No final reminder for GTB this time

[Asashosakari]

Still the lopsided distribution of guesses leaves me guessing. My only explanation for such a bias towards Ama remaining Komusubi would be that many players are subconsciously (or consciously) affected by what they see others post as guesses on the forum. IIRC we saw no 3-sekiwake versions and virtually no discussion of it being a possibility.

I don't know...the notion that it usually takes 11 wins to force a komusubi->sekiwake promotion has been pretty well established in my opinion, and dates back through most of the five years I've been playing GTB, if not longer. I was actually surprised to hear that more than a quarter of all entries still contained three sekiwake.

As far as I can tell the latest non-mandatory 10-5 promotion was Musoyama back after 1999.11 and even in that basho it wasn't universal (Tosanoumi was also 10-5 at K2w and stuck). I guess one could quibble about Asashoryu's 10-5 promotion after 2001.11 as a more recent case, but I suspect that was in part (or wholly) because one of the existing sekiwake had gone 0-0-15 kosho (as S2w, to boot, so they would have needed to promote him to S1w despite the absence).

And that's even before the banzuke makers became more restrictive with sanyaku promotions in general...my memory could be wrong, but I don't think the more generalized trend became really apparent until Hakuho went 12-3 at M1w and was only promoted to komusubi exactly three years ago.

Edit: I hasten to add that you're welcome to post a three-sekiwake guess the next time this happens. My score will welcome the downward pressure on everybody else's scores in case your theory about the influence of publicly posted guesses is correct. >:-(

Edited October 30, 2007 by Asashosakari