Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Players' Page

POY 2006

Alex @ Thursday, February 22nd [link]

Voting for the Player of the Year 2006 award should now be open. See the poll page.

I don't think there is any one particular favourite to win it, so it might be a close one.

I've already got evidence that PLH is not perfect, so my 'tests' are no longer important.

Alex @ Thursday, February 22nd [link]

Movement

#1 Hendrik Bunde remains #1, but suffered several defeats and WR losses to Richard and Aron. His AF worsened a little bit to 2.43. Meanwhile, Richard has reported his first PR improvements since December, scoring two WRs in Bowser's Castle. Richard trails Hendrik by 0.06 in AF. =O #3 Aron Langerak made 5 PRs, all of which were WRs. He's a man on a mission, but does he have a chance to catch up to #1 and #2 any time soon?

The French community's POY, #9 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate, cut 0.6 off his AF. JSX could soon be the #1 French player, because #8 Olivier Peruch and #7 Raphael Segas are now within 1 AF pt ahead of him. Raphael has promised to play some 60Hz, so we wouldn't count him out of fighting JSX away from his French title.

#11 Konsta Jukka raced 14 PRs during the past two weeks, and has cut the distance between himself and #10 Marijn Jongbloed in half because of a 1.4 AF pt cut. Konsta would no doubt be happy with a top-10 position, but he still has 1.8pts to go. Marijn scored 1 PR on the first day of this week, but has kept quiet. Maybe Marijn has some PRs in the works that are ready to report? Konsta would probably hope not. Meanwhile, Konsta must have carefully calculated his standards because his ARR of 2.497 is just enough for a Myth A tattoo.

Parisian #60 Thomas Lander passed #61 Ivo van der Stap this week. Six of the next 7 players ahead are French. Thomas could either pass them one at a time and savour the flavour, or just pass them all in one go--their AF scores are bunched up.

#81 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers passed two players, Frenchman #82 Tanguy Audenaert and Belgian #83 Tom Salden. I guess it makes sense, because Jerrol is a Dutchie, and Netherlands is above France and Belgium. Breaking the rules of geography and breaking rules of neutral diplomacy, Switzerland's #80 Alex Hantson went above Jerrol. Alex's 10 PRs resulted in a 4pt AF cut, and a passing of 4 players.

#91 Rhodri Morgan was idle this week, giving #84 Matt Tanzer a chance to run away with a small lead. Matt only scored half as many PRs as last week, but he still managed a 9pt AF cut. Meanwhile, #97 Scott Abbey found the motivation to make it to the top-100. Armed with 'only' 4 PRs, Scott's 5pt AF cut passed 7 players, giving him a top-100 finish and Hero B in the same week.

#243 Andrew Johnson couldn't manage a 3rd week in a row with a ~50pt cut, but his 33 pt cut was still big enough. For now, he's made it into the top-250, and should reach Expert C very soon.

#267 Rosalinda Cancino, better known as the top female, reported some PRs after 2 month's break from the game. She says that she quickly found her groove and smashed 20 PRs, so we should expect her to further improve her 1.7 woman AF. She's the first female player to reach Expert. #288 Alessandra Martinelli is only 20 places behind Rosalinda. Considering her 41pt AF cut, it would seem likely that she can catch up to her female rival soon. Alessandra became Advance A this week.

#295 Ian Smith had been trailing #298 Gosia Buza for some weeks, but managed to pass the Dutch player on his way into the top-300. #367 Xavier San Giorgi moved up another 30 places with a 43pt AF cut, after making it into the top-400 last week. He also reached Adv C. Recent addition #463 Paco Rodriguez is making a good start to improving his gameplay by scoring a 47pt AF cut. He also jumped 3 ranks to reach Intermediate A.

Honourable mentions: #197 Andrew Manning (Exp B), #515 Peter Nonkes (Int B).

New Records

Aron Langerak has not been very kind to the top players this week, taking a whole bunch of their records.

Aron already held both Mushroom City records with 1'34"44 and 30"94, but lowered them to 1'34"433 30"926. They're both about 0.03-0.04 ahead of his Dutch rival, Vince.

Hendrik had the Peach Beach lap record at 21"72, but Aron beat it with a 21"692 G+10. The top laps used to be very close in this level. Now Aron has a 0.03 lead over Hendrik, who in turn has a 0.03 lead over Konsta.
Hendrik had the Sherbet Land record at 1'14"25 earlier this month, but Aron beat with it a 1'14"190. The time is still G+1, but it's 0.06 quicker than Hendrik.
Richard had the Mario Circuit lap record at 27"80, but Aron beat with it a 27"798. It's only 0.006 quicker, but it makes the G+4 standard.

