On the PAL rankings Thomas Grandjean and Yrvin van Wijk gained a rank on non-shortcut. Some new players made their first entrance on the PAL rankings: Marius Hukkelaas, Andrew Hannath and Simon Rinaldi.
A good deal of other people were active. After some quiet months during the release of MKDD, it seems like MK64 activity is picking up again. Many of the members who joined recently seem to be quite consistent PR improvers. Maybe we'll see some of them reach the higher ranks in the near future.
I continue to light up the shortcut ranks, moving past 2 more players, Kevin Booth and Jason Whalls. Reaching #7, Legend-A!!! But i wasn't the only player to makes some nice shortcut moves. Jeffrey Gutierrez and Ben Broadwater both made Elite-D, with nice number rank improvements. There both in the 50's, with Jeff ahead by only a few ranks!
Two new karters on the non-shortcut list. Matthew Wongkee from Canada, is #266 Beginner-A. Henry Liljestrom from Europe, is #242 Intermediate-B.
Keep on karting!!!
Really interesting was the return of former world champion Jonathan Bernier. He picked up the controller again during the end of December. In that short time span he managed to re-pass about all the the Legend A players that passed him in the past 2 years. He reached tenth place in nonSC Avgfin, ARR and total lap time, and he took out Thomas Grandjean for a 9th place on total 3lap time. On shortcuts he reached Legend B. It looks like he'll go inactive again now. But it was nice to see some activity from a former champion.
Ben Miller lowered his Shortcut ARR score (which is the lowest ARR score in the world) from 0.400 to 0.350. Steven Gutierrez made a massive shortcut improvement, which even sent him ahead of Jonathan Bernier!
Three players made the milestone of entering the King ranks: Marius Hukkelaas, Andrew Weatherton and Jeffrey Gutierrez (who made the biggest jump of them). Tuomas Dunkel, Jose Blanco Lezcano and Jeremy Aube all climbed around 25 spots on the ARR rankings.
Most of the other active players might not have been as spectacular as the players mentioned above, but nevertheless most of them still made some really solid improvements, including some good letter rank improvements.
Then, we have the 8 new members. Steven already mentioned 5 of them that were ranked on the Player Lists. Jack Boettscher, Richard Keyser and Jonathan Menge weren't ranked there because they didn't have a complete of non-shortcut times yet. Their names can be found on the ARR and Average Finish pages though.
POW - Week 1 (1st-8th)
As you can imagine, both his overall ARR and AvgFin stats were boosted because of that, as well as new times on many other courses, resulting in a Legend B rank. He also enters the AvgFin top 10, passing Wingert and Bernier, and reaches King A in Non-sc. He earns his 6th award since joining the site.
NB: you can view the 2004 POW page by clicking on the link below. The one in the menu on the left (2003 version) should soon be changed. Afterwards, if you wish to view the 2003 POW page, you'll find it in the "POW archive" section.
2004 POW page
shortcut: I moved passed Brent Wingert and Jonathan Bernier for #9 and making Leg-B!!! Jonathan Bernier makes Leg-B also, but didnt manage to get passed me. Ben Miller was active, getting another GOD time and improving his stats a bit. Making him closer to reaching shortcut GOD!
new karters: A total of 5 new karters! Ryan Duescher starts his carrer here with good stats in both non-sc and shorcuts. Ryan is Pro-C (#136), in shortcuts hes Elite-D (#55)!! Trystan Pugh comes in at Expert-D (#201). Stephen Regat starts at Advanced-B (#221). Martin McMullan is Intermediate-C (#241). and lastly, Chris Poole joins at Newbie-D (#275).
Everyone keep up the amazing karting!!!
- Non-shortcut Totals
- Shortcut Totals
And in other news: The move to the new server has been completed succesfully. So, you shouldn't see any 403.9 error messages anymore in the future. And the Message Board is also back and working again.
Player of the Week (25th-31st)
A very quiet week. With his brother's help, Jeffrey Gutierrez continues to climb both the Non-SC (reaching Elite B) and shortcut rankings, which makes him our last 2003 Player of the Week.
Player of the Month - December
Jeffrey's older brother Steven Gutierrez made a great jump in the shortcut ranks by winning 7 places and reaching Legend C. Perhaps more importantly, he earned his first World Record on Mario Raceway and kept improving it, taking away one or two tenths each time. He also improved his Non-shortcut stats, where he became a King B player. At that point I would talk about the other karters' performances, but none of them came close to matching Guttierrez's. So well done Steven.
Player of the Quarter
There were 3 main candidates for that award: Eric Habrich, Michael Fried and Steven Gutierrez. Eric lowered his AvgFin score from 5.781 to 3.000, reached God and passed 3 players to gain the #2 rank in the world. He also set 3 new World Records, on KTB and WS. Michael continued to rise amongst the Legends, going from Legend F to Legend C with a nice 22nd place. As for Steven, most of his karting activity was set during December, so you can read about it on the POM report, although he did earn one extra rank in shortcut towards the end of November, passing 8 players in total.
Edit: Of course, Cooper Lovera was considered for this award, and was in fact one of the closest persons capable of preventing Eric from winning it, reaching King D during his first 3 months of activity on the site. For some reason I had forgotten to comment on such a strong performance. Sorry about that.
2003 Player of the Year
I don't usually name the winner of the award when it's a greater one than the POW, but I'll make an exception this time, since everyone is well aware of the identity of that person.
The 2003 Player of the Year is ***Eric Habrich***. There's not a lot about Eric that I can say that hasn't already been mentionned. Eric joined the site on December 19th, 2002, as a Pro C player. Kevin immediately saw the huge potential of that player, commenting his performance during the first week of this year with: "The starts of a new phenom" (POW page). A month later, he was already Elite A and had reached the Legend ranks by the end of February! He continued to be active throughout the year and by September had shown something that a lot of players thought wasn't possible: to be able to compete with the top PAL players. By the end of November he had become the third karter in history ever to reach the GOD rank and fell just one place short from becoming the best player in the world. A truly remarkable achievement that thoroughly deserves to be rewarded by such an award.
Eric obviously wasn't the only player to have shined throughout the year. Other players also deserve a mention:
-Michael Jongerius: started the year as #8, ended it as World Champion. More than that, he karted in a class of his own, reaching one of the lowest AvgFin scores ever recorded on the site and destroying World Records that were once thought to be unbreakable. He still has a comfortable lead over his closest rivals.
-Tim Everett: Tim entered the competition at around the same time as Habrich, but couldn't quite follow him to the top of the rankings, although he did a very good job by reaching the top 20. He was also very active in the Shortcut ranks, finishing the year as #26. We'll probably see a lot of him during next year.
-Michael Fried joined the site a few months later than Tim, but moved up the rankings slightly faster. His stats on December 31st are impressive: 22nd in Non-shortcut, 19th in Shortcut! Another player to watch out for in 2004.
-Steven Gutierrez: easily the best Shortcut player of the year. Out of the top 100 in January, Steven surprised many people by his excellent driving, especially towards the end of the Year, earning his first World Record and reaching a very respectable 11th place. He also entered the top 50 in Non-shortcut.
Many congratulations to all these players and well done to everyone else for their activity on the site, breathing life into this game seven years after its release. This has in fact been the most active year ever, looking at the number of yahoogroups posts we've received. Let's hope we can keep this trend going in the future. Have a happy new year!
