New Juryo for Nagoya 2025

[Asashosakari 19,941]

New:
none

Returning:
Otsuji - Ms3e 7-0 Y, Takadagawa-beya, Hyogo, 21 years old, 2nd promotion, back after one basho
Kotokuzan - Ms4w 5-2, Arashio-beya, Kanagawa, 31 years old, 3rd promotion, back after 13 basho former maegashira

No Kyokukaiyu! 
 

Edited May 28 by Asashosakari

[Reonito 1,613]

8 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

No Kyokukaiyu! 

He can certainly feel hard done by, and Miyanokaze is a very lucky boy. I guess we have an example in which the tie went to the incumbent.

[Bunbukuchagama 827]

1 hour ago, Reonito said:

He can certainly feel hard done by, and Miyanokaze is a very lucky boy. I guess we have an example in which the tie went to the incumbent.

This explains why Kyokukaiyu didn't get a "promotion/relegation" bout.

Edited May 28 by Bunbukuchagama

[Yarimotsu 614]

2 hours ago, Bunbukuchagama said:

This explains why Kyokukaiyu didn't get a "promotion/relegation" bout.

Rather the other way around - he didn't get one so they considered that against his promotion? I don't think we can say for sure which way.

[Kaito 322]

Hmm, I hate that. It's too hard to get demoted from Juryo.

[sahaven111 188]

Of course Kyokukaiyu wasn't going to be promoted!

I mean, seriously! Changes to the rankings? In my zero-sum combat sport that updates it's rankings every two months?!

[Koorifuu 1,079]

Mixed feelings. Happy that Miyanokaze gets another chance to settle in, gutted for Kyokukaiyu who's absolutely earned it.

...then again, I'd feel this way regardless of their choice.

Edited May 28 by Koorifuu

[Ryoshishokunin 330]

I don't have time to do it today/soon, but it might be worth doing some statistical analysis to see if the thresholds for promotion are reasonable.  Reasonable hypothesis is that the 'correct' threshold for promotion should have the same performance in the next basho.  That is, the last retained rikishi and the last promoted rikishi should have similar performance.    In some sense this is easy to check, but I don't know how to automate it.

(I actually think you might want more volatility than that, but sumo's conservative in its ranking system.)

[Reonito 1,613]

Somewhat ironically, Kyokukaiyu would have made it if Miyanokaze won his final bout.

[Reonito 1,613]

6 hours ago, Ryoshishokunin said:

I don't have time to do it today/soon, but it might be worth doing some statistical analysis to see if the thresholds for promotion are reasonable.  Reasonable hypothesis is that the 'correct' threshold for promotion should have the same performance in the next basho.  That is, the last retained rikishi and the last promoted rikishi should have similar performance.    In some sense this is easy to check, but I don't know how to automate it.

@Asashosakari  did an analysis for J <-> Ms and we thought we understood the pattern; not exchanging Kyokukaiyu and Miyanokaze (just barely) breaks it.

[Ryoshishokunin 330]

I'm not arguing about the pattern.  I'm trying to evaluate if the decision making process is a *good* one.

[Gurowake 4,123]

1 hour ago, Reonito said:

Somewhat ironically, Kyokukaiyu would have made it if Miyanokaze won his final bout.

That's the thing given the disconnect between the torikumi makers and the banzuke makers.  The former have no way to force the exchange matches that they set up to actually be exchange matches.  They may have used the same logic to try to figure out what the banzuke makers were going to do, as it seemed fairly clear to me at least that the two Ms-J matches on senshuraku were true exchange matches so long as they were willing to demote Miyanokaze in favor of Kyokukaiyu.  Certainly it's not like they had better options available to make the matches, but if Miyanokaze wasn't going down with a loss, they could have put Kotokuzan against someone else for him to fight for his berth and not make it look like a clear exchange match.  That would have looked a little silly, but it would have given better insight as to their thinking about promotions.  So long as the disconnect remains between the two groups, the torikumi makers will continue to make matches that seem most appropriate, but might not end up being true exchange matches even though they look like they might be.

Or maybe I'm just completely wrong and am missing something obvious.

Edited May 28 by Gurowake

[Gurowake 4,123]

I was going to say during the promotion thread, but I didn't want to butt in with my comments that are increasingly wrong, that I wondered if the debutant aspect of the exchange would work again Kyokukaiyu here.  That's often something that appears to go against such rikishi when things are close. It's possible someone could go back and look at the times that there were similar ties and see if all of those times the promotee was someone who had already been in Juryo.  If there previously had been someone making a debut on a tie, then I guess that's yet another time that I'll be wrong about something.