Doing a little bit to help stop Aron's rampage, Richard beat Aron in Bowser's Castle. His new time is 2'17"572, 0.2 quicker and G+4. He also beat Hendrik's 6-month old lap record (it was Hendrik's oldest PR!) of 45"002 with a 44"962.

The changes break the 9-9 WR tie that Richard and Hendrik had last week. Richard is now on 10, while Hendrik fell to 6. Aron jumped to 8.

New Players

No new players.

1 + 1 = <3, actually.

Alex @ Thursday, February 15th [link]

Movement

#1 Hendrik Bunde made some more PRs (and WRs) to improve his AF by a little bit. He's taken the lead in the top-5 rivalry. Richard still leads in rivalry AF, but Hendrik improved his ARR to -0.04 (!!) this week, and got the upper hand. They tie 9-9 in rivalry wins, they're 16-16 in head-to-head matchups, and they're 9-9 in overall WRs.

#3 Aron Langerak, #5 Andreas Rudmarker, #9 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate, #10 Marijn Jongbloed and #11 Konsta Jukka all made some small cuts. Marijn had the biggest cut of the bunch with 0.7 pts. He almost caught up to J-C, but the French POY got away in the last moment. They are currently 0.3 apart. Andreas made up 0.4 AF pts on #4 Vincent van der Fluit, and is now trailing by 0.6 pts. #3 Aron looks dutchier every week (that's an adjective, right?), and raced some more WRs. He also completed his 60Hz timesheet to take 8th spot in the 60Hz ladder.

#17 Bo Garman reported several PRs, and even raced some of them within a few tries. Good to see that his skills are intact. The US champ made a 1.2 pt AF cut to bring himself to 0.8pts behind #16 Rene Bauer. He's only a few standards away from a rank promotion, too...

Around the top-50, #51 Andre Overesch passed #52 Alejandro Laflamme. He'll need to pass Martin Rudmarker and Steven Zwartjes to reach the 49-th spot. Frenchmen #58 Arnaud Teil moved up ahead of Yohann Ghignet, and is now one spot behind some guy called 'Alex'! Once he passes that guy, there's another 4 French players to for Arnaud to chase after! #61 Thomas Lander passed 3 famous MKDD names: #62-#64 Rob Chastain, Prashant Bhoja and Paul Regeffe. Besides Yohann and Arnaud, Thomas has the same line of French karters to hunt down on his way to the top-50. Another French player, #69 Florian Chollet, will be hoping to do the same. He's about to pass #68 Sylvin Rigal (yeah, another French player).

#84 Alex Hantson's 7.5 AF cut helped him almost catch up to #82 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers, who had a 3.3 cut of his own. Following his win over Rob van Zanten recently, Jerrol passed two more players and rank-upped to Hero A. Alex probably didn't want to be left out, and passed most of the same bunch of players. He should reach Hero A quite soon.

#90 Matt Tanzer is not far from both of the above. And he's on fire. His 16 pt AF cut easily got him inside the top-100, and he even passed Rhodri Morgan (by one position). Rivals #91 Rhodri and #104 Scott Abbey were active, too, but their efforts appeared to be overshadowed by Matt's 13 PR mega-week. We'll see how next week goes. Matt says he's very motivated to play, but Rhodri only just scored his first pair of Titan times, and Scott is only a few positions outside the top-100. All three have reasons to PR smash. Matt just became a Hero B player, while Scott and Rhodri should make it there by next week...

USA's #110 Andres Oliveira Dos Santos made a 12 pt AF cut, and may give Scott some bother in reaching the top-100. Andres passed 10 players this week, and is about to pass former USA champ #109 Michael Fried. He also became Hero C.

#190 Alain Studer joined the site this week at 204th spot, but quickly got into the spirit of things and raced 21 PRs. He moved up 14 places, making it inside the top-200. He also became Exp B. #199 Andrew Manning is also a recent addition to the page, and conveniently passed 6 players to take 199th spot. =D

#266 Andrew Johnson's 2nd full week in the rankings proved to be just as successful as before. After a 48pt cut last week, Andrew matched it with a 51pt AF cut this week. As predicted, he did jump into Expert territory and became Expert D! (Incidentally, he made it in by just one standard.) Andrew joined at around 400th at the start of the month, and there's still two weeks left. Looks like a POM candidate to me.

