First and foremost, anyone who hasn’t already should congratulate Vincent Tolhuis on becoming the new SC champion! Vincent tied Ben Miller’s PAL WR on YV 3lap to overtake Karlo Tomazelli at the top of the shortcut rankings and give us double-Dutch champions. He subsequently cut a fraction off his time to take the PAL WR outright and he now sits 0.05 AF ahead of Karlo at the top of the SC chart. Will Karlo make a comeback to reclaim his title? Can VAJ become a double GOD and maybe even displace Karlo at the top of the Universal rankings? I’m certainly looking forward to seeing how he gets on.
Another man who has had a very impressive year is Andre Hermanny, and just a few days ago he broke into the top 10 on nonSC, pushing out Jamie White and giving Brazil more players in the top 10 than the USA. Andre’s breakthrough was made on BB, with both a 3lap and flap PR. He now faces a bit more of a gap to 9th-placed Sami Cetin, but if Andre can make that then Lucas Oliver and Michael Fried are not far away. Further down on nonSC, Zoran Tintor proved that he is just going to keep on getting those PRs as he closes in on Luke Barnard. No. 36 Finn Berger keeps on turtling his way upwards with some PRs on MR, while John Falls Marshall displayed some distinctly anti-turtle tendencies by already cutting nearly 12 from his AF this month to reach 43. Nathan Stinson and Maurice Fleer both made cuts of just over 1 to keep edging up the charts at 49 and 52.
Some familiar names were on the move over on SC, but they were joined by a man who hadn’t made a PR for nearly 2 years: Kevin Booth! Ranked 13th on SC, Kevin cut over a second from his RRa 3lap time and in doing so gained the distinction of setting a PR in three different decades of his life. Just below him, it was that man Zoran passing Jonathan Bernier for 14th, and two other familiar names hit some more PRs: John and Robert Szabo, now 22nd and 38th respectively. Steve Symes, a new player from the U.K., sent in an incomplete but very impressive timeset that meant he entered the charts at 109! Steve’s times include a 9th-placed RRo 3lap time; if he can transfer these skills to his full timeset, he could move up very fast indeed. Stephen Regat made a nice 11-point AF cut to climb to 136th, while Keith Spreckels doubled that and jumped to 162nd.
Back on nonSC, we encounter yet another familiar name, Cole Gilbert. Cole improved his ranking to 92nd to continue his impressive start to MK64. Jacob Goldfinger moved up 3 more places to 153, while Timothy Klebetz returned to kart with a 3-point AF cut at 170. Marcos Vinicius Alves was on the move again, jumping to 178 and passing Stephen, who made some small cuts to get to 180. Keith added to his SC cuts by storming up to 284th with an AF cut of over 50 and Alencar Faria was yet another Brazilian improving his times, up to 318. Terry Doleschal and Daniel Pabst were the last movers on nonSC, up to 486 and 544.
Our new players so far in December:
Steve Symes 519 – Beginner C - 109 SC
Jimmy Livingston 583 – Newbie B - 331 SC
Tingshian Wu – 587 – Newbie C
And that’s it for this update. I hope everyone has a great holiday, and if you’re not having a holiday, you at least get some good karting in. I’ll see you in 2008 for the round-up of all the last action of 2007!
Who wins the award? Since it took so long for us to decide I'll let you go check it out yourself :P
December Week 1
The player of the week this week was John Falls Marshall.
Week 2
John Falls Marshall wins this one as well. Both weeks he cut over 10% off his AF.
In non-shortcut the biggest jump by far was made by John Falls Marshall. He made an incredible jump from 3.000 to 2.281 in non-shortcut ARR in one week.
Karina Villa was removed from the site, because of lack of cooperation in the validation process, and because of very strong evidence of identity cheating. If you have any questions or concerns about this, feel free to contact me by email and please don't start a public discussion about it on the messageboard.
Week 4
Every time this guy plays he moves up the ladder faster than anyone around him, and it happened again this week. Cole Gilbert passed about 40 people on his way from King D to B, so he wins this POW.
