Promotion/Demotion and Yūshō Discussion Haru 2023

[Asashosakari 18,670]

I'd be curious to know what the numbers looked like for the periods of 1996-2000 and 2001-2005, when they were still doing more J vs Ms matches than today. The Ms5 virtual cutoff probably dates from around the year 2000 when they also changed a bunch of other stuff in how they handled lower division records, such as the 6-1 promotion cutoffs (Sd->Ms, Jd->Sd).

Edited April 4, 2023 by Asashosakari

[Tsuchinoninjin 1,244]

On 04/04/2023 at 07:52, Asashosakari said:

I'd be curious to know what the numbers looked like for the periods of 1996-2000 and 2001-2005, when they were still doing more J vs Ms matches than today. The Ms5 virtual cutoff probably dates from around the year 2000 when they also changed a bunch of other stuff in how they handled lower division records, such as the 6-1 promotion cutoffs (Sd->Ms, Jd->Sd).

2001-2005 seems maybe the most lenient era, maybe some strategy around the sekitori expansion? Of course the were a lot of ridiculous promotions for the actual expansion basho but the other basho also had lenient promotions as well.

Percentage of records promoted to Juryo

 

 

[Reonito 1,306]

32 minutes ago, Tsuchinoninjin said:

2001-2005 seems maybe the most lenient era, maybe some strategy around the sekitori expansion? Of course the were a lot of ridiculous promotions for the actual expansion basho but the other basho also had lenient promotions as well.

Percentage of records promoted to Juryo

 

Percentages might be hard to interpret given small numbers. From 1996 to now, 17 rikishi ranked Ms6 scored 6-1. Three were promoted, one in 1996, one in 2004, one in 2015. For Ms5, it's 15/17. So a pretty clear invisible line. For Ms5 with 5 wins, there were lots of promotions from 2000-2013 (100% during a stretch in 2000-2004), but few before or since, confirming your point.

Edited April 6, 2023 by Reonito

[Tigerboy1966 1,376]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but Enho was promoted with a 4-3 from Ms6 after January 2018. Which I suppose goes to show that context (or banzuke luck) matters.

[Koorifuu 860]

3 hours ago, Tigerboy1966 said:

Sorry if this has already been mentioned but Enho was promoted with a 4-3 from Ms6 after January 2018. Which I suppose goes to show that context (or banzuke luck) matters.

Everyone's favourite MMA heavyweight Sudario got in from Ms7.. with 5 wins.

That juryo basho might've been many things, but 'reliable reference' isn't one of them.

Edited April 7, 2023 by Koorifuu

[Reonito 1,306]

16 minutes ago, Koorifuu said:

Everyone's favourite MMA heavyweight Sudario got in from Ms7.. with 5 wins.

That juryo basho might've been many things, but 'reliable reference' isn't one of them.

Yup 7 impossible to keep records in juryo and only 5 KK in the Ms promotion zone will do that.

[maglor 122]

I remember that was the basho where some of us thought WTK might make it in with his 7-0 from Ms17. Guess the Ms5 line is more of a strong suggestion while the Ms15 line is absolute.

[Reonito 1,306]

16 minutes ago, maglor said:

I remember that was the basho where some of us thought WTK might make it in with his 7-0 from Ms17. Guess the Ms5 line is more of a strong suggestion while the Ms15 line is absolute.

Maybe not completely absolute, but it takes something fairly extreme, like an expansion of division size.

[Akinomaki 39,581]

1 hour ago, Reonito said:

Yup 7 impossible to keep records in juryo and only 5 KK in the Ms promotion zone will do that.

We had 2 usually impossible to keep this time and they stayed - it's rather that the shimpan are extremely odd sometimes - and nowadays all the time, just as chaotic as the basho results

[Reonito 1,306]

16 minutes ago, Akinomaki said:

We had 2 usually impossible to keep this time and they stayed - it's rather that the shimpan are extremely odd sometimes - and nowadays all the time, just as chaotic as the basho results

Those guys computed to J16e, which is not impossible to keep, just very rare and requires a dearth of quality promotion cases to push them down. To put it another way, they would have been clearly safe with one more win. We all thought Kawazoe at least had done enough to replace them, and perhaps Shiden, but for whatever reasons the shimpan disagreed.

The best-placed guy to be demoted after Hatsu 2018 was 4-11 at J12w, 3.5 ranks lower than Tsushimanada with the same record, or 1.5 ranks lower than Shimanoumi, who had one more win. He computed to J19w and would have needed 3 more wins for safety. That's truly impossible to keep, as in they'll go down as far as needed to find a kachi-koshi to replace him.

[Reonito 1,306]

It's a little tricky to make the terms crystal-clear with odd vs. even ranks and East vs. West, but we can try:

J14: 8-7 safe; 7-8 demotable but could stay; 6-9 impossible to keep*

J13: 7-8 safe; 6-9 demotable and unlikely to stay; 5-10 impossible to keep*

Demotable guys are more likely to stay if ranked on the East side; and in general the treatment gets a little more lenient as we move up the banzuke

*unless there's a scandal that nukes half the banzuke

[Tsuchinoninjin 1,244]

I’m a little disappointed that nobody is calling out hakuho promotion from ms9 on a 6-1 when the sekitori slots expanded which I intentionally cut off.

[Reonito 1,306]

To add to the above, Tsushimanada is the first J9 to survive with a 4-11 record since Juryo went to 28 rikishi, but that's out of only 7 instances. A couple of J11's with a 5-10 have pulled this off before Shimanoumi. The only non-demotion that (just barely) breaks "impossible to stay if needed more than one additional win for safety" was Sumanofuji, who stayed in Juryo with a 5-10 from J12e in Natsu 2005. The next-best promotion candidate in that instance was 5-2 at Ms6w. Again, I'm excluding this, which is the exception to pretty much all banzuke rules.

