Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Players' Page

6.3

Alex @ Sunday, January 22nd [link]

So I finally got around to doing the news, and my clock tell me that it's already time for the next week's news. So for the first time in history, I'm going to combine two weeks into one and pretend the pervious never happened. History is being made right here, right now, folks! And you're all a part of it. Cool bananas.

Movement

#3 Hendrik Bunde is on fire lately, passing fellow drunk-smasher Marius Mollenhauer in the AF standings, and almost reaching #2 Jonathan Steel. Hendrik cut 0.9 off his AF, while the guys around him dropped a little. At the moment, #1 Segas stands at 3.84, with Steel 4.18, Bunde on 4.21 and Mollenhauer on 4.81. Seems like Jonathan and his best-friend Marius won't be separated for too long.
During this time, Hendrik only scored 5 PRs, but two of them were Myth A, and three of them ranked in the top 3 for that chart. The ARR drop saw Hendrik get promoted to Myth B, squeezing in between Jonathan and Marius (who are both also Myth B).

#10 Fernando Moritz dos Santos cut a full AF pt to overtake Paul Maes. Fernando now trails #9 Paul Tanney by 0.4 AF pts, but both players are tied in ARR. Fernando has also apparently switched to 50hz, so it would be interesting to see how far up he can go - there are eight 50Hz players ahead of him.

While #14 Olivier Peruch and #16 Andreas Rudmarker reported some PRs and we're used to seeing them pass someone, they didn't this time. Good news for Andreas is that he was on 6.5 ARR before, and he improved 1 standard - that makes him now Titan+! Olivier is quite close to #13 Mike Hartjens though. Also in the same region, #18 Bo Garman has tied #18 Trystan Pugh in AF. Like Olivier, Bo doesn't have very far to go to reach the next playern up, #17 Rodolphe Gouet.

USA's broze medal bearer #3 Alejandro Hernandez moved up another spot, and is looking for a top-30 finish. #30 Christian Kuklock is just 0.2 ahead, and #29 Kyle Clayton is another 0.2 after that - should be easy for Alejandro. Reaching #25 Gregor Fran is asking for another 5.0 AF pts. It's unlikely that Alejandro will cut 5 pts from playing nothing but MCT all week, but he's definitely active enough to pull off PRs.

#46 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate made a jump in the ladder of almost 10 places! A nice way to reach the top 50 for him, scoring 19 PRs for a 12pt AF cut. He passed some French guys (Ghignet, Rigal, Seznec and Regeffe), as well as Jon Prentice, and is now waiting to pounce on another 4 French guys ahead of him (Eyma, Boisiaud, Chu and Foog), as well as Alex Penev. The big 1.2pt ARR cut also made JC our newest titan, at Titan D!

#54 Karl Anders is building up the gap between himself and Ben Zeller behind him, and has closed the distance to #53 Rickard Lindell to just 0.3. A few more PRs should see him take the spot, but reaching the top 50 will require making up the large 5pt gap between Lindell and Yohann Ghignet. D'oh.

Half a page-scroll below Karl, #67 Thomas van Leeuwen made a smaller cut, but was in a position to pass 4 players with it (DeLoriea, Smith, Taroni and Brown). I suspect that Thomas's current goal is #65 Rob van Zanten. Two places and 4 AF pts to go.

#75 Benoit Boudreau had a nice 7pt AF cut to pass seven players. He is now 10 spaces from being Canada's top player, with #66 Simon Laflamme and #68 Matt Brown both being within 11 AF pts reach. He also reached Hero C.

#86 Tom Salden made a 6pt cut to pass 10 players, including #95 Lars Nouwen, #92 Matt Flees and #88 Vincent Zee. No countrymen for Tom to target since he's the top Belgian already, but in case he's in the same mindset as Benoit and wants to punish Canadians, #85 Dave Phaneuf is just one spot ahead.

Newcomer #100 Aron Langerak cut 17.5 AF pts in his first two weeks here. He pushed #101 Roman Tio down one spot, but #99 Nathan Cromwell luckily held on to his top-100 ranking. Being Dutch, you should expect Aron to go psycho every once in a while. His current set of times are inconsistent, with more than 100-rank difference between his best and worst positions. He'll probably iron out his scores in the near future. In his first two weeks, Aron cut 2 whole ranks in ARR, reaching Hero D.

#122 Dan Furst has just passed 11 players, six of which were also from the USA. He is now leading one of the most USA-concentrated groups in the ladder, with the next target being #115 Derek Clark. He reached Expert A, too.

#162 Sebastien Lussac has come back from 4 months absence with 17 new PRs, enough to pass 19 players. #161 Snorre Hakonsen (aka Norway's best ranked player) managed to sneak ahead of Sebastien in the last moment. Both players should be able to move up another few ranks easily, but reaching #157 Christophe Cosentino will need getting through a large 5pt gap.

