Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Players' Page

Proof Progress

Derek @ Tuesday, May 24th [link]

The call is going better than the previous two. Fourteen of 30 players asked for proof have been validated or are expected to be officially validated within the next few days. Five others likely to be validated in the next few weeks. We've only had one removal, and it was a player ranked in the 90's--not bad. Two other players are likely to be removed if I am unable to contact them. As for the remainder? I'm unable to contact the following players:

Ivo van der Stap
Evan Giampa
Marcus Mathews
Christian Kuklock
Fritsch Jeremy

I'll send out another email and hope you guys are reading this. If anyone can contact these players, please do so. If I'm unable to contact them in the next few weeks, the staff and I will have to look over their times and last update records, and make a decision whether or not to freeze or remove them.

Finally, a huge thanks goes to Kieran Jessell, who has volunteered to help me contact those elusive French players. He's already managed to contact a handful of them, so hopefully we'll be able to validate those unchecked Frenchman who are speckled throughout the top 50.

That's all for now; I'll keep you posted.

...and Bob (the horse) asked for a pint of Sunshine and Butterflies.

Alex @ Saturday, May 21st [link]

Movement

Major news of the week is that #1 Jonathan Steel is no longer at the top on his lonesome. He's been joined by both Raphael Segas (proving that Steel isn't invincble) and Marius Mollenhauer (proving that 60Hz is pretty easy after all) as a "God". This is only a tentative title, assuming that new standards will be introduced in the future. All three of these players had to conquer DK Mountain last, and they did. Raphael's DKM ended up being the new WR. So in the ARR department, three players are on 0.00, with the next being #4 Yannick Plebani on 0.62 (still pretty darn good!)

Much like Jonathan and Raphael before him, Marius was lacking in the DKM department. He scored a 1'44'4 and 33'9 on the mountain this week, just missing out on the WRs (2nd and 2nd). He also narrowly missed out on the SL WRs too, landing into 3rd and 2nd.

In AF, Jonathan continues to hold onto the #1 spot, with a score of 2.46. Raphael is second on 2.59, and Marius on 3.43 (he has a habit of hitting the brakes a few metres short of the finish line to cost him the WR, this guy). Quite a ways behind them in #4 is Yannick, with 7.7. On the other hands, Raphael leads on PRSR (0.9980), ahead of Jonathan (0.9974), Marius (0.9965) and down to Yannick (0.9923) again. Furthermore, Raphael is first in both course and lap total times, with Jonathan beating Marius in laps and Marius beating Jonathan in courses.

So who is currently first - nobody really knows. It's all up in the air. And it's pointless to make a guess, since in a couple of days it will probably change in wild ways. For now, it's pretty clear that Yannick is #4. That's as far as I'm willing to say on the matter confused

Lower down, #5 Paul Maes is trying to run from #6 Vincent van der Fluit. He's sort of succeeding for now. Paul's cut of 0.75 AFpts was larger than Vincent could make up on him (0.4). The distance between Vince and Paul (9.6 vs 8.7) is about the same as the distance between Paul and Yannick (8.7 vs 7.7).

Just behind them, #8 Paul Tanney is squaring off against #9 Rene Bauer. It's very tense between them at the moment. In AF, it's 11.09 vs 11.12 in Paul's favour, but Rene is leading ARR by 0.2 (equivalent to 7 standards). Paul's be spending a lot of time on LC lately, trying to get a god course time and maybe steal a lap WR in the process. Rene scored 9 PRs, four of which were god. These guys were added in a rivalry, along with the three players ranked immediately before them. Should Rene overtake Paul in the near future, Paul's continued top-10 ranking is reasonably safe, since the next highly-active player is another ten places down.

That active player was #18 Xavier Valentin. He actually had quite a nice cut, with 15 PRs for the week. Unfortunately, Xavier did not pass anyone. He also stopped right on 2.5 ARR points, which is the border to getting Titan B sad

Xavier is currently sitting in the middle of 6 Frenchmen in a row, but is much closer to passing Olivier Lavenant now.

#22 Kyle Clayton decided to finally pass #24 Alex Penev, having been sitting on his head for weeks. Kyle also passed #23 Bart-Janssen Bouwmeester, and is looking at Emmanuel Debenest and Rodolphe Gouet as victims if he wants to reach the top 20 wink

#26 Mike Hartjens continues his unfinished business of hunting down all the Dutch guys. He passed Prashant Bhoja this week. His hit-list includes Bart JB for now, and maybe Luke Mulders, Stefan van Dijke and Vincent van der Fluit in the future.

Another Dutchman taking names is #35 Steven Zwartjes. We haven't forgotten about him, right? He's been away for three weeks, but came back with 11 PRs and a 3.1pt cut. Unfortunately for Steven, #34 Bo Garman anticipated this move, and managed to jump out of the way and maintain his 34th spot, with a 1.0pt cut. But would you believe Steven is a Titan now? Yup, Titan D!

