Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Players' Page

A new 'number one contender'

Alex @ Thursday, March 22nd [link]

Movement

#1 Hendrik Bunde reported just one PR this week. It's good to see the champ active, because #2 Aron Langerak has just snuck past #3 Richard Karlsson to see the title just 0.1 AF pts in front of his fingertips. Of course, Hendrik is no stranger to losing his #1 spot, and he's bounced back every time someone decided to challenge him for it. It would be wrong to count Richard out of it, too, because Richard's fingertips are only 0.06 AF pts behind Aron's fingertips. It's pretty close. Even Aron's AF cut this week (0.18) was more than the distance between Richard's fingertips and Hendrik. Supposing Aron does reach #1 (a "only his first time?" laugh is heard coming from the other two), Hendrik is still the only God ranked player in ARR. Aron's fingertips are 0.04 short of that goal. And Richard's fingertips are 0.04 behind Aron's fingertips.

French leader #7 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate made it past #8 Marius Mollenhauer this week, but he was himself passed by #6 Marijn Jongbloed. Marijn, the 3rd ranked Netherlands player, became Myth+ in the process. Both J-C and Marijn have passed a handful of legends in #8 Marius, #9 Raphael and #10 Olivier. #5 Vince has a strong lead on both of them. Close behind, #11 Konsta Jukka has just reduced his AF to sub-10 and is approaching the same gauntlet of legends. He is 0.5 AF pts behind Olivier and a top-10 spot.

#26 Marc Schwartz has already got ahead of fellow countryman #28 Mike Hartjens. His next target, #25 Luke Mulders, should be no problem. Look out for a rank promotion, too...

#35 Andrew Math cut 3 AF pts and moved up three places. He is now one spot behind ex-champ #34 Stefan van Dijke. Andrew reached Titan A last week, but this week's 12 PRs already bring him half-way to Titan+. #51 Andre Overesch focused his efforts mostly on Mario Circuit over the week. He passed #52 Martin Rudmarker, who last week had lost his top-50 finish due to Andrew Math's return. Andre now needs to pass #50 Stefan Baczynsky to reach that barrier.

There are many active players in the high Titan region. #64 Kevin Borne, a recent recruit for the French army, led the charge with a 9 pt AF cut. He moved up 10 places, managing to pass #65 Alex Hantson but not #63 Joey Michorius. Alex, too, scored a nice cut of 4 AF pts. The Swiss-American passed US players #67 Rob Chastain and #69 Jon Prentice, as well as retired veterans Prashant Bhoja and Paul Regeffe. Frenchman #75 Arnaud Guepey's 5 pt AF cut brought him much closer to rival #71 Florian Chollet, who himself passed another Frenchman this week, #72 Sylvin Rigal. #73 Matt Tanzer squeezed ahead of #74 Marvin Mester with 5 PRs. Among those was Matt's first Titan+ score. #79 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers is expected to join all those above players in Titan-land any day now. Jerrol settled with passing MKDD pioneer and veteran #75 John Anderson for now. Finally, #85 Jonas Natanaelsson scored more PRs last week than since his comeback started at the end of February. Maybe he is 'warmed up' now. Jonas has many active players ahead of him to keep him busy!

#192 Alessandra Martinelli played 60Hz for the past two weeks. A few scores a still missing from a complete set. She is therefore yet unranked, but it looks like she will be around 170th in 60Hz. (Alessandra's rival for the female title, #183 Rosalinda Cancino, is 118th in 60Hz.) In the overall ranking, Rosalinda made a small cut and put a few more people between herself and Alessandra. She even passed #187 Andrew Johnson, one of the guys in her rivalry. #160 Andrew Manning had almost run away with that rivalry, but I replaced the missing-in-action #266 Ian Smith with #172 Jordon Ward because JW was keeping up with the two Andrews. Jordon's idea of sharing the rivalry records were to grab Andrew's bunch and split them, 12 apiece.

#211 Antoine Veylon made a small comeback by reporting 14 PRs. The French player's last submission was in October. He's not far from getting back into the top-200. Meanwhile, #259 Patrick Hewson made a small 0.7 pt AF cut after scoring a one PR in Luigi Circuit. In 50Hz, no less. Clearly imperfect, dude.

