[Previous entry: "Hmm, don't wanna wait another 4 years... the WC should be every year! Best idea ever."] [Next entry: "Mark has a what? o_O We should demand photographic evidence from him, he could be pulling our leg."]
| 22 July 2006: "Who likes McNuggets?" |
|---|
| Movement Richard Karlsson's reign as been put on pause for now, with Hendrik Bunde taking back the #1 position. #1 Hendrik scored one G+1 and five Myth+ times, for a 0.4pts AF drop. At the same time, #5 Marius Mollenhauer and #3 Vincent van der Fluit scored 4 and 9 PRs each, to lay the hurt on the inactive top players. Vince was closing in on #3 last week, lacking 0.2 AF pts, and Hendrik was 0.3pts away from #1. The shake-up this week saw #2 Richard fall by 0.38, giving Hendrik the title (with a 0.5pt lead now). #4 Raphael Segas was hurt by 0.35, while Vincent's 0.5 improvement from his many PRs gave him the 3rd spot! Vince has a 0.7 cushion against Raphael now, but instead of worrying about what's behind him, he will look forward at the 0.2pts he needs to reach #2 Richard... #5 Marius remained steady for the week, neither gaining nor losing. He stands to benefit from Raphael's injuries, as Marius is now 0.3 behind the Frenchman. Richard is still top in ARR, with 1.58 (Myth A). Hendrik's 1.62 is next, with Marius and Vince each going sub-2. All that stuff above means that several of the top positions were exchanged this week, and they could change again by next week!  The next big mover was #6 Aron Langerak. He was 9th, but scored 21 PRs over the past 3 weeks. This gave him a 3.0 pt AF cut, with which Aron charged right through Paul Maes, Jonathan Steel and Tristan Eyma, finishing in 6th. #5 Marius is safe for now, since Aron needs 2.5 AF pts to catch him. Aron became the 6th Myth A player, after a nice 0.6 cut in ARR. #17 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate made a minor 0.4 AF cut with 5 PRs, passing the trio of Frenchman. He was already ahead of #20 Yannick Plebani at the end of last week, but now he also passed #19 Xavier Valentin and #18 Cedric Willo. This makes JSX the 5th best Frenchie. Next up is #10 Oliver Peruch, who is looking a long way ahead. #37 Marijn Jongbloed cut 3.5pt to see his AF score dip under 40.0. He passes #39 Jonathan Eyma and former champ #38 David Grard with his 10 PRs. For short-term goals, he's not far from #35-36 Christian Kuklok and Emmanuel Debenest, and will reach them if he keeps his pace. For longer term, the next Dutchie ahead of him is #30 Stefan van Dijke, who is 8 AF pt ahead. Marijn became Titan B this week. Newly appointed Hero A, #66 Andre Overesch made the best of the tight bunching-up in players ahead of him... by passing them all. He scored a 5pt AF cut to pass 7 players, including #72 Dave Taylor and #70 Pobry Gutierrez. Andre is creeping up behind two compatriots, Germans #63 Ben Zeller and #62 Michael Duerr. Michael passed Ben this week, so maybe he will take on Andre's challenge. #97 Konsta Jukka is making Finland proud now, with another big week (14 PRs) and big cut (9.2 AF pts) for yet another week. How many weeks in a row so far? Pretty much since he joined 5 weeks ago at ~190. He moved up 13 places this week, breaking into the top 100. And he doesn't seem to be slowing down much, so we'll have to see what his real potential is. Konsta became Hero C this week, making the cut by just two standards. Due to Konsta's movement, Piet den Dulk slipped off his favourite and comfortable top-100 fence, back to #101. Dutch action inside the top 200 sees #168 Marc Schwartz cutting 29pts in AF, due to 18 PRs. He moved up 30 places with these, assuring his top-200 placing. His PRs were mostly Exp B, and he reached Exp B in ARR. In the same region, #180 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers is catching up to his son Flynn, thanks to a 8.5 AF cut. Jerrol would have passed Flynn, had it not been for Flynn's 4pt cut! Flynn moved up to #177, so now there are only two players separating the pair. I guess this means that they are close enough now to have a good rivalry... so no more holding back, Flynn! Again in the same region, but not Dutchies this time, USA's #191 Robert Chastain and #193 Robert Szabo both reached the top 200. Robert S had a 9pt AF cut, which would normally count for 9 positions, but he passed 15 players since they're all bunched up near the 200th spot. Definitely got his money's worth from his 9 PRs. Rob C joined a little later than Rob S, but scored twice as many PRs (18 of