#1HENKAFAN

Hakkeyoi!

Once again I go just above the kachi koshi line, just as I had predicted. Call me Takarafuji cause I am a middling score machine!

I don't understand this argument about Roga being had. He used to be billed as Mongolian until he requested to be listed as Russian. If he was born and raised in Russian territory and sees himself as a Russian national then why wouldn't he be Russian? If anything I find it strange he wasn't listed as Russian by the kyokai in the first place.

NO CHIYOSHOMA WHY DIDN'T YOU HENKA

Chiyoshoma should henka Aoiyama right now and show Hakuoho how it's done!

A lot of those Miyagino boys are liable to henka. Enho, Ishiura, Hokaho, Hokuseiho, etc. I doubt Hakuho is the kind of coach that would discourage his students from using it, to say the least. And Kiho's henka on Tsushimanada was a fine one indeed. The way his hands touch Tsushimanada for a mere split second before pulling to the side was very matador-esque!

I've been thinking that the slippery dohyo might explain the drought of henka this time. Last basho was the single most henka by sekitori ever recorded iirc and now this basho I have only seen one or two at all. Add in all the injured names and this has been one bizarre basho. I'm suffering over here without my favorite move. I need a mighty Chiyoshoma henka to cleanse my palette!

The slipping is especially bad this basho. It always is in Nagoya but this is maybe the worst I've seen it.

Nishikigi is 6-1, tied for the lead, and already faced all the sanyaku. His yusho dream is far from over yet. Tamawashi will still have an easier schedule due to being lower ranked and Hoshoryu is also there of course (even if he should actually be 5-2) so maybe Nishikigi isn't the outright favorite but he's still in a strong position to take the yusho. Also, I'm not going to be happy if Hoshoryu's unfair win gives him Ozeki or the yusho. Normally I like the guy but for this basho I am anti-Hoshoryu. I want him to win his promotion with no black clouds hanging over it.

All 3 sekiwake being at 3-1 (Although Hoshoryu would be 2-2 if the judges weren't sleeping) adds to the storyline this basho. This has been a basho of high highs and low lows so far. It's been a lot more eventful than it seemed it would be going in

I've been having problems with slow loading as well. Changing the country on my VPN helps sometimes so anyone else with one might want to give that a try.

Not a crazy pick but not a bad one either I think. I happen to like Chiyosakae (I do love those late bloomers) and I think he's likely to continue my streak of getting just above or below the kk line, leaning towards a positive score.

Put me on the Wakamotoharu train. I think one of them will probably make it this basho and while it's tempting to choose Hoshoryu after his training with uncle there's just something about Wakamotoharu that feels very special. His scores have been more consistently strong than Hoshoryu, Daieisho, and even Kirishima before got his Ozeki run. Daieisho and Hoshoryu have had better peaks than him but Hoshoryu still needs to work on his mentality issues and Daieisho's history of losing at the edge is worrying.

You think that shikona is bad, but once I saw a Sumo Spiffy video where he jokes about making his shikona "myballsishot" and I was heavily considering naming myself that just to see his reaction.

I put Kagayaki at M17w without promoting Ochiai, bumping up Bushozan to M16W by necessity and getting more points than I would have if I promoted both because there was no way I would have guessed Bushozan over Ochiai if they both got promoted. Even when it's the wrong decision choosing to not demote Kagayaki is earning me points.

Just to set things straight, I am AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and I've played the game for 2 or 3 years now. Not as impressive as a 3rd basho runner-up, sadly. I cycle through email accounts often so I've had a few different shikona over the years. 300%HENKA and ANENEMYBRAND were shikona I used before. I don't remember if I have ever used any others but i just play the game for fun so I don't really care that it screws over my rankings.

I wasn't going to actually post my banzuke because when I put it in my post I thought the image was too large and it would annoy people, plus I couldn't fit another image o would have wanted in the post. Sorry to everyone because I honestly didn't mean to post it.

What a weird banzuke, right? Nishikifuji's drop is so lenient I never could have predicted it and Oho below Hokuseiho also shocks me, among other things. Somehow despite that I got my best score ever by a good margin. My best score before this was 54 I'm pretty sure but this banzuke I got 62 points. Very proud of my banzuke for this one. I always pull out a bottle before I sit down and work on my banzuke. This strategy almost never fails.

