With the November banzuke dropping a week from now, it’s time to post my prediction. I’ll go through the major question marks below; scroll down if you just want to see the guess.
Komusubi
With one Komusubi slot open via Daieisho’s likely promotion to Sekiwake, and the other via demotion of K1w Hiradoumi (7-8), we need two replacements. M3w Wakamotoharu (11-4) has a clear claim on K1e. Whom to put on the West side is less clear. I’ve gone with little bro M7e Wakatakakage (12-3), who has the best numerical case, but M4e Shodai (10-5) faced a stronger schedule, as did M2w Oho (9-6), who also beat Shodai on Day 15, and you can make valid arguments for any of the three.
M1e-M2e
The first three maegashira slots will be filled, in some order, by Hiradoumi plus whichever two of the trio above miss out on Komusubi. The order is unclear though. All three maegashira have strong enough rank-record combinations to be ahead of Hiradoumi, but it’s pretty rare for a Komusubi with a 7-8 record to drop below M1. Given my choice of WTK for K1w, I’ve gone with Shodai-Oho-Hiradoumi, but my confidence here isn’t high.
M3e-M4e
The three contenders here are M2e Atamifuji (7-8), S1e Abi (5-10), and M7w Churanoumi (10-5). I’ve listed them in the order of my guess, on the grounds that Atamifuji shouldn’t be over-demoted and a dropping Sekiwake should get a bit of leniency, but Churanoumi actually has the best rank-record combination and could go ahead of one or both of them.
M14-M17
Usually, Juryo promotions don’t go ahead of incumbents with winning records, but I think the two-win difference between the last guy in Makuuchi, M17e Nishikifuji (8-7), and the top guy in Juryo, J1e Chiyoshoma (10-5), will be enough to overcome this. After that decision, M14w Onokatsu (7-8) and Nishikifuji slot in naturally at M14w and M15e, followed by the other two obvious promotions from Juryo, Tokihayate and Shishi, at M15w and M16e. That still leaves us with three slots to fill (Takakeisho’s retirement shrinks the san’yaku, leading to the return of M17w). The candidates here are three Makuuchi rikishi with records that would usually mean demotion—M12e Bushozan (4-11), M12w Kinbozan (4-11), and M16w Kitanowaka (6-9)—and two Juryo rikishi with records that are right at or just below the promotion line—J11w Takerufuji (13-2) and J8e Asakoryu (11-4). I’ll be very surprised if Takerufuji doesn’t come up, though whether he trades places with Kitanowaka or Kinbozan is a coin flip. I’ve actually opted to drop both and bring up Asakoryu, but again, I am far from confident.
Other smaller question marks: Roga/Gonoyama, Takayasu/Ichiyamamoto, Tamawashi/Meisei, Hokutofuji/Sadanoumi. And of course, count on the banzuke committee to make some completely unanticipated decisions that’ll leave us scratching our heads.
The full guess is below. Let me know what you think in the comments!
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I’d love to see Asakoryu come up…but its a bit of a razors edge and he can be….inconsistant…heres hoping…
Thank you for all the thinking and considering, lksumo! This time it must have been a real brainer, but you delivered and presented as convincing as always.
Nevertheless I don‘t believe WTK for Komusubi already, maybe they‘ll just prefer Oho?
And yes, it would be very nice to see Asakoryu in Makuuchi!
Yeah, this will be close. Those can really go either way. Kinbozan and Bushozan fought rather uninspired sumo at Aki, so I’d like to see them get dropped. It would be interesting to see the brothers at Komusubi but I’d like to see Oho or Shodai get the nod. It will be interesting….
I kinda thought the day 15 Oho-Shodai matchup was effectively a play-off, but let’s see..
It’s possible that the torikumi committee thought of it that way, but the banzuke committee doesn’t have to. It’s a consideration for sure.
I’m looking at kitanowaka being saved over kinbozan. They deserve to be the same rank in juryo and kitanowaka had more wins. Just like last time when nishikufuji, onosho, and chiyoshoma were tied for the same juryo spot, but one of them had to be saved, they went with nishikifuji who had more wins…even though he was M17.
I also went for WTK at kw. I think a lot of people are going to pick Shodai or Oho for that spot on the grounds that they were in the jo’i and had tougher schedules. My response would be that WTK beat Onosato.