[Asashosakari 19,941]

I was actually wondering the same thing in the closing days of the tournament, especially as Kyokukaiyu not only hasn't been to juryo before, it's his first appearance in the promotion zone altogether. We used to believe that inexperience might be considered a negative mark back when the promotions were still generally more permissive, but in the current strict environment it seemed like there's no need to bring that in, too. Maybe they feel that there is.

[Reonito 1,613]

3 hours ago, Ryoshishokunin said:

I'm not arguing about the pattern.  I'm trying to evaluate if the decision making process is a *good* one.

Ah, I see. Like, will Miyanokaze and Kotokuzan perform similarly in Nagoya?

[Reonito 1,613]

It's not like Miyanokaze is an established juryo vet, but maybe just crossing the sekitori threshold once counts for something...

[Tsuchinoninjin 1,281]

It might be just a practical thing, with fewer low rankers around it becomes a pain to get all the tsukebito stuff setup just for it to be somewhat pointless a couple months later and set up the tsukebito for ANOTHER new guy. Along with individual room and other perks…

Returnees can easily restart the framework that was previously set up for them.

Of course this could all be eased a bit by introducing a quarter step of perks and pay in makushita joi 

[Koorifuu 1,079]

1 hour ago, Tsuchinoninjin said:

Of course this could all be eased a bit by introducing a quarter step of perks and pay in makushita joi 

I've regularly had this crazy idea that a semi-profissional tier between juryo and makushita could make sense. Some sekitori perks, but not all of them. Maybe as an introductory tier.

Generally speaking, the skill level within ms1-ms10 feels oh so much closer to juryo than it is to lower makushita.

Edited May 28 by Koorifuu

[Oskanohana 297]

14 hours ago, Kaito said:

Hmm, I hate that. It's too hard to get demoted from Juryo.

Kasuganishiki and his crew liked it that way.

[sahaven111 188]

42 minutes ago, Oskanohana said:

Kasuganishiki and his crew liked it that way.

Am I missing something? I'm not aware of how Kasuganishiki relates to this as he certainly has nothing to do with the banzuke making process, and I can't find a single instance on his record of getting a demotion worthy score yet staying in Juryo. If anything, looking at his record brings back fond memories of a time when rikishi were demoted more than a rank and a half for a bad makekoshi.

[Gurowake 4,123]

35 minutes ago, sahaven111 said:

Am I missing something?

It's not something that's going to be found on the Sumo DB.  But it is in the lead paragraph of Wikipedia's article for him.

Edited May 28 by Gurowake

[Bunbukuchagama 827]

14 hours ago, Koorifuu said:

Happy that Miyanokaze gets another chance to settle in

I am less than happy. He is in the wrong sport. 

[Ryoshishokunin 330]

3 hours ago, Reonito said:

Ah, I see. Like, will Miyanokaze and Kotokuzan perform similarly in Nagoya?

Yes.  If they're making "correct" ranking decisions, then the performance of rikishi that got to the same place should perform about as well as each other.   So if they're making a systematic error in promiting too few, you'd expect to see them perform noticeably better than the rikishi that got retained/underdemoted.  And of course the opposite is also true: if the newcomers systematically get destroyed, that probably means too many are being promoted.  

(This is generally true, but it's most noticable at this boundary: you could do something similar to look at the promotion sizes for 4-3 vs. 5-2 rikishi farther down the bankzuke, e.g.)

Of course, making everyone start at the bottom throws a spanner in that, as well as the difference in expectations between Juryo and Makushita, which confounds things.  

[Bunbukuchagama 827]

6 hours ago, Gurowake said:

That's the thing given the disconnect between the torikumi makers and the banzuke makers.  The former have no way to force the exchange matches that they set up to actually be exchange matches.

Aren't those basically the same people? 

[Bunbukuchagama 827]

1 hour ago, Koorifuu said:

I've regularly had this crazy idea that a semi-profissional tier between juryo and makushita could make sense. Some sekitori perks, but not all of them. Maybe as an introductory tier.

Generally speaking, the skill level within ms1-ms10 feels oh so much closer to juryo than it is to lower makushita.

That would essentially require creating another division. And the problem would just get kicked down to the boundary between Supermakushita and Makushita.