Recent additions #390 Jeff Lloyd and #395 Colin Stephens made huge PRs all over the board, resulting in a 95 pt and 32 pt AF cut, respectively. Jeff is the second person this month to get a 95pt AF cut. If #348 Ben Wilson is any indication, Jeff should follow up with a 35pt cut. #393 Nick Welch cut 53 AF pts this week to slide between Jeff and Colin. All three players became Adv C and appear hungry for blood. Maybe I should put them in a rivalry and let them duke it out. Since they're already past 400, I can call the rivalry '300'. Who's best prepared for glory?

From the rest of the newer players, #423 Kiyan Nourain produces a solid 63 AF pt cut. Kiyan seems to be speeding up rather than slowing down! He started March at nearly 600th and barely Intermediate, but he's already Adv D and looking towards top-400. #509 Joe Anderson should make top-500 by next week, with #519 Tim Jay and #532 John Kenny almost certainly joining him.

Honourable mentions: #125 Kevin Sirman, #141 Ahti Lampi.

New Records

One new record for this week: Bo Garman raced a 33"726 DK Mountain lap in 60Hz. His Myth A time is 0.07 ahead of Hendrik Bunde and Marius Mollenhauer.

New Players

Welcome to...

Otto Knigge, USA (555th, Int C).
Euddy Valdez, Dominican Republic (322nd, Adv B).
Jason Trulson, USA (~630, Int D).

Yes. I know I could wisecrack on today's Pi-day. (Hmm, looks cleverly concealed)

Alex @ Thursday, March 15th [link]

POY

Apparently the 'Player of the Year 2006' playoff vote is running for another 14 hours, so I'll let the timer run out by itself rather than stop it half a day early.
We're about 10 votes short of the initial (pre-playoff) vote, so some of you voted before but not now. Maybe you can't make up your mind? wink

Yes, it's tricky...

Movement

For some time now we've had two players at the top of the game, but soon it will be three. Already leading the WR tally with 10 WRs (Richard has 9, Hendrik 8), #3 Aron Langerak scored 8 PRs to cut 0.5 off his AF and bring himself within striking distance of Hendrik and Richard. The AF ladder currently stands at #1 Hendrik (2.5), #2 Richard (2.6), #3 Aron (2.8).

#7 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate has become the top French player, following his overtaking of ex-champion #8 Raphael Segas. JSX made 2 crucial PRs in Daisy Cruiser, and although he's one position ahead of Raphael in DC 3lap and one position behind in DC lap, he overall cut 0.25 in AF and now leads Raphael 8.47 to 8.53. Could this spur Raphael into a return? I don't know. But JSX can do one better on his 7th place and reach 6th if he can catch #6 Marius Mollenhauer.

Close behind JSX is #9 Marijn Jongbloed. The Dutchman flew past #10 Olivier Peruch this week to reach single-digit-ranks for the first time. With #6 Marius, #7 JSX and #8 Raphael within 0.6 AF pts ahead of him, there's a chance that Marijn could reach #6 soon.

There was some more good news for Dutch fans in #29 Marc Schwartz's passing of Gregor Fran. Gregor, the 4th-ranked US player, still keeps his top-30 finish. Marc, however, is currently the 6th Dutchie, and will no doubt be interested in catching #25 Luke Mulders and #27 Mike Hartjens and improve that stat.

#38 Andrew Math has provided satisfactory proof and has had his times quickly reinstated. He now breaks into the top-40 and has reached Titan A! Several players' reaction to Andrew's new timesheet was something along the lines of 'we got pwned'. Andrew's return pushes #51 Martin Rudmarker out of the top-50 and #101 Stephen Regat out of the top-100.

#60 Thomas Lander got ahead of his fellow Frenchman #61 Arnaud Teil. He still has three more French players in his vicinity. A few places behind Thomas, #62 Ivo van der Stap is trying to pull ahead of fellow Dutchie #63 Joey Michorius. All three players were active, but only Thomas and Ivo had a net AF improvement over the week because of Andrew Math pushing most people's AF down by 1 pt. Currently, Thomas is 1pt ahead of Ivo, who is 1.5pts ahead of Joey. In ARR, Thomas and Joey are on the verge of reaching Titan C, while Ivo just became Titan C.