#207 Tom Baker had a great fortnight, scoring 27 PRs for a 41pt AF cut. It was enough to pass 34 players. It's a shame he stopped so close to the top-200 barrier, but at least he did become the newest Expert, at Exp D.

#374 Linda Andersson and #378 Ben McElmurry are very near each other, but quite isolated otherwise. Linda is relatively new, and Ben is brand spanking shiny new, and you can expect them both to have lots of potential. Maybe they will push each other until they start to run into other active people. For now, Linda and Ben cut 41 and 45 AF pts this week, thanks to 31 and 32 PRs, respectively. Linda, however, has a coach by the name of #97 Jonas Natanaelsson... will the top-secret tips help her outplay the men?

Honourable mentions: #40 Jake Sopcak (Titan C), #140 Matt Rosebraugh, #167 Dean Barnhart, #281 Ryan Brown.

New Players

Welcome to... lots and lots of historical people...

Aron Langerak from the Netherlands (Hero D, 100th)
Marijn Jongbloed from the Netherlands (Exp C, 158th)
Scott Black from Canada (Newbie, ~633)
Roland Huszak from Sweden (Beg D, ~616)
John Furtney from the USA (Beg D, ~595)
Jordan Hurley from the USA (Beg C, 489th)
Ben McElmurry from the USA (Int B, 378th)
Emile Broekhuizen from the Netherlands (Beg B, ~546) - a name to out-cool Enzio Fruijtier after all this time?!
Chris Clark from the UK (Newbie, ~633)
Dan Phillips from the UK (Beg A, ~495)

New Movies

Hendrik Bunde, BC 2'19'0
Fernando Moritz dos Santos various vids, latest ones include 1'43'9 33'6 DDJ.
Bo Garman, DC 31'8 1'38'5, BC 45'6 2'19'7, RR 2'59'2.

6.1

Alex @ Sunday, January 8th [link]

POQ

The Player of the Quarter (Oct+Nov+Dec 2005) poll is up. Go and vote!

I didn't receive new suggestions for people to add, so it seems like many people were happy with the options. The poll's been running already for about a day and some people have voted, but now it's officially announced. Yeah, and don't try to vote fifty times over. It's easy for me to catch you, and you're just creating extra work for me to filter out the bogus votes.

We should have a POY vote as well, but I haven't come around to making it yet. Some POY candidates would include most of the top 10, so it will be fun! Jonathan Steel got it in 2004, with a close finish against Marius Mollenhauer.

Movement

#4 Hendrik Bunde scored 4 PRs to chop off another 0.25 off his AF. He is now on 5.09, which is 0.4 behind #3 Marius Mollenhauer. Hendrik is one standard away from Myth B (the three players ahead of him at all Myth B!). #5 Vincent van der Fluit remains at #5, and trails Hendrik by 0.7pts.

#32 Alejandro Hernandez passed #33 David Grard this week, with 6 new PRs that also got him to Titan B. As far as Alejandro can remember, David was #1 when he joined the site. Times change. What's David up to these days, anyway?

#55 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate passed two well known names, #56 Daniel Sloggett and #57 John Anderson. He is very close to #53 Karl Anders and #54 Ben Zeller. If he can pass these two Germans, he has just one Swede and two fellow Frenchman in his way to the top 50. He needs about 10 AF points though, which sounds like at least a couple of weeks of work.

#83 Benoit Boudreau has a nice 5.5pt AF cut, which in his tigh-knit region helped him pass 7 players (compare to J-C above, who needs double that amount of points for two less positions). One of Benoit's victims was Canadian buddy #85 Dave Phaneuf, both of which had some battles during 2005. This puts Benoit as the third-ranked Canadian, with Simon Laflamme and Matt Brown another twenty positions up, at #66 and #67 (they're pretty close!)

#96 Tom Salden easily made it into the top 100, with a 10pt cut to complement last week's even bigger cut. He moved up 7 positions, and cut 0.4 ARR points to become the newest Hero at Hero D. We have 101 Hero-or-higher players now. #100 Roman Tio was the unfortunate one who was bumped back to triple-digits rank.

New guy #151 Julien Galtier debuts fairly high, and cut 15 AF pts so far. He looks like one of the French-site guys. Surprisingly, there's no many French people in his region... he needs to improve a bit more! He reached Expert B with his first two submissions.

#165 Snorre Hakonsen passed everybody's favourite leprechaun #166 William Lacey. On his way Expert C, his 19 PRs helped him pass another 19 players besides William. Snorre is almost 100 positions ahead of Norse #2 Finn Berger now, though he's probably after Scandinavian glory.