A very good response, indeed, but irrelevant for the banzuke committee, I fear.
They could argue that one already gets a kinboshi for beating the Yokozuna.
Oh wait, Onosato isn’t Yokozuna yet! We‘ll have to keep patience for that till spring…
Anyway, I‘m also expecting both Waka brothers at Komusubi. Takakages numbers seem good enough to overtake the two joi.
My little experience tells me, that they go for numbers, ranks and schedules, but for banzuke they won‘t start to look at which rikishi beat whom personally. Then you’d have to do it for everyone, and this would be a complete mess.
Yeah, although I don’t think schedule really counts, either. Having said that, it doesn’t seem to be a purely Markov process (to paraphrase lksumo, I think), so there must be something else that gets considered, at least from time-to-time. I suppose if it was one thing, someone would have figured it out what it was by now. But, perhaps running an interpretable machine learning model over it would reveal some factors..
You’ve got 24 people essentially voting on each decision. There could be many different somethings that influence each individual oyakata’s choices, it’s impossible to tell what they might be just from the aggregate results. We just know that one outcome had majority support (possibly due to multiple voting blocs with entirely separate reasons!) and every feasible alternative didn’t. And what has majority support in 2024 may not have had it in 2019, and might not in 2029, which complicates things further.
Yeah, I (and plenty of others) have considered trying to build a machine learning model, but given the changes over time, I think the sample size for any reasonably consistent time period would be too small to learn more than our usual rules of thumb.
I get a growing comprehension, why Guessing The Banzuke seems so popular and addictive :)
I’m wondering what the banzuke committee’s recent behavior has been regarding preferring promoting rikishi from Juryo with winning records versus keeping rikishi in Makuuchi with terrible records. I suspect that if there was a third promotable candidate from Juryo (Hakuoho, I’m looking at you), Bushozan, Kitanowaka, and Kinbozan would all be demoted. However, the committee has previously kept Makuuchi rikishi in the division instead for previous bashos. This is, obviously, why we have the Guess the Banzuke game in the first place!
Just for the sake of argument, I think if Asakoryu went 12-3 and Hakuoho went 10-5 (in addition to the 3 clear promotion candidates), all of those guys would be toast. It’s when you have demotable but not completely irredeemable records in makuuchi and not quite promotable records in juryo that discretion enters the picture. Not too long ago in such scenarios, they tended to push down the makuuchi guys and bring up the next-best replacement, but now they’ve flipped (and of course Nishikifuji last basho kinda redefined what they seem to regard as “not completely irredeemable”).
Is there any chance that both of the Onami brothers and Shodai and Oho all get the nod to Komusubi? History does show that each of them get promoted with their respective records from their previous positions.
It would put 10 guys in the named ranks, which is not an unusual situation.
I sent 5 down to Juryo — Kinbozan, Bushozan, Kitanowaka, Kagayaki, and Shirokuma. Again history says they should ride the barge back down but then six have to come up (counting Takakeisho’s Intai).
Bringing up Chiyoshoma, Shishi, Tokihayate, Asakoryu and Takerufuji was an easy call. Over-promoting Kayo seemed doable to fill in the top division but I will probably get slapped by the Committee once they announce the Banzuke Monday. Interested to see who doesn’t get dropped if I’m wrong.
They don’t tend to create extra komusubi slots unless the records are truly compelling, and none would seem to be this time—all of those rank/record combos have stayed in the maegashira ranks in recent years when there wasn’t space available.
If they did decide to drop 5 guys, Hakuoho would be the one to come up, not Kayo. It’s not impossible, but seems highly unlikely given their recent decisions. Bushozan should be first in line to stay by virtue of being on the east side.
An M7 with a 12-3 getting promoted over an M2 with a 9-6? I will cook you yakisoba if that comes true… :)
It’s possible I was influenced too heavily by the Natsu 2022 banzuke, when Takayasu, who went 12-3 at M7 in March, ended up at M1e, ahead of Ichinojo, who went 9-6 at M2e and only got a half-rank bump … I realize san’yaku promotion doesn’t always follow the same patterns as ordering rikishi within the maegashira ranks.