Player of the Month
A lot of players had great cuts this month, including Andreas Rudmarker, Marcos Vinicius Alves, Andre Hermanny, Nathan Stinson, Darius Austin, and Cole Gilbert. But none of them had quite as good a month as Maurice Fleer, who cut 30% off his AF and moved from Legend F to C in nonsc, as well as a 20% cut in sc that helped him join the Universal Legends at Legend D.
The Player of the Season award for Fall will be posted soon. It's a tough one so we're still deliberating.
In the top ten, Lucas Oliver managed to get himself to 8th outright, pushing Sami Cetin down to 9th and nearing no.7, and combined MK no.1, Michael Fried. Lucas now only needs a fraction of an AF point to pass Michael and put himself in 7th, with 6th-placed William Lacey set to be his next target. Andre Hermanny continues to hit some very impressive times and managed to pass several players in a tight cluster, going from 17th to tie Eddie Taylor for 11th! Jamie White is less than an AF point away from Andre; can he make it into the top 10 by the end of the year? Zoran Tintor made some small cuts and edged himself up to 28, continuing his quest for Player of the Year.
Over on SC, Vincent Tolhuis moves ever closer to Karlo Tomazelli and that number one spot. With his new YV flap time, Vincent tied Karlo on that track and is now just 0.2 AF away from him on the charts. Will Karlo still be number one by the end of the year? Zoran Tintor keeps on moving up, going up a place to 15th, while three players in the red closed in on the top 20: Nathan Stinson, up to 22; John Falls Marshall, just behind at 23; and Maurice had the biggest jump of all, cutting over 11 from his AF to reach 25th. Andre added to his nonSC cuts with some here, but found himself passed by Robert Szabo to leave them at 40 and 41. A small cut from Robin Usher saw him make a few places to reach 115, while Marcos Vincius Alves and October joiner Alvin van Asselt made similar cuts to finish at 234 and 266.
A flurry of top 100 action begins just below; Jean-Francois Dubreil moved up past Ben Miller to 34, and then Finn “The Turtle” Berger, Willi Rossberg, Robert and Richard Karlsson all made cuts to leave them at 36, 37, 38 and 39 respectively! Finn and Willi also made it to Legend A, with Robert and Richard not far off. This swathe of orange is shortly followed by a splash of red, starting with the return of Nathan to the top 50 at 49. Maurice added to his big SC gains and claimed the best cut of those in red, slashing a huge 22.3 from his AF and ending up at 51. The cuts of John moved him to 56 and just about managed to hold off Andreas Rudmarker, who pulled off yet another big cut to shoot into 57th. Your GHIII-addicted news writer still played enough to move up 13 places into 67th and finally become Legend; now I’ve also got myself into a rivalry with a lot of very good players. Genius.
Matt Nissenbaum went up a couple of places into 84th, but old rival Robin Usher moved ever closer with a 9-place jump that saw him break the top 100 at 93. Cole Gilbert continued to prove he is worryingly good at every kart game he plays, leaping from 137 to 95 with a 32 point AF cut. After that burst of top 100 action, we have to look down to 156 for the next mover, where Jacob Goldfinger kept on moving up the charts with an 18.5 AF cut. Rival Tianyi Liu couldn’t quite keep up with Jacob, but still rose 7 places to 190. Marcos rounds out the movers in the top 100 with a massive AF cut of nearly 63 to end November in 196th.
Outside the top 200, Jeffrey Spoth moved up to 235, while Alex Hantson added to his cuts from last month to go from 315 to 297. Jack Porter was another player on the move in successive months, going up from 383 to 345 and closing in on another player with some cuts, no. 337 Keith Spreckels. The top American MKDD player, 12th-placed Bo Garman, tried his hand at a bit more MK64 and cut 18 from his AF. Perhaps he’ll join Richard and Andreas in making a successful transfer to 64. Alvin made a big 70 point AF cut to go all the way from 574 to 487. October’s other new player, Terry Doleschal, found himself being passed by Alvin despite a cut of nearly 35 that got him to 497.
New players in November:
Von Flyler – 445 – Advanced D
Nicholas Dwyer – 511 – Intermediate F – 348 SC
Sean Stackhouse – 578 – Newbie B
Plenty of movers to read up on there; I'm definitely not going to play Guitar Hero now. Honest.