#70 Alex Hantson and #72 Matt Tanzer continue to follow each other stroke for stroke, though Alex managed a few extra PRs and push #71 Florian Chollet between himself and Matt. Matt's 5 PRs and passing of 2 players didn't quite match Alex's 10 PRs and passing of 3 players, but both of them became Titan D.

With #=91 Andres on vacation and #95 Rhodri keeping quiet, #=91 Scott Abbey didn't have many active players in his immediate neighbourhood. Nevertheless, the Scott made a 4pt AF cut and passed both Andres and Rhodri.

#173 Andrew Manning had a small 5.3pt AF cut that worked extra hard for him, passing 12 players! Andrew has been added to the battle of the sexes rivalry, and is enjoying his lead in all the stats. #185 Andrew Johnson is no longer the alpha-male (or alpha-Andrew?) in the rivalry, but he worked a 14pt AF cut to gain 9 positions. He is now 6pts behind Andrew Manning. The two girls, #190 Rosalinda Cancino and #192 Alessandra Martinelli, both had stronger weeks than the guys and have almost caught up with them! The girls are just two places apart from each other, with #191 Cameron Tangen having the please of being the meat in the sandwich (I'm sure his wife doesn't mind). Since the girls are also the top women, the No. 1 woman spot is up for grabs: at 17-15 in head-to-head in Rosalinda's favour, a single PR from Alessandra can force a tie. The girls both reached the top-200 this week, and are now tied in ARR.

#187 Jordon Ward made a comeback last week. He was quiet at the beginning of this week, but started sending in multiple PRs per day for the past few days in a row. It looks like he's picking up some momentum. He made a 9pt AF cut and passed 8 players, but he might just be warming up.

As expected, #347 Ben Wilson had a big submission prepared for us. He made 30 PRs, one less than on the previous update. A 35 pt cut and 30 positions gained was much less than the previous week, too, but still okay. Among the other new players, #422 Colin Stephens had a big 'first week' on the site, scoring a 66pt AF cut, moving up 64 places and reaching Advanced level. #485 Kiyan Nourain's 59 pt cut puts him now where Colin was last week--Int B and inside the top-500. #519 Joe Anderson moved up 42 places with a 43pt AF cut. Coincidentally, one place behind Joe, #520 Gabriel Laflamme (brother of #93 Simon) reported 20 lost PRs. He moved up 70 places, and his last submission was in 2004! Joe reached Intermediate B, but Gabriel only just missed out on it.

New Records

There were two overall records this week, both from Richard Karlsson. Richard already held the Daisy Cruiser record at "789, but he improved it to 1'36"543 G+4. His time is almost half a second ahead of anybody else. Aron, Marijn and Jean-Christophe have recently been playing DC as well, which may a reason behind Richard improving his own record. Richard's second record was Wario Colosseum 1'56"737 G+6. Richard had this record at 1'57"3, but recently received a scare from Andreas Rudmarker's 1'57"20. His new record is 0.5s ahead of Andreas and 0.8 ahead of Vince.

Apart from Richard's self-beating-records, there was another record made. In 60Hz, Hendrik Bunde's 24"446 lap in Luigi Circuit was just 0.002 quicker than Olivier Peruch's time from early January. Both players have a G+1 lap ahead of Marius Mollenhauer's 24"47 GD.

New Players

Welcome to...

Jeff Lloyd, USA (475th, Int A)
John Kenny, Australia (~644, Beg A)

POY playoff

Alex @ Thursday, March 8th [link]

POY 2006

There were over a hundred votes for the POY 2006 award. But the results were really close! The top 4 candidates were only 6 votes apart. So we're going to have a "Round 2" of voting: a playoff. Only those four people remain as choices, and the poll is done from scratch. Go and vote in the poll page. Voting is open for one week.

(Normally when people try to cheat and vote multiple times, I roll my eyes, giggle like a school girl, ignore the excess votes, and make a note in my little black book about your wrongdoing. But one of your votes still gets through. For this poll, I'll disregard all your votes if I even suspect you of cheating. To prevent wasting your vote, only vote once.)

