2-6 in makushita

[messi19]

When browsing Hoshizakura's results on the database I came across the Nagoya 2005 basho where the Mongolian finished with a 2-6 record from Ms12W.

http://sumodb.sumogames.com/Rikishi.aspx?r=1103

What made Hoshizakura have 8 bouts in a makushita tournament not including a kettei-sen? I'm totally confused. ;-)

[Pikenoyama]

When browsing Hoshizakura's results on the database I came across the Nagoya 2005 basho where the Mongolian finished with a 2-6 record from Ms12W.

http://sumodb.sumogames.com/Rikishi.aspx?r=1103

What made Hoshizakura have 8 bouts in a makushita tournament not including a kettei-sen? I'm totally confused. ;-)

Visit to Juryo, I suppose.

[messi19]

Nope he only fought makushita guys in each of his 8 bouts!

http://sumodb.sumogames.com/Rikishi_basho....03&b=200507

Makes it all the more confusing, doesn't it? ;-)

[Randomitsuki]

Imagine that a basho consists of only one day. And imagine that you have an odd number of rikishi on the banzuke (none of which is kyujo). So when you are the torikumi maker for that 1-day basho you'll have the problem that you cannot assign a bout to every rikishi. The solution would be to have one rikishi fight twice.

Now by extension the same problem applies when you have a 15-day tournament. If the number of active rikishi is odd you can always juggle around torikumi in the lower divisions (that's why sometimes a Makushita rikishi might have something like a 3-2 record after 8 days; he should have had only four bouts until day 8). Ultimately, however, there is a 50% chance that the torikumi do not fit for day 15. That's when one rikishi is assigned an additional bout. In all cases it is someone with a strong MK record (1-6 or so), and in most cases it is a rikishi from Jonokuchi. Sometimes, however, they give the eighth bout to a Makushita rikishi, just like it has happened in Hoshizakura's case.

[messi19]

Yes that makes sense. One question remains though: If the rikishi fighting an additional bout ends up winning that one (which didn't happen in Hoshizakura's case), will the extra win have an influence on his banzuke ranking next basho? Or is the rikishi fighting in a "practice bout" which won't be taken into consideration when the next banzuke is created and the bout only ends up being important for the opponent who is appearing in his 7th bout? Had Hoshizakura won the bout would his record have been considered as a 3-4 or a 2-5 regardless?

There is a problem related with each scenario:

1.) If it is no more than a practice bout the rikishi may not fight with the same fire/motivation as he would if it were to count for the banzuke ranking

2.) If it does count for the banzuke the rikishi is totally favoured over all the other rikishi who would have finished with the same record

Edited February 6, 2008 by messi19

[Asashosakari]

Now by extension the same problem applies when you have a 15-day tournament. If the number of active rikishi is odd you can always juggle around torikumi in the lower divisions (that's why sometimes a Makushita rikishi might have something like a 3-2 record after 8 days; he should have had only four bouts until day 8). Ultimately, however, there is a 50% chance that the torikumi do not fit for day 15. That's when one rikishi is assigned an additional bout. In all cases it is someone with a strong MK record (1-6 or so), and in most cases it is a rikishi from Jonokuchi. Sometimes, however, they give the eighth bout to a Makushita rikishi, just like it has happened in Hoshizakura's case.

For the bout to happen in makushita, there's another requirement though: a sekitori needs to go kyujo on Day 14. At any rate, the Hoshizakura case is certainly exceptional because usually the 8th bout will indeed be a juryo visit. Near as I can tell, this is what happened:

After Day 12, there were six kyujo sekitori. That means they held back an even number of makushita rikishi for possible exchange bouts (because you need 0, 2 or 4 rikishi each day, and any three-day sum is even, obviously). The rikishi they held back were Ms2e Raiko 4-2, Ms2w Tamamitsukuni 3-3, Ms4w Dairaido 3-3, and Ms5e Ryuho 4-2. And possibly Ms3w Masatsukasa and Ms6w Baruto at 5-1...they hadn't faced each other yet, so depending on how many juryo rikishi you have on the bubble, you can either schedule them against one another, or each guy against a juryo rikishi. But either way it was an even number of makushita rikishi.

Day 13 saw zero exchange bouts. However, Asasekiryu went kyujo on that day. Normally that doesn't affect things too much...you can still assign all the available makushita rikishi, you just need to do it differently (e.g. instead of 2 each on Days 14 and 15, you do 1 + 3). Apparently though they decided to get a little creative and instead added two more makushita guys to the exchange pool, namely Ms1w Maikaze 2-4 and Ms7e Asahimaru 2-4, who were most likely supposed to meet each other originally. I'm not sure why they did it that way, but it may be because lots of juryo rikishi were on the bubble in that basho, and they didn't want to "burn" one of the exchange rikishi on a meaningless filler bout for Day 14 (the one that became necessary because of Asasekiryu's kyujo). So instead they put 2-4 Maikaze against juryo Sumanofuji who was already demotion-worthy (3-10 at J14w).