#303 Ian Smith kept quiet last week, giving #297 Gosia Buza a chance to run even further ahead. He reported 22 PRs this week, resulting in a 32 pt AF cut that almost caught up to Gosia. Unfortunately, Ian narrowly missed out on top-300, and Gosia's 20 pt cut took her to the greener side of the top-300 barrier. They're pretty much even, again. Both became Adv A this week, too. Race to top-250?

#326 Alessandra Martinelli's lovely 65pt cut, derived from beating all 32 of her PRs, was the largest jump of the week. She's quickly catching up to the other girly Alex (not me!), #308 Alexandra Haemmerling--the same one that Gosia Buza passed to become the 2nd-ranked lady on the site.

#396 Xavier San Giorgi scored 10 PRs, including his first Adv A time. His 29pt AF cut pushed him 32 places higher, landing inside the top-400.

Honourable mentions: #131 Kevin Sirman (newest Hero, at Hero D), #180 Flynn Hoppenbrouwers, #347 Daniel Pabst (Adv B), #384 Christopher Steele (Adv C).

New Records

Hendrik took two more WRs this week: one from Richard Karlsson and one from Aron Langerak. They were both on Sherbet Land. A 1'14"250 G+1 came out 0.005 quicker than Richard's G+1 time from 5 months ago, while a 23"855 GD lap edged Aron's 23"862 (also GD).

Aron made up for the loss by taking 3 other WRs. His 1'07"688 G+5 on Peach Beach beat Richard's record from December by 0"001! Hendrik is only 0"007 behind, making it a really tight race.
Aron also took Vince's WRs on Mushroom City... Dutchie battle! He scored a 1'34"446 (and earlier, "447) to beat out Vince's 1'34"465 G+10 course time from last month, and later raced a lap of 30"942. There are 3 other players with sub-31 laps, but Aron's is the only one to claim the G+8 standard.

The WR exchanges lowered Richard's WR tally to 9 and raised Hendrik's to 9. Aron moved up from 4 to 6 and Vince dropped down to 6.

New Players

Welcome to...

Alain Studer, Switzerland (190th, Exp B)

Hendrik enjoys the process of AMPquot;becoming new champAMPquot; a lot. How long will he defend it this time?

Alex @ Thursday, February 8th [link]

Movement

#2 Richard has not sent any PRs for 5 weeks now, and we've seen #1 Hendrik slowly chip away at Richard's lead in AF. Hendrik scored 4 PRs this week, and made a tiny 0.1 cut in AF. But it was enough to pass Richard and take the championship title for the 9th time!! (Actually this sounds kinda bad, because it also means he was beaten 8 times.) Richard had only just accumulated over 100 days as champion, but now it's back to Hendrik to build on his existing 180 days. He's still some way behind Raphael's and Jonathan's reigns, which lasted 264 and 237 days. The past champs page has the details.

Is Richard playing? Is he hoarding? Is he just giving Hendrik a head start? I don't know, myself, but I would assume that if Richard had already become overall God, he wouldn't wait to tell us. So it's safe to assume that Hendrik, who also made a tiny 0.1 cut in ARR this week and reached a score of 0.0000, is the first 'god' player under the revised standards!! (There were many gods under the original standards, so the standards were beefed up to be harder.)
Hendrik benefited from the A-tech, scoring many God+ times to earn negative AF points. He still has 6 Myth times left over. Richard also has 6 Myth times left, and remains on an ARR of 0.1 until we hear from him again.

How close are our top two players? Well, Hendrik leads both AF and ARR by 0.1. Richard leads WRs (11 to 7), head-to-head (17-15), PRSR (0.02%, lol) and total times. Pretty close, but it seems to be a matter of Hendrik concentrating on the right stats and taking advantage of Richard's idleness.

With Hendrik's position gain, the countries of the top-6 players are symmetric again (Ger, Swe, Ned, Ned, Swe, Ger). The Top-2 Country AF page has Sweden with a narrow lead over the Dutchies, despite the champ being German. From the other four players, #3 Aron Langerak scored 2 PRs and a WR. Meanwhile, #6 Marius Mollenhauer reported two PRs in LC. It's good to see him active.

#11 Konsta Jukka passed #12 Tristan Eyma, and now faces a 3pt gap in catching #10 Marijn Jongbloed. Eyma was active, but in 60Hz. He completed his 32/32 timesheet to take 17th place (between Kyle Clayton and Benoit Boudreau).

