with me for now.

Frustrating basho overall. It seemed like I had a great read on it the whole way, but it just led to a bunch of near misses. Pretty dodgy win awarded to Daieisho today costing me a win in Bench. And poor Takayasu. Oh well, see ya in January.

To be fair to Keisho, Wakatakakage did put his hand down in one of those 4 "wins".

Try not to worry about that. I'm sure everyone will understand. I hope your wife feels better soon. Good luck to both of you.

It's likely that Hoshoryu has made some improvement or is in slightly better than usual form, but I honestly can't tell from watching. I'd still be impressed and surprised if he got through that group with 1 loss, let alone 0. I think Takayasu's brought the best sumo this basho and I'm still hopeful he'll come back into the lead.

I don't know what was announced, but when Kiribayama almost pulled Ryuden out of the ring at the start, he had his hand on the back of Ryuden's head. I believe they were looking for a hair pull there.

I can't be upset overall today. I had to enter the games last minute and when I saw the Toto picks, I was convinced I was gonna have a bad day. Watching the matches, I thought I was having a bad day and had lost for sure by the end. Then I checked the Toto results and didn't even have to scroll down? The bad part was looking around at others' Tipspiel picks and being influenced to move Myogiryu from 1 or 0 up to 4, as well as moving him onto the bottom of my Sumo-Game lineup to lose an important match I was otherwise winning.

Of course I get a 15. I'm sure it would've been a high-scoring day, but still.

I'm pretty sure Takayasu/Kiribayama wasn't a choice, but I don't remember for sure what it was. Hiradoumi/Kotoeko?

If the next Ozeki is just Takayasu again, I'm fine with that.

Yeah... I accidentally picked 2 Xs today when I meant to have 1. After losing the last match, I totally called it. "I'm gonna end up tied with a bunch of people who win but I'll lose with my terrible tiebreaker." First one under the line. Sad stuff.

Here are some stills to compare the Hoshoryu/Kotonowaka and Nishikigi/Takarafuji finishes. Spoilered in case anybody's bothered by a wall of images.

Takarafuji was pushed out of the ring before Nishikigi landed. To win with a pulldown, you must keep at least one foot planted inside the ring until your opponent hits the ground. Oftentimes (too often for my taste), they call for a rematch if it was close, but this time they judged it was clear that Takarafuji was fully airborne before Nishikigi landed. I assume your confusion is because Nishikigi landed before Takarafuji, but that's not what decides it. Takarafuji was dead from the moment his feet left the dohyo for the last time.

And just from poking around that list, I found there were 3 basho in 2000 where Kotonishiki and Mitoizumi were in Juryo simultaneously, but they were both kosho absent in the first, never scheduled against each other in the second, and both retired mid-basho in the 3rd, again without facing off.

If I'm being projected for 15 points in Toto, I've got a rather tenuous grasp on them. I happen to have the tiebreaker currently amongst a large 4-1 group, but it can easily become 0 points. In Tippspiel, I bounced back to reclaim 2nd, but until recently I've considered it my worst game and there's a long way to go. Just need a Hoshoryu win today to hit the special question in Norizo Cup and hopefully lock up some real points. Tried to shoot to 1st in Odd yesterday but lost the last leg of the 5-man bet when Ura didn't get his pull quite right. I've hit my fair share of Odd bets in the past, but my hit percentage when I'm down to only needing the last wrestler must be about 25%. As is my custom, I made a bunch of unhelpful alterations to my Oracle entry before submitting, but I'm still hoping for a result there.