And presumably the idea was to do the same thing with Asahimaru on Day 15. That in itself would already be a bit unusual because he was only at Ms7, but it's not unheard of. But then, Yoshikaze also went kyujo in juryo on Day 14, the 8th sekitori to do so. And suddenly Asahimaru was without an opponent; they had held back five rikishi, but needed an even number. Normally they would just pick yet another high-ranked makushita for one more exchange bout, but that would have brought the number of such bouts to six which is probably too much to stomach (and they couldn't really scrap any of the others* to reduce it to four), so instead of doing Asahimaru-juryo and filler-juryo, they put Asahimaru against Hoshizakura.

* Because they were all against juryo rikishi on the bubble:

Ms3w Masatsukasa (5-1) - J10w Kinkaiyama (5-9)

Ms6w Baruto (5-1) - J11w Yotsukasa (5-9)

J13e Chiyotenzan (6-8) - Ms5e Ryuho (4-2)

J14e Chiyohakuho (6-8) - Ms2e Raiko (4-2)

[Asashosakari]

Had Hoshizakura won the bout would his record have been considered as a 3-4 or a 2-5 regardless?

There is a problem related with each scenario:

1.) If it is no more than a practice bout the rikishi may not fight with the same fire/motivation as he would if it were to count for the banzuke ranking

2.) If it does count for the banzuke the rikishi is totally favoured over all the other rikishi who would have finished with the same record

Hilariously enough, the answer is that it would have been treated as approximately 2.5 wins. No, seriously. Kyokunankai in 2005.01 did exactly that, finishing 3-5 but got demoted a little more than one would expect for a 3-4 at his rank.

Edit: Those halfway-in-between promotions/demotions are probably easier to tell with the rikishi in jonokuchi, e.g. Jk24w Tateishi 3-5 in 2007.07:

Jk19e Nasu 2-5 -> Jk27e

Jk24w Tateishi 3-5 -> Jk23w

Jk25w Toshi 3-4 -> Jk22w

Jk26e Fukusegawa 3-4 -> Jk23e

Or Jk28w Omori 4-4 in 2006.01:

Jk27w Eigashima 3-4 -> Jk19e

Jk28w Omori 4-4 -> Jk16w

Jk35e Akai 4-3 -> Jd118w

And those "8 bouts, all in makushita" cases aren't quite as rare as I seemed to remember...2006.01, Ms11w Rikiryu finished 3-5 with a win against Ms1w Kinkaiyama 2-5. And 2000.03, Ms14w Futatsukuba finished 2-6 with a loss against Ms4w Minami 3-4.

Edited February 6, 2008 by Asashosakari

[Asashosakari]

And one last, for the sake of completeness: When the additional bout takes place in jonokuchi, they sometimes give it to a rikishi who has absences to "make up", e.g. Shobimaru in 2007.01. Even though he missed the first 12 days (= 6 rounds of bouts), his official record ended up at 2-0-5 rather than 2-0-6.

[kaiguma]

And one last, for the sake of completeness: When the additional bout takes place in jonokuchi, they sometimes give it to a rikishi who has absences to "make up", e.g. Shobimaru in 2007.01. Even though he missed the first 12 days (= 6 rounds of bouts), his official record ended up at 2-0-5 rather than 2-0-6.

I have one more. How is KK/MK determined in the case of a 4-4 record. If it is indeed considered as a 3.5-3.5, it would seem like a KK. But if he was 3-4 after the 7th bout? is KK then determined at the 7th bout even when 8 are completed?

[Asashosakari]

I have one more. How is KK/MK determined in the case of a 4-4 record. If it is indeed considered as a 3.5-3.5, it would seem like a KK. But if he was 3-4 after the 7th bout? is KK then determined at the 7th bout even when 8 are completed?

4-4 after 4-3 = 4-3. The extra bout can never put you into a worse position than you were in without it.

4-4 after 3-4 (as with Omori above) = who knows. :-) I wouldn't call it a kachi-koshi (I had Omori as a Persistence Watch guy beyond his 4-4), but I'm not sure what the official stance would be on that. He definitely didn't get the proper KK treatment though, as you can see; he missed out on the customary promotion to Jonidan, and they merely treated him a little better than the regular 3-4 rikishi.