#40 Kristopher Will continues where left off last week, overtaking Francois Chu and Dave Taylor. Dave is too busy with exams to do anything about it for now. Kristopher is mere inches away from #39 Yohann Foog.

USA's #44 Alejandro Hernandez passed USA's Gregor Fran. Gregor will likely have something to say about this - this is the fight for 4th place in the USA, after all. Let's see how they stand next week, as both players are active.

Another player doing very well is Olivier Peruch. He scored 19 PRs this week, and cut off 2.4 pts from his ARR (not AF)! He's Hero C now, and just outside the top 50 in the ARR chart. Unfortunately, he's missing WS non-sc times, so he's still unranked on the AF chart. But when he sends them in, I think he'll make it into the top 50, this guy. He's French, so it figures that he's crazy.

#52 Sam Hoar moves up a couple of places, and is looking for a top-50 finish by next week.

#68 Jeffrey Gutierrez's bravado is running wild on the message board, with the young'un promising to start devoting more of his time to MKDD rather than MK64. You may remember Jeff's bombastic threats about "Pobre smashing" Marius some months ago. This was, of course, the source of the current trendy catch-phrase "Drunk Holy Moly Smash". We'll have to wait and see if it will be turned into "Drunk Holy Pobre Smashing Moly Smash" rolls eyes

Before Jeff can consider going for one of our best karters, he may want to hold his own ground, because #69 David Lalo is about to pass him anyway day now. David passed veteran Jonas Pettersson this week. Both Jeff and Dave are from the US, with gaming-hero Matt Flees being the next nearest countryman, at #60.

#96 Alan DeLoriea made up much ground in his rivalry against #89 Vincent Bal, #102 Arnaud Teil and #103 Pete Robinson. Vincent still leads, but his lead has been dramatically cut down this week. Alan has taken all 8 Special Cup records now. He also passed 6 people to make it into the top 100! #102 Arnaud Teil is fighting as well, passing a few people himself (including Pete Robinson, by one position!). Arnaud is now where Alan was at the start of the week.

#129 Daniel Whittingham only scored 5 PRs this week, but passed 7 players with them in the AF chart. How's that for value for money? The competition in the 120-140 region is certainly quite close. Just entering this region is #139 Peter Toch, who had a rather lousy week, scoring only 13 PRs. Well, almost anything pales in comparison to what he did last week. Peter's 14.5pt cut saw him pass 13 people this time and become Expert C, which is still pretty good.

#149 Marcel Felix squeezed into the top 150, scoring three late PRs at the close of the week. Marcel's PRs from earlier in the week ensured that his overall cut was quite chunky - just over 20 AF points! But it's those last few PRs which pushed him over the line.

#205 Dion de Graaf passed four Dutchmen in one fell swoop - Thomas Thunnissen, Matthijs ten Ham, Rutger Mensch and Enzio Fruijtier. They were all lined up for him! He now has #203 Paul van Cappelle, #199 Jeffrey Uitman, and a top-200 finish are just ahead. Both Dion and Enzio were in a rivalry recently, but it was getting a bit obsolete so I removed it. Both players were active this week, so it would be a good idea to give them another, better rivalry. Unfortunately, nobody in particular is equally active and very close to them, so maybe it'll have to wait a bit. Perhaps newcomer #227 Menno Kos or #237 Mike Ruitenbeek will give them a good fight - an all-Dutch rivalry sounds tempting.

Honourable mentions: #147 Niels Duijvesteijn (-12 AF), #159 Andreas Brilke (from Adv A to Exp D), #181 Jake Sopcak (-1.2 ARR), #229 Ben Goldberg (-28 AF), #240 Mike Ruitenbeek (-20 AF, -1.0 ARR).

New Records

Trystan Pugh has broken the 26 second barrier in Mushroom Bridge at the start of this week, with a 25"985. Even though 6 people have raced under 26"100, Trystan leads over second-placed David Schiering by a huge 0.09s!

Raphael Segas scored two more WRs on his way to reaching 0.0 in ARR. He beat Jonathan Steel's Donkey Kong Mountain course time (dating from two months ago) by 0.1, with a 1'44"340. Marius Mollenhauer missed out on this record, scoring 1'44"46 later in the week.

Raphael also stole Rodolphe Gouet's only record (1'38"09 DC from two months ago) with a 1'37"872.

New Players

Welcome to...

Tom k katu from Japan (Intermediate C, ~335)
Menno Kos from the Netherlands (Advanced C, 227th)

New Movies

Marius Mollenhauer LC 1'15'9 (direct link).
Marcel Felix has lots of new movies (around Expert-Advanced level).
Gregor Fran RR 3'00'6 59'3 here.

A horse walked into a bar. It hurt.

Alex @ Saturday, May 14th [link]

Don't forget to check out the POQ play-off poll, and Derek's proof-call postings below! razