Promotion/Demotion and Yūshō Discussion Haru 2023

[Asashosakari 18,657]

18 hours ago, Gurowake said:

I'm guessing that they didn't want to break up the pair on the bubble, and didn't want to promote Shiden because they hate him.

Replace "they hate him" with "he was Ms6+" and it's basically my assessment. Notwithstanding that I was hoping for the opposite outcome, I don't really get the general outrage here. It's hardly like Ms3w 4-3 is a slam dunk promotion case, based on how they've handled this area over the last few years. 

[Reonito 1,296]

1 hour ago, Asashosakari said:

Replace "they hate him" with "he was Ms6+" and it's basically my assessment. Notwithstanding that I was hoping for the opposite outcome, I don't really get the general outrage here. It's hardly like Ms3w 4-3 is a slam dunk promotion case, based on how they've handled this area over the last few years. 

It's more that 4-11 at J9 seemed like a slam dunk demotion case...

[maglor 122]

Yeah denying a borderline case in Kawazoe to break decades of precedent to keep up Shimanoumi and Tsushimanada seems rough.

[Seiyashi 4,068]

1 hour ago, Reonito said:

It's more that 4-11 at J9 seemed like a slam dunk demotion case...

Only in sumo do two slam dunk demotions next to each other make for a slam dunk retention of both. 

Oh well, write it down to Gunning's Law and move on, I guess... 

Edited March 30, 2023 by Seiyashi

[fwuzzle23 66]

2 hours ago, Reonito said:

It's more that 4-11 at J9 seemed like a slam dunk demotion case...

Eh, a 4-11 at J9 is one win below safety by the numbers, as is a 5-10 at J11, I don't know if I'd call either slam-dunk necessarily. The three that actually got demoted were multiple wins under safety. I can buy that the shimpans didn't feel like either case necessarily demanded a demotion, especially when those that would be coming up in their place didn't really enough to demand a promotion themselves.

[sahaven111 167]

Maybe Tsushimanada was spared because he was scheduled against rikishi like Ichinojo and Ochiai late into the basho, even though their records were vastly different?

[Reonito 1,296]

39 minutes ago, sahaven111 said:

Maybe Tsushimanada was spared because he was scheduled against rikishi like Ichinojo and Ochiai late into the basho, even though their records were vastly different?

I feel like the whole point of scheduling him against Ichinojo with the yusho on the line was that he had something to fight for, namely avoiding demotion.

[sahaven111 167]

1 minute ago, Reonito said:

I feel like the whole point of scheduling him against Ichinojo with the yusho on the line was that he had something to fight for, namely avoiding demotion.

That actually makes sense. but here he's lost, and presumably not demoted...

[Sakura 1,462]

8 hours ago, sahaven111 said:

That actually makes sense. but here he's lost, and presumably not demoted...

Often, what seems like a promotion/demotion type match-up doesn't come to that, for whatever reason.

[Seiyashi 4,068]

8 hours ago, sahaven111 said:

but here he's lost, and presumably not demoted...

If it's not a direct H2H exchange bout, I wouldn't read anything into his loss to Ichinojō. Rikishi lose all the time to their divisionmates; one bout shouldn't count against them more than another in that sense.

Speaking of exchange bouts, and after having cooled off a bit, the real reason is probably Kawazoe losing the exchange bout to Shimanoumi. And if Shimanoumi is staying at Kawazoe's expense, there's no call demoting Tsushimanada 2 ranks higher with an otherwise equivalent record for Shiden 3 ranks lower and out of the promotion zone, as Asashosakari points out. So Shimanoumi won the one bout he needed to, to secure his salary, and Tsushimanada might have to buy Shimanoumi a round for helping save his ass by proxy too.

Edited March 30, 2023 by Seiyashi

[maglor 122]

10 hours ago, Reonito said:

I feel like the whole point of scheduling him against Ichinojo with the yusho on the line was that he had something to fight for, namely avoiding demotion.

Well, as long as he thought that he had to win the match to stay up mission accomplished.

Definitely possible the torikumi committee thought it was a do or die match for him but the banzuke committee disagreed.

[Nantonoyama 239]

17 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

Replace "they hate him" with "he was Ms6+" and it's basically my assessment. Notwithstanding that I was hoping for the opposite outcome, I don't really get the general outrage here. It's hardly like Ms3w 4-3 is a slam dunk promotion case, based on how they've handled this area over the last few years. 

I agree. I believe Chiyonoumi has a stronger promotion case than Shiden. The ms5-ms6 is a clear border, cf Churanoumi vs Akiseyama for Kyushu 2019 banzuke.
 