Movement

#4 Andreas Rudmarker has overtaken #5 Vincent van der Fluit, finally breaking up the Dutch pair of Vince and #3 Aron Langerak. The 2-player country AF has Sweden with a slight lead over Netherlands. Both Andreas and Aron are active and could sway the rivalry in their country's favour. Andreas might be hungrier for it at the moment, since he's the underdog and is behind Aron in the rankings. As for how far behind... it's over 2 AF pts, so Aron's 3rd place is safe for a good while. But that doesn't mean that he should go easy on the Swedes!

#10 Marijn Jongbloed and #11 Konsta Jukka have both lowered their AF scores to under 10 pts, and will be looking forward to catching up to some big names. Four players ahead of them have an AF of between 8 and 10: Marius, Raphael, Jean-Christophe and Olivier. If Konsta can't catch Marijn, he can still make it into the top-10 by catching Olivier.

#17 Bo Garman and #30 Marc Schwartz's scored only 4 PRs between them this week. While Bo moved a little closer to #16 Rene Bauer and Marc closer to #29 Gregor Fran, their achievements this week were to become Myth C and Titan+ players, respectively. Another player who didn't quite manage to gain a spot, but nicely set himself up to gain a few if he can make another PR, was #42 Thomas van Leeuwen. The Dutchie player reported two new PRs after two months absence. Thomas described his new Titan+ BP 3lap as 'etcetera', which may be construed as a way of saying "Dude, whatever. Too easy." Should we expect more?

#63 Joey Michorius was once upon a time a rival of #62 Robert Chastain. Joey has managed to catch up to his old friend once again and is currently 0.0something behind Rob in AF. Joey passed Paul Regeffe and Prashant Bhoja this week.

#72 Alex Hantson raced 10 PRs and passed two players this week. #73 Matt Tanzer kept up, scoring 8 PRs and passing 4 players, as well as upgrading all of his scores to top-100 status. With Alex being the top Swiss player and #70 Marvin Mester being the top Liechtenstein player, you may have chuckled at the recent real-life parallel to Alex's encroachment of Marvin's territory. As luck would have it, the Swiss-Liechtenstein conflict was accidentally broken up by the French Army when their fresh recruit from Paris, #71 Kevin Borne, debuted at Titan D and split Alex and Marvin apart. I don't know if Kevin is a member of the French site, but his scores are quite good for a debut. Perhaps the Swiss should consider marching into Paris, too? There's no such thing as neutrality in kart.

#80 Jerrol Hoppenbrouwers practiced some 50Hz recently, and raced 3 PRs this week. His relatively innocuous 1pt AF cut worked overtime, passing a total of three players.

Switzerland's second player, #170 Alain Studer, had a decent week. Having been way for two weeks, Alain returned with 18 PRs and a 21pt AF cut. This gives him a small lead on #184 Andrew Manning, who raced 12 PRs. Alain's 0.75 cut in ARR got him through to Expert A, while Andrew still has a small distance to go.

#210 Alessandra Martinelli had a relatively quiet week, for a change. While she passed 6 players, her week was overshadowed by her rival, #201 Rosalinda Cancino. Rosi improved 27 PRs, resulting in a 47pt AF cut. She's the top female karter once again, and is even on the verge of reaching the top-200. #194 Andrew Johnson is still leading the rivalry, but his lead is not a comfortable one. Andrew and Rosalinda both became Expert B's. Meanwhile, #265 Ian Smith raced 17 PRs and advanced 10 places. He's probably just giving the others a head start for now.

A potential addition to the above rivalry is #193 Jordon Ward. Jordon broke a 4-month slumber with a handful of submissions, giving him a 20pt AF cut. Enough to make the top-200. If Jordon will stick around and if the girls don't mind taking on multiple guys, maybe I can add him in. He's currently one place ahead of Andrew.

#377 Ben Wilson debuted at around 465th place last week, and nearly had a 3-digit AF cut in his first week. He sent in 31 PRs on the first day of this week, so his PRs were probably made last month. Nevertheless, his 95pt AF cut is one of the biggest we've seen so far. We haven't heard from Ben for about 6 days now, so it's not unlikely that he has another big submission in the works.

Joining us this week, newcomers #486 Colin Stephens, #545 Kiyan Nourain and #561 Joe Anderson made some promising improvements with their second submissions. Colin debuted at just outside the top-500, but quickly jumped the barrier. We'll see how he fares in the near future. Kiyan and Joe both cut 45 AF pts, and moved up about 50 places.

Honourable mentions: #69 Florian Chollet (Titan D, newest Titan!)

New Records

Aron Langerak had a poor week, scoring only 1 WR! Tsk tsk. Aron beat Vincent van der Fluit's 25"701 record on Mushroom Bridge with a 25"697. It was only 0.004 quicker, but it reached the G+5 standard.

Hendrik Bunde broke a nice barrier, scoring 1'37"960 in Waluigi Stadium--another of Vincent's records getting beaten! While Hendrik broke 1'38 (Vince has 1'38"018), it is still a Myth+ time. Hendrik complained that he took some sand at the end of the run, and could have finished even quicker.

The last two records of the week came from Sweden. But they were from Andreas, not Richard. Actually, it was Richard who lost a record to Andreas, who beat his 1'57"34 in Wario Colosseum with a 1'57"202. It's the first G+4 time on the track.
Andreas's second record was one that he already held; he beat his Rainbow Road 2'54"97 with a 2'54"689 G+2. Although there is one other player with a God time on RR, Andreas is the only guy sub-2'55.

The course total times for the WRs is now under 26'01, so we're 1 second away from 26 minutes. This time last year, the WR totals were 26'15!
A further shake-up in the WR stats is that Aron has taken the lead with 10 WRs, while #1 Hendrik and #2 Richard are tied on 8 WRs. Vince fell to 3 WR, but the ones he recently lost have been by small margins. Will he get them back?

New Players

Welcome to...

Mathieu Vincent, France (~774, Beg D)
Colin Stephens, USA (486th, Int B)
Jeremy Garcia, USA (465th, Int A)
Kiyan Nourain, USA (545th, Int C)
Adam Stolarski, USA (~806, Newbie; he only submitted one score.)
Kevin Borne, France (71st, Titan D)

In case you need me to remind you, PLH is imperfect!

Alex @ Friday, March 2nd [link]

Movement

Not much visible activity in the top two spots, but #3 Aron Langerak scored 6 PRs and cut off 0.5 in AF. His current AF of 3.3 is quickly approaching 3.0, which means that he could soon be fighting for 2nd place. #1 Hendrik is on 2.5, and #2 Richard Karlsson on 2.6.

#5 Andreas Rudmarker is threatening to break up the two buddy Dutchies #3 Aron and #4 Vincent van der Fluit, and the DE SE NL NL SE DE symmetry of the top-6 players. In the 2-player country AF, NL leads SE by only 0.01! Andreas is now 0.15 AF pts behind Vince, but Vince could fight him off with relatively fewer PRs, because Vince has 4 times with double-digit ranking, while Andreas has 2.

#8 Jean-Christophe Lacastaignerate has moved up from French Bronze to French Silver position, passing his rival (and 60Hz #2) #9 Olivier Peruch. JSX no doubt has his eyes set on the French Gold, which has been held by #7 Raphael Segas since, like, forever. Raphael is 0.344 AF pts ahead, and JSX's cut this week was also 0.344. Coincidence? I think so. What's not a coincidence is that JSX reached Myth+, and is the 8th player to do so.

#11 Konsta Jukka is bad from disturbing Aron's karting. We almost didn't think he'd submit this week, but he came through and raced 11 PRs in the past couple of days. His 0.9 AF cut puts him within 0.9 pts of reaching #10 Marijn Jongbloed.

#30 Marc Schwartz and #33 Michael Duerr's inclusions in the POY candidates were both questioned, and both promptly rejected. They deserved their nominations. Michael has raced 4 PRs in the past 10 ten days, after a couple of months of inactivity. This week, the German passed #34 Stefan van Dijke, a Dutchie. He would hope to soon pass the next Dutchie in the ladder, Marc. Marc's 2.5 cut got his past #31 Rodolphe Gouet, but there's still a bit of distance to reaching #27 Mike Hartjens or #25 Luke Mulders.

