Banzuke

The banzuke is the official ranking, rewritten before every honbasho. It is a document, not a bracket. Every man from yokozuna to jonokuchi sits on it; banzuke-gai are the active names who did not. Tachiai’s guess board covers the salaried ranks plus the makushita joi who might join them.

East on the right

A printed banzuke puts East on the right and West on the left, because it is read as if you were facing the dohyo. Tachiai — like most English guess-the-banzuke boards — uses East | Rank | West so the higher side is on the left as you scan.

East of a rank is listed slightly above west of the same rank. Y1e sits above Y1w. They are not conferences, not teams, not separate leagues. One ladder, two columns.

Calligraphy is rank

On the official woodblock print, name size is rank. Yokozuna names are the largest. Maegashira shrink as the numbers climb. Juryo and below are smaller still. You can read a printed sheet from across a room.

Extra yokozuna or ozeki are not a layout error. The Kyokai will add a Y2 or O3 row when the people are there. That is why the guess board keeps those slots even when they start empty. Leaving them empty is correct until you promote into them.

What else is on the sheet

Heya are printed next to the shikona. They are training houses, not teams — open a house from a name or the directory. Hometowns appear too. Tachiai keeps the rank, the record, and the house on the objects you can click.

The sheet is published about two weeks before the next basho, usually on a Monday. Until then the last published ranking is still the current one. Between those dates, guessing the next sheet is the English-speaking fan sport — see the year.

Colors on Tachiai

After a basho the names pick up the usual colors: green for kachi-koshi, red for make-koshi, gold for 7–7, gray for kyujo. Those colors are last basho’s record sitting on this basho’s rank — the input to the next guess.