them). With his huge 24pt cut, C overtook S by just two places. It could be a fun rivalry between C and S, if they keep it up. C reached Exp C, but S was already Exp C  Dutchie #224 Omar Al-Azhar reported for the first time in about a month. His 17 new PRs gave him a 32pt AF cut, moving up 20 places. He's now one place behind Dutchie #223 Enzio Fruijtier, though a similar-sized cut need week will easily see him break into the top 200. His 1.0pt ARR cut was enough to make him the newest Expert player, at Exp D. We have 254 Expert-or-better players now. Last week, #269 Scott Abbey reached 426th spot with a 120pt drop and 32 PRs. "It's his first week, so it's no big deal." This week, he made even sillier numbers show up on the table, with a 139pt AF drop, probably the largest we've ever had. As you'd expect, he had 32 PRs again. He improved almost 160 positions with those. Like last week, he pretty much jumped 4 ranks in ARR. He is now Adv A. Maybe some of you are thinking "it's his second week, still no big deal, talk about the jelly wrestling instead." Maybe. Let's see what he decides to do to finish off the month. Oh, and yeah, about the jelly wrestling. Well, the blonde girl threw some lemon jelly into the brunette's face, and called her a "tart". No, the brunette was not pleased about that, and lunged at the blonde, grasping at her long hair, and both of the girls fell to the ground and... Scott's huge improvement would have looked a lot cooler if #320 Cole Gilbert hadn't been around. The Canadian had a 122pt AF drop of his own, narrowly surpassing Scott's debut last week in improvement magnitude. Cole was about 200 positions worse than he is now when he joined a month ago, but only now did he really fire up. Cole jumped 4 ranks in ARR, from Int B to Adv B. There was lots of action around ~350 last week. This week it was more quiet, with several of the players not reporting (maybe they're saving up and hiding their progress from each other). This week, #346 Richard Turenhour made a small cut, and #347 Hans ter Haar caught up to him. There are large AF gaps between #345 and #348, so these two players didn't gain much in terms of position. Hans did become Adv C, however. In his first week here, Darius Austin cut 32 AF pts to finish exactly on 500th spot. #508 Slaketo Flake, who joined last week, cut 49 AF pts to move up 40 places. Will they fight it out together? They both became Intermediate players with their cuts this week, at Int D. New Records There were 4 new overall records this week. Three came from Germany, one from Netherlands. Aron Langerak made the run for the Dutch, beating Richard Karlsson's 27"98 on Mario Circuit with a 27"943. It's 0.04 faster than Richard's God time from a month ago, but Aron's is G+1! In this same week, both Vincent v/d Fluit and Hendrik Bunde produced a 28"003 to tie for 3rd place here, but they just missed out on the God time. The other three were from Hendrik Bunde. As I mentioned above, he also played Mario Circuit. He didn't get the lap record, but he got the 3lap record: a 1'27"842, a Myth+ time. Vincent got a Myth+ time of 1'27"96 (a WR, earlier in the week), leaving Richard (1'28'00) in third spot. The other two records were both on Rainbow Road. It was a course which the top players had forgotten about for some time. Hendrik scored a 2'55"524 (Myth A) on the 3lap here. Marius Mollenhauer got 2nd place and a new 60Hz record with 2'56"000, miraculously missing out on a 2'55. He did beat Raphael by "019, though, pushing him down to 3rd. On Rainbow lap, Hendrik's new time of 57"736 is 0.07 faster than Marius's new 60Hz 57"808 record. Those times are Myth+. Will Rainbow receive more attention from the top players? Vince also scored new RR times, but he had to settle for 6th and 7th. Karlsson and Raphael might have to make a comeback here... Raphael's times are from 13 months ago, so he has been neglecting RR for some time. Apart from Marius's two records above, there were a few others set in 60Hz. Marius also improved the Yoshi Circuit records to 1'41"396 and 32"524, both Myth A. The course time is only 0.1 faster than Olivier Peruch, and 6th overall. The lap time is just 0.07 behind the overall WR, and is 3rd overall, and 0.1 faster than Olivier. Finally, Olivier Lavenant scored a 1'04"782 in Baby Park. It's Myth+. There's another three 60Hz players under 1'05, the next best being Marius with 1'04"92. It seems like a pretty big lead... New Players Welcome to... Darius Austin, UK, (500th, Int D) |