UK's #239 Tom Baker is one place behind UK's most famous karter #238 Sami Cetin and two places behind the 2nd-coolest-person-on-the-planet, #237 Mark Jones. Those two have been strongest in other kart games besides MKDD, but it should still feel nice to kick their puny behinds to a pulp. Tom's efforts this week, and 11pt AF cut and reaching Exp A, saw him make it inside the top 250 with little sign of slowing down.

New USA guy, #294 Ryan Brown, scored 24 PRs and cut a massive 33 AF pts. He passed many Americans in the process, and there are many more to come. He joined recently at #322, and is doing fairly well for his second week here. He also became 299th on the ARR chart, reaching Adv C.

Another new guy, Sebastien Pierrot debuts just outside the top 300, but his first submissions indicate that he'll break 300 pretty soon. He started as Int A, but reached Adv D almost immediately with his new PRs.

#406 Kamiel Wissenburg (cool name) reported since joining two weeks ago, and did what Dutchies do best, and drunk himself silly. Drunk with PRs, yeah. Many PRs. 23 PRs. Moved up 19 places and passed (former champion?) #421 Eise Smit, amongst others. Got an Int C promotion, as well.

New Players

Welcome to...

Julien Galtier from France (Exp B, 151st)
Michael Duerr from Germany (Exp C, 188th)
Sebastien Pierrot from France (Adv D, 326th)

6.

Alex @ Monday, January 2nd [link]

Movement

#11 Fernando Moritz dos Santos scored 5 PRs to round off a good month. He didn't manage to reach Paul Maes, but has moved to within 0.25 AF pts from the 10th spot.

#19 Bo Garman and #20 Cedric Willo both reported just one PR each, and Bo's PR kept his top-20 spot safe for now. Cedric is just 0.13 behind Bo.

#53 Karl Anders got past fellow German #54 Ben Zeller, but needs almost 10 AF pts to reach the top 50. Sounds challenging! Karl has another challenger challenging him for the challenge, with France's #57 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate cutting a nice 4.6 AF pts to move up 5 places. J-C scored 9 PRs, including a Titan+ lap on MB (his only T+ time for now), and also reached Hero A.

#75 James Leare is probably too busy updating to have time left over to play, but he managed to pass three players. One was fellow Brit #77 Sam Hoar, and the other two were All-Mario-Karts-champ Michael Fried and ex-MKDD-champ Cesar Martin. Take that, eh? There's a 3pt gap between James and #74 Tobias Bauer, and another equally sized gap to #73 Stephen Regat.

#103 Tom Salden made a huge 17.3 AFpt cut, thanks to 29 new PRs. One more AF point lower and he would have tied #101 Casey Mast, but to reach the top 100, Tom has to pass or tie #100 Jonas Patterson and #99 Roman Tio, who are an extra 6 AF pts ahead of Casey. Tom's equally big 0.7 ARR cut didn't quite make it to a new rank, but he is only a handful of standards away from reaching Hero!

#126 Alexandre Vaesken scored 8 PRs to finish off a decent December, having been MIA for half a year before that. He ended it with another 5pt cut, which saw him move past 5 players (four of whom happened to be American) and reach Exp A. The next Frenchmen ahead of Alexandre are #113 Eric Belloni and #111 Arnaud Palierne.

#155 Jan Haye Klijnstra cut 13 AF pts to pass 19 players! Luckily, they were all closely bunched up. His 12 PRs helped him overtake Dutchies #172 Jamie Tio, #160 Arno Bats and #156 Menno Kos, as well as some other famous names such as Brent Wingert and Susan Lacey. Unfortunately, Jan needs another pts cut to move up just 5 more places to reach the top 150, since the next few players are spread apart.

#361 Hans-Kristian Arntzen ended up filling in all cells in his timesheet, so he's now finally ranked on the AF chart (after 5 months away.) Because he no longer received Newbie standard for his missing scores, he cut a huge 4.7 ARR pts to reach Int B.

Austria's #409 Michael Poelzl pulled off a similar stunt, submitting all his missing scores to finally be ranked on the AF chart. Before last week, he only had 8 scores, dated from Decement 2003! A 2-year break is easily the biggest we've had so far. Michael's ARR reached equilibrium at Intermediate D, four ranks higher than before. He is also just one standard away from reaching Int C, teehee.

Honourable mentions: #185 Snorre Hakonsen, #260 Tom Baker, #295 Mark English, #351 Robert Baldrance, #390 William Richardson.

New Records

A 25"918 lap on Mushroom Bridge by Fernando Moritz dos Santos beat out Hendrik Bunde's 25'93 from two months ago. There are 5 players under 26, but only Fernando and Hendrik have Myth+ laps. This is Fernando first WR in quite some time.

New Players

Welcome to...

Kamiel Wissenburg from the Netherlands (Int D, 425th)
Chris Cothran from the USA (Beg C, ~549)
Chevallier Florian from France (Int B, ~399)
Ryan Brown from the USA (Adv D, 322nd)