The one outstanding case is Enho in Haru 2018 that got promoted from ms6 with 4-3, it took a sheer amount of luck and the willingness of the committee not to save a 4-11 J12w.

[Sumo Spiffy 522]

I've only started paying much attention to juryo recently, but do they commonly put guys who might be fighting for their salary against someone who's doing really well? At a glance, making a guy fight a joi regular who's only down there due to suspension—and thus not only far superior to the division normally, but also rested—just seems like a gigantic fk you.

[Akinomaki 39,515]

38 minutes ago, maglor said:

Well, as long as he thought that he had to win the match to stay up mission accomplished.

Definitely possible the torikumi committee thought it was a do or die match for him but the banzuke committee disagreed.

The first is what I also thought, it was just to assure that the opponent had some fighting spirit left to have a meaningful bout. For the 2nd - well, both is done by the shimpan department, one or 2 persons may differ - rather they were in a different mood after the result than before.

[Reonito 1,296]

34 minutes ago, Sumo Spiffy said:

I've only started paying much attention to juryo recently, but do they commonly put guys who might be fighting for their salary against someone who's doing really well? At a glance, making a guy fight a joi regular who's only down there due to suspension—and thus not only far superior to the division normally, but also rested—just seems like a gigantic fk you.

The general principle is to try to pair up guys who have something to fight for. With a max of 27 possible opponents in juryo, matchmaking gets hard toward the end. Ichinojo had already fought anyone who was doing well, and someone with a mild KK or MK from the middle ranks wouldn't have had anything even potentially at stake.

[maglor 122]

1 hour ago, Akinomaki said:

The first is what I also thought, it was just to assure that the opponent had some fighting spirit left to have a meaningful bout. For the 2nd - well, both is done by the shimpan department, one or 2 persons may differ - rather they were in a different mood after the result than before.

Ah I thought there were more changes between the two

[serge_gva 52]

On 29/03/2023 at 23:14, Asashosakari said:

Replace "they hate him" with "he was Ms6+" and it's basically my assessment. Notwithstanding that I was hoping for the opposite outcome, I don't really get the general outrage here. It's hardly like Ms3w 4-3 is a slam dunk promotion case, based on how they've handled this area over the last few years. 

I agree this is not the strangest decision imaginable... But I find the current Makushita > Juryo promotion criteria a bit wonky at the moment. A 6-1 at Ms6e rank  is almost never enough, while a 7-0 at Ms15w rank is always enough? I struggle to see the logic in this, especially since if the Ms6e lost his match early in the tournament, chances are he didn't face the Ms15w.

Edited April 3, 2023 by serge_gva

[Asashosakari 18,657]

8 hours ago, serge_gva said:

I agree this is not the strangest decision imaginable... But I find the current Makushita > Juryo promotion criteria a bit wonky at the moment. A 6-1 at Ms6e rank  is almost never enough, while a 7-0 at Ms15w rank is always enough? I struggle to see the logic in this, especially since if the Ms6e lost his match early in the tournament, chances are he didn't face the Ms15w.

They've got to draw the line somewhere with unbeaten records, and Ms15 is as good as any point. Keep in mind that anywhere below makushita it's an automatic promotion to the next division, so potentially 100+ ranks up. In addition, it's simply hard to go 7-0: only ~1 in 128 rikishi will do it in any given basho. By comparison, it's ~7 in 128 for 6-1 records. That needs to be rewarded sufficiently.

I do agree that 6-1 records below Ms5 probably should be treated better, but if I had to speculate, the reason they don't do it might be that those rikishi actually don't face the other promotion contenders all that much, less than a third of their matches.

[Reonito 1,296]

1 hour ago, Asashosakari said:

I do agree that 6-1 records below Ms5 probably should be treated better, but if I had to speculate, the reason they don't do it might be that those rikishi actually don't face the other promotion contenders all that much, less than a third of their matches.

To what extent is this because they almost treat Ms1-M5 as a separate division for scheduling, vs. a natural outcome of the Swiss tournament system in rank order?

[Bunbukuchagama 675]

13 minutes ago, Reonito said:

To what extent is this because they almost treat Ms1-M5 as a separate division for scheduling, vs. a natural outcome of the Swiss tournament system in rank order?

Shiden beat Ms2w, Ms3w, Ms5e, and Ms5w. I wouldn't call it "not facing other promotion contenders all that much". 

[Koorifuu 858]

It just dawned on me, and it might've already been mentioned here, that not promoting Kawazoe can be an example of 'two wrongs make a right'. Making amends for the fact he was given an incorrect, decisive win.

[Asashosakari 18,657]

41 minutes ago, Reonito said:

To what extent is this because they almost treat Ms1-M5 as a separate division for scheduling, vs. a natural outcome of the Swiss tournament system in rank order?

I would say mostly the latter; they take the next available opponent for 99% of lower division matches, so there's nothing special going on up there. Aside from the fact that the upper 5 ranks have a near-monopoly on matches against juryo rikishi, which not only sets them apart from Ms6+ on its own but also means fewer opportunities for cross-scheduling of those two groups of Ms rikishi. But that's a fairly limited effect these days since they don't do many optional J vs Ms1-5 matchups either.
 

22 minutes ago, Bunbukuchagama said:

Shiden beat Ms2w, Ms3w, Ms5e, and Ms5w. I wouldn't call it "not facing other promotion contenders all that much". 

Exceptions don't invalidate the general pattern, and we can't realistically expect them to discuss every case on its own detailed match-by-match merits because that would probably never end when there are 23 24 people involved. I'm not saying it's definitely what's going on, but it makes sense to me that they would have decided at some point that there needs to be an arbitrary cutoff there as well, same as the 7-0 Ms15 deal, just to keep everything manageable. Maybe Ms5 isn't even the best cutoff (I haven't looked that closely) and it ought to be Ms4 or Ms6 instead, but 5 has that "nice number" thing going on.

Edited April 3, 2023 by Asashosakari

[Reonito 1,296]

2 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

Exceptions don't invalidate the general pattern, and we can't realistically expect them to discuss every case on its own detailed match-by-match merits because that would probably never end when there are 23 people involved. I'm not saying it's definitely what's going on, but it makes sense to me that they would have decided at some point that there needs to be an arbitrary cutoff there as well, same as the 7-0 Ms15 deal, just to keep everything manageable. Maybe Ms5 isn't even the best cutoff (I haven't looked that closely) and it ought to be Ms4 or Ms6 instead, but 5 has that "nice number" thing going on.

Could easily be something along the lines of "We won't look at records other than 7-0 below Ms5 unless we've used up all other promotion candidates and there's still a record in juryo that simply can't stay." 

[Gurowake 3,874]

Since 2011, the median opponent of each Ms rank near the top:

Ms1e > Ms2w
Ms1w > Ms2w
Ms2e > Ms2w or Ms3e (it's very close, I'm not going to determine it exactly, and this way you get more information)
Ms2w > Ms3e
Ms3e > Ms3w
Ms3w > Ms4e
Ms4e > Ms3w
Ms4w > Ms4e
Ms5e > Ms5w
Ms5w > Ms6e
Ms6e > Ms6w
Ms6w > Ms7e

There's no steep drop off upon hitting Ms6 - it's actually one rank higher.  If there's a heavy line to be drawn it should be after Ms4, since in Ms4 you have the unique situation where they face more ranked ahead of them than behind, which is due to the fact that the top few rikishi are much less likely to face rikishi ranked ahead of them and that has to be made up somewhere.  I suppose at some point it gets into a steady state where the median is going to land right between the rank ahead and behind, but at least through Ms6 that wasn't the case and the lower rank was clearly the median.

It's also clear that there maybe should be a line after Ms2, as the top 4 rikishi face nearly the same schedule, which makes sense given how the pairings are done.  That then suggests that maybe an Ms3 KK shouldn't automatically replace a minimally demotable Juryo rikishi, and the deciding factor here was the loss of the exchange match (plus minimal KK).  The line below Ms5 doesn't seem supportable though.

[Reonito 1,296]

4 minutes ago, Gurowake said:

There's no steep drop off upon hitting Ms6 - it's actually one rank higher.  If there's a heavy line to be drawn it should be after Ms4, since in Ms4 you have the unique situation where they face more ranked ahead of them than behind, which is due to the fact that the top few rikishi are much less likely to face rikishi ranked ahead of them and that has to be made up somewhere.  I suppose at some point it gets into a steady state where the median is going to land right between the rank ahead and behind, but at least through Ms6 that wasn't the case and the lower rank was clearly the median.

It's also clear that there maybe should be a line after Ms2, as the top 4 rikishi face nearly the same schedule, which makes sense given how the pairings are done.  That then suggests that maybe an Ms3 KK shouldn't automatically replace a minimally demotable Juryo rikishi, and the deciding factor here was the loss of the exchange match (plus minimal KK).  The line below Ms5 doesn't seem supportable though.

Given how they do the matchmaking, powers of 2 make a lot more sense than multiples of the number of fingers on one hand, but outside the NCAA basketball tournament and other knockout formats, it's hard to get people to focus on top 4 or top 8 instead of top 5 or top 10.