You may recall reading about #73 Alex Hantson and #77 Matt Tanzer making the top-100, because it didn't happen very long ago. It would appear that these two are now half-way to making the top-50, as well. Sure, the next 25 players will perhaps be a little harder to pass than the 25 that just went, but with 6pt AF cuts like both of them had, you wouldn't want to bet against them being able to do it. Alex raced 14 PRs, including his only Titan B, and Matt raced 7 PRs, getting his second Titan B. Between the pair, Matt wins head-to-head 19-13, even though both players have identical total times (give or take). Both Alex and Matt became Hero A this week. Another thing they have between them is #75 Arnaud Guepey. Arnaud passed two players this week, but his big news was that he hit Titan D and is the newest Titan.

#89 Andres Oliveira Dos Santos has been putting MKDD off lately, deciding to dabble into Pokemon Snap and DKR DS. So I had to go and play DKRDS to bring him back to the straight and narrow. He ended up karting a 22 PR week, rocketing into the top-100 with a 20 pt cut. Andres moved up 19 places and reached Hero B with this, and also entered the top-50 in 60Hz. Unfortunately, he's flying off to see his family in Brazil for a month. I can't exactly chown all of Brazil, so we'll just have to wait this one out. (You think I can? Come on, it's, like, the 5th largest country in the world! Sixth-placed Australia, maybe. But the top-5 are out of my league.)

#177 Flynn Hoppenbrouwers is about to pass fellow Dutchman #176 Bart Savelkouls. Those of you who were here in late 2003 or early 2004 will remember Bart. He used to be unbeatable in a few of the tracks, and was briefly #1.

Last week, #191 Andrew Manning reached position 199. He's been playing other games lately, and only improved by 8 places this week. He reached an AF score of 199. The other recently-added Andrew, #200 Andrew Johnson, almost halved his position during his first month on the site. He jointed a little over a month ago at #360. He made a 35pt cut this week.

#214 Alessandra Martinelli is now the top Italian player and also the top girl! It's only fitting, considering her name is historically associated with Greatness. Since she also passed #217 William Lacey, Alessandra is now ahead of anyone that is considered maybe-a-girl. (#67 Stacy Needham and #132 Casey Mast are male.) Alessandra's 75pt AF cut turned the tables around on #250 Rosalinda Cancino, who had only recently come back from inactivity to protect her female title. Rosalinda is perhaps still warming up after her hiatus, and managed to knock off 26 AF pts.
Apparently, both girls have been chatting online (how come I wasn't invited?), and they've decided that it would be fun to fight it out with some of the guys. I've made this rivalry on Rosi's request, which pits Rosi and Ali against #200 Andrew and #275 Ian Smith. What could be better than a battle of the sexes? Well, I suppose some jelly could... what? Oh, I said that out aloud? Anyway, Andrew has already made a preemptive strike and taken the lead in all rivalry factors. And we already know that, now Expert D, Ian isn't afraid of fighting women, seeing as he looks set to beat Gosia to the top-250. Do these girls know what they're getting into? Don't hurt their pride too badly, guys... or girls... (whoever wins; I don't feel confident making a prediction here.)

#503 Adam Leibach returned after 2 months of inactivity to beat half of his PRs. He made a 30pt cut in AF (31 positions) and became Intermediate B.

Honourable mentions: #94 Scott Abbey (60Hz top-50), #154 Ahti Lampi (60Hz top-100), #353 Xavier San Giorgi (Adv B), #354 Terrence Fenner (Adv B).

New Records

There were 2 WRs this week. Aron Langerak raised his tally to 9 WRs, while Richard Karlsson fell back to 9. Hendrik Bunde got one back (now on 7 WRs) after last week's losses.

Aron's WR was in Waluigi Stadium. His new Myth+ 31"019 lap leads Vincent van der Fluit by 0"04. Days after Aron beat Richard's Luigi Circuit record with 1'14"879, Hendrik beat Aron with a 1'14"872. Both times are G+7, while Richard's 1'14"92 from December was a G+6.

New Players

Joe Anderson, USA (600th, Beg A)
Ben Wilson, UK (465th, Int A)
Timothy Jay, USA (568th, Int D)