#64 Thomas Lander passed wonderkid #65 Joey Michorius, as well as Jon Prentice and Stacy Needham. He should soon pass French legend #61 Paul Regeffe. Last week, Marvin Mester was ahead of Florian Chollet, with the pair taking positions #69 and #70. Florian's attack was stronger than Marvin's defense this week, and the pair switched places.

#84 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers passed the last Dutchie he'll be seeing for some time, after moving ahead of #86 Rob van Zanten. The next Dutchie is #65 Joey, and twenty places could take some time to make up. Jerrol also passed one of Canada's best respected karters, #87 Simon Laflamme. His PRs included one Myth time, and he's starting to get some Titans now. We've also received 2 new PRs from #182 Flynn Hoppenbrouwers. He has much ground to cover before he catches up to his dad, but he's got many more years left to do it in! In related news, #311 Gosia Buza is quickly closing in on the top-300 barrier. For another week in a row, her cut was slightly smaller than the previous week (24pts this time), but she probably won't be coming to a halt any time soon.

#94 Rhodri Morgan overtook #95 Tory Waters, but failed to find #89 Alex Hantson, who skipped ahead of 4 more players.

#105 Matt Tanzer, now a Hero C, jumped another 10 places this week. He currently trails ex-champ #104 Cesar Martin by one spot. Matt's 9 PRs included four Hero A times, so it's only a matter of time until he starts hitting Titan standards. #109 Scott Abbey renewed his motivation to go after the top-100 when Matt passed him recently, and jumped 5 spots this week. It still looks like Matt will get to the top-100 first, but Scott can claim to be the first of the pair to have scored a Titan time.

#143 Kevin Sirman's 27pt AF cut was 3x larger than last week's. The French player easily broke inside the top-150 by passing 30 players. He also reached Expert A, is already halfway through to reaching Hero D!

#315 Andrew Johnson just completed his first full week on the rankings, and seems to have tackled the courses in order. He scored 21 PRs in 12 of the courses, resulting in a 48pt AF cut. One of the largest so far this year, but will he keep it up? He's Advanced B now--and very close to Adv A--but a similar cut next week will probably see him jump right into Expert territory.

#368 Daniel Pabst returned with 18 new PRs after a month's absence. The German's 22 AF pt cut moved him up 15 spots. Maybe he didn't want to be passed by Alessandra! smile

New Records

Just one new WR this week. And it wasn't even from the new champ or the old champ. It was from Aron Langerak, who took a WR away from Hendrik. Aron's 23"862 lap in Sherbet Land brings another course to God level. Hendrik was former holder with 23"90, and Richard 0"03 behind him. Their times were 5 months young.

New Players

Welcome to...

Peter Nonkes, Netherlands (543rd, Int C)
Yoann Panza, France (~387th, Adv C)

Round 3?

Alex @ Friday, February 2nd [link]

Movement

#1 Richard Karlsson is idling. He hasn't sent any new PRs for almost a month. Meanwhile, #2 Hendrik scored a few nice WRs. The small AF gain for Richard and small AF cut for Hendrik combined into a decent improvement for Hendrik: he's within 0.15 AF pts of reaching Richard. Really riveting! Okay, not quite. But if he's hungry for the title, it doesn't seem out of his reach. Richard is a few days away from having held the title for 100 days in total.

From the top-10, Vincent van der Fluit was also active. He remains steady on 5.0 AF after setting 4 PRs. #5 Andreas Rudmarker gained a little bit of ground on Vince. Not too-threatening for Vince, yet. #9 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate's 5 PRs brought him 0.5 AF pts closer to compatriot #8 Olivier Peruch, and his AF is now under 10 pts.

#12 Konsta Jukka made 12 PRs to cut 2.7 pts in AF. He passed #15 David Schiering, #14 Paul Maes and #13 Jonathan Steel. Big names in MKDD's history! He is also very close to #11 Tristan Eyma. Konsta's 0.56 ARR cut conveniently gets him a shiny Myth B trophy for his shelf, and pushes him over the half-way mark to reaching Myth A.

#67 Thomas Lander made up his deficit on Sylvin Rigal and finally passed his French ally. If Thomas can repeat his 2.2 pt AF cut, he should be able to pass a lot more players now, because he's finally made it across the annoying 7 pt AF gap between Sylvin and #71 Rickard Lindell. Next up are #66 Stacy Needham and #65 Jon Prentice.
#69 Marvin Mester and #70 Florian Chollet jumped right in the middle of that gap themselves, with AF cuts of 3.3 and 5.5. Florian had the larger cut, but missed out on reaching Marvin by 0.2. #76 Arnaud Guepey is the closest active player behind. The French player made 3 PRs for a small 0.5 AF cut, with which he passed #77-78 Jeff Gutierrez and Dave Taylor. Arnaud and Florian are still wearing their Hero A jackets, while Marvin got the promotion to Titan D.