For me a large part of why I make mock banzuke is because I simply want to know what the banzuke will be and how it works. I like winning too, of course, but even if there was no game I'd be making a mock banzuke anyways so I can get an early idea of where everyone will be. With a mock banzuke I can get an early look at the developing stories of the next basho as well as extra time to consider my choices in the many fantasy sumo games that come around each basho. It makes discussing sumo so much easier when I can point to my banzuke and say "this guy is ranked around here. Here's all the guys ranked around him that he's also likely to fight." With that in mind I am very much for any idea that will let people get a better understanding of the banzuke as a whole. The argument against it that "an auto sorter will make banzuke creation too easy and simple" is just such a backwards way of thinking in my eyes. I do see the point in the argument that many of the lower level players make objective mistakes in their banzuke and that using the proposed gtb helper features would likely limit some of those poor decisions (I don't think it would solve all their problems in that department, mind you), but some of the things being said against the tool I don't abide by. Like, read this: Seriously? Wanting a publicly available auto sorter is like supporting athletes taking drugs? That's a bad faith argument if I've ever seen one and comparing the two is just goofy. If you compared it to say, how racecar drivers in the old days would modify their cars to get an advantage or if the NBA legalized those shoes that make you jump higher then I could maybe understand, but saying it's like doping is comparing apples to oranges and makes it sound like you're trying to demonize the other side of the argument. I also take issue with the insinuation that people who would use the gtb helper are creating "low-effort" banzuke. Wanting to use all the tools available to you is not "low effort" in any way, it's the exact opposite. I look through every banzuke-related post I can find, watch Sumo Spiffy's banzuke videos, read Ikusumo's banzuke posts and trawl back every few days just to see if anyone in the comments posted a banzuke too. Does referencing what other players think make my way of playing the game "low-effort"? Between these and the gtb helper, would a "low-effort" person be someone who uses all of these to get any advantage they can? I say if someone is "low-effort" it's more likely they're not going to get the most advantage from these because they might not have even done the research to know all these things exist and can help them. Furthermore, the gtb helper website is quite clunky on mobile devices so there is some question as to how "accessable" it truly is. Like some others have in this thread, I say there is a high chance those against the new helper features are overestimating the impact having better tools on the gtb helper would have due to accessibility. I myself am a mobile user so I can say from firsthand experience that the website is aggravating to use on mobile devices. To see every name on your banzuke at once you have to move the screen to juuuuuuuust the right spot and if you bump into your screen on accident it moves and you have to repeat the process all over again. Even then you don't get a complete look at all the information when you do this because a half of their records will be off the screen. It's easy to accidentally pick up a rikishi and move them somewhere else on the banzuke when you don't intend to. Even though I know about the banzuke helper and use it to some extent I still have to create paper banzuke because it's so much easier and quicker to reference than tab hopping and using the gtb helper on my phone. There are many people just like me who almost exclusively use phones to access the Internet, and I think many of them wouldn't put up with the frustrations of using the gtb helper on mobile in the first place. It's for these reasons I'm not convinced that the gtb helper will become the standard even if it becomes the objective best tool available to create one's banzuke. Adding computed ranks but no auto-sorter is probably the single worst way to solve this situation. It's a half-step that does nothing but leave both those for and against the proposed changes to the gtb helper unsatisfied. If you still have the computed ranks available that is basically the same thing as having the auto-sorter with extra steps. That does nothing to solve the problems people have with it making the game easier, all it does is waste time by making people spend 2 or 3 minutes placing everyone where they would be if they had the auto-sorter anyway. So if someone against the auto-sorter then it doesn't make sense why they would be okay with having the computed ranks available either, and from the perspective of those who approve of the auto-sorter you are intentionally making the tools inefficient to use. Shooting yourself in the foot, so to speak. Either add both the computed ranks and auto-sorter or just don't change anything at all. By looking too hard for compromise you will end up leaving all parties unhappy.

For what it's worth I also have Kotoshoho at 16E. Asashosakari might not feel confident about his placement but when I see something on my banzuke lines up with his it does wonders for my own confidence let me tell you! The conversation around juryo promotions and placements very interesting, although I must admit there is something making me a little frustrated. A part of me wants to post my banzuke to add to the conversation, but after sticking up for people who post their banzuke before the gtb deadline I'll feel like a huge hypocrite if I only post my banzuke now. I did change from my first draft a lot this time and I'm a bit more shy than I let on anyways so maybe it's for the best.

Like I didn't already love Spiffy's banzuke predictions enough. This is an excellent idea. Thank you in advance for your work and I thank Spiffy as well for both sparking the idea and his high quality analysis! As for my banzuke, I don't think I've ever gone back to change my answers so many times after checking sumodb, but I've landed on a banzuke I feel fairly confident in. It seems like the top half was easy for everyone this time as my banzuke from 9E up is the exact same as Spiffy's and one of the comments on YouTube says something similar as well.

ME

I can think of a couple strong gtb players that post their guesses before the deadline. The guy from Grand Sumo Breakdown does an entire podcast on his predictions and Sumo Spiffy makes videos of his first drafts as well. Although they don't post an entire banzuke guess Ikusumo's posts on Tachiai are also a great reference to compare your banzuke predictions with. I usually don't change my banzuke much from the first draft but listening to well informed second opinions has saved me a few missed points here or there. These are also some of the best places to get a real discussion about the banzuke since the comments are often from GTB players working to improve their scores.

I didn't realize the "as a sekitori" part of the question meant anything so I just chose Chiyonokuni cause I thought he'd retire first, oops

It's the makushita joi so nobody would be surprised if he doesn't manage it but Shishi held up well in his first match at least. There's much to be interested in there with Shishi, Kawazoe, and Shiden. Hopefully they can all get kachi koshi so we can see them in Juryo next basho.