At the other end of banzuke luck, J13e Akiseyama (7-8) and J11e Kizenryu (6-9) are the only rikishi who were safe by the numbers and still got demoted. This happened in a single basho, Natsu 2013. They were exchanged for rikishi with solid promotion cases, but I don't see them doing that today.

Edited April 8, 2023 by Reonito

[Sakura 1,463]

1 hour ago, Reonito said:

At the other end of banzuke luck, J13e Akiseyama (7-8) and J11e Kizenryu (6-9) are the only rikishi who were safe by the numbers and still got demoted. This happened in a single basho, Natsu 2013. They were exchanged for rikishi were with solid promotion cases, but I don't see them doing that today.

Sagatsukasa had the same issue as those two. Those three all computed to the same rank, so I suppose if one went then all three had to go.

[Reonito 1,306]

38 minutes ago, Sakura said:

Sagatsukasa had the same issue as those two. Those three all computed to the same rank, so I suppose if one went then all three had to go.

Right, I'd missed him as I only looked at J9-J14 for unusual demotions/non-demotions. I'm pretty sure that if those results happened today, only Ms1e Seiro (5-2) and Ms7e Osunaarashi (7-0) would go up, with the other three who got promoted back then getting stuck at J1/J2.

[Asashosakari 18,670]

18 hours ago, Reonito said:

The only non-demotion that (just barely) breaks "impossible to stay if needed more than one additional win for safety" was Sumanofuji, who stayed in Juryo with a 5-10 from J12e in Natsu 2005. The next-best promotion candidate in that instance was 5-2 at Ms6w.

It goes without saying that that was also quite the surprise at the time.

On 22/05/2005 at 14:30, Doitsuyama said:

Shiraishi won against Komanofuji and finishes 5-2 to get fifth in the Juryo promotion line behind Ushiomaru, Kyokunankai, Onishi and Chiyohakuho. This will likely be enough for promotion as four demotions from Juryo are likely plus the Intai of Kotoryu.

On 25/05/2005 at 20:00, Asashosakari said:

Geez, I know the Kyokai doesn't like to promote from below Ms5, but... I could see why they kept Harunoyama, Daimanazuru and Maikaze last time with slightly better records since there were already 5 promotions and the remaining candidates didn't have the most convincing records, but Sumanofuji vs. Shiraishi struck me as a complete no-brainer, especially with only 4 other promotions...

That should put also a bit of a dent into those people who think Baruto can make it to Juryo next basho...with this kind of precedence case, he better get 7-0 unless banzuke luck drives him up all the way to Ms5, which I doubt (on both counts).

(I kept the second paragraph of mine in the quote intentionally, finding the details of what ended up happening there is left as an exercise to the reader.)

 

16 hours ago, Reonito said:

Right, I'd missed him as I only looked at J9-J14 for unusual demotions/non-demotions. I'm pretty sure that if those results happened today, only Ms1e Seiro (5-2) and Ms7e Osunaarashi (7-0) would go up, with the other three who got promoted back then getting stuck at J1/J2.

I'm not so sure. It was considered a major upset of the established order of things by us around here back then as well.

 

Edited April 8, 2023 by Asashosakari

[Reonito 1,306]

28 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

(I kept the second paragraph of mine in the quote intentionally, finding the details of what ended up happening there is left as an exercise to the reader.)

I see the Kyokai was no less baffling and no more consistent back then! 5-2 Ms6w doesn't get exchanged with a 5-10 J12e one time, then gets exchanged with 5-10 J10w the next (or 3-12 J6w; not sure of the order).

[Reonito 1,306]

50 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

I'm not so sure. It was considered a major upset of the established order of things by us around here back then as well.

I saw in that topic that having to insert Sokokurai was a factor?

[Asashosakari 18,670]

3 hours ago, Reonito said:

I saw in that topic that having to insert Sokokurai was a factor?

In the sense that the straight-up solution would normally have meant 3 promotions from makushita but only 2 because of Sokokurai. Speculation at the time was that the added "pressure" from that may have helped push them into the big move with the triple overdemotion.

[Asashosakari 18,670]

3 hours ago, Reonito said:

I see the Kyokai was no less baffling and no more consistent back then! 5-2 Ms6w doesn't get exchanged with a 5-10 J12e one time, then gets exchanged with 5-10 J10w the next (or 3-12 J6w; not sure of the order).

Also the comparison to two basho earlier, where another J10w 5-10 was spared at the expense of Ms5w 4-3 and Ms7e 6-1.

One of the things I've never liked to say out loud over the years but which I can't help but think is that the makushita guys who've benefited from unexpectedly permissive promotions over the years have tended to be guys hyped up as audience draws, i.e. Baruto, Endo, Enho. No idea if that's a real thing or just post-hoc rationalizing of mine.

Edited April 8, 2023 by Asashosakari

[Reonito 1,306]

In any case, the numbers certainly confirm the intuition that "safe by the numbers" = safe with very rare exceptions, and likewise for "more than one win from safety" = toast. One win and two ranks away from safety = probably toast, one win and one rank away from safety = true tossup / banzuke luck. Easier to run the numbers for J/Ms than for M/J because of the fixed number of ranks in J.

[Koorifuu 860]

On 08/04/2023 at 23:50, Asashosakari said:

In the sense that the straight-up solution would normally have meant 3 promotions from makushita but only 2 because of Sokokurai. Speculation at the time was that the added "pressure" from that may have helped push them into the big move with the triple overdemotion.

Sounds like the polar opposite of what just happened now - double underdemotion. I imagine that if they had to keep one of Shimanoumi and/or Tsushimanada due to opting against promoting Shiden from below the invisible line... might as well keep both. Kawazoe being the collateral damage.