#95 Rhodri Morgan's 8pt AF cut was one of the highlights inside the top-100, with the UK player making the jump from #103. The players he passed included #103 James Leare and everyone's favourites, Christophe and Piet. Rhodri stopped one position short of #94 Alex Hantson, whose 1.7 pt cut moved him up one place.

Outside the top-100, #115 Matt Tanzer looks to have the better chances between himself and #113 Scott Abbey of reaching the double-digit ranks first. Despite being a few places behind his countryman, Matt's has the momentum of a 21 pt AF cut. He passed 18 players! His 16 PRs included double Hero A on WC, which is not bad for a newly-crowned Hero D player. In the same region, #118 Sylvain Artigue is coming up to a couple of French players, #116 Florian Vaz and #117 Louis Nebout. #124 Andreas Oliveira Dos Santos moved up 7 positions, and may reach Sylvain.

#173 Kevin Sirman's 8pt AF cut worked hard for him. Considering the tight packing of players around him, he passed 9 players. Two of these players were French, but Kevin's best-known victim was probably #175 Bart Savelkouls.

#226 Andrew Manning put his foot down on the gas on the day of the last update, so some of his PRs counted for last week's update. But he took advantage of the long fourth-week-of-the-month and raced 26 more PRs for a 64 pt AF cut and 58 position gain. An easy break into the top-250! Will he keep this momentum up? It's not unlikely, considering that he's PRing every day. He's got several Exp A times already, and will no doubt be hungry for his first Hero time. Andrew reached Exp C overall.

#361 Mark Engelsman was inactive this week, giving #340 Gosia Buza the opportunity to overtake him and cushion her lead. A nice 27 pt cut in AF moved her up 26 places. Gosia currently sits between fellow Dutchie #339 Rutger Mensch and legendary webmaster #341 Iacope Sorce. #332 Ian Smith did indeed reach Mark with his queued PRs, but also scored a further 18 to eclipse Gosia's run. Gosia receives training from #87 Jerrol (I wonder if they fight over the controller?), so she may fight back against Ian. Both became Adv B players.

#367 Brian Smith must be a very attractive guy. He's a player-magnet. Newcomer #366 Andrew Johnson made a decent 36pt AF cut in his first week, and ended up where Gosia and Ian were last week (glued to Brian).

#422 Robin Usher made light work of #424 Karel van Duijvenboden, but there are plenty of Dutchies left. One of them may only be just emerging. #426 Xavier San Giorgi, absent 8 months, picked up a controller once more. He scored 21 PRs in just a few days. Xavier's 59 pt AF cut moved him up about 50 places. Robin and Xavier both became Advanced D.
Also, keep an eye out for #463 Eric Tapani and #464 Nick Welch. While both are from the USA, one's a newcomer and the other on a new comeback. Eric countered Nick's 27 PRs with 29 of his own. With cuts of 68 and 86 AF pts (resp.), we expect to hear more from them next week.

Honourable mentions: #156 Jivago Pacheco da Silva (Exp A), #302 Kevin McAteer (almost top-300, but became Adv A), #387 Ryan DeMaster (Adv C).

New Records

There were 3 overall records this week.

Vincent van der Fluit is once again the king of Mushroom City. He took back the course record last week, and snatched the lap record this week. His 30"964 is just 0"002 ahead of Richard and 0"005 ahead of Hendrik. It's very close between the top three on this level. They're the only three guys sub-31, and all have a G+7 lap.

Not to be outdone by Vince, Hendrik is once again the king of Yoshi Circuit. He took the 60Hz YC records a fortnight ago as practice, and now reclaimed the 50Hz double. His 1'40"387 was 0"05 quicker than Richard's month-old time. Both players are G+2 there, and about 0"5 ahead of Aron and Vince. Hendrik's 32"323 lap narrowly edged Richard's 32"334. Both are G+2, and about 0"05 ahead of Aron and Vince.

New Players

Welcome to...

Gernot Lenz, Germany (559th, Int D)
Andrew Johnson, USA (366th, Adv C)
Alessandra Martinelli, Italy (383rd, Adv C) -- 5th among the ladies, and our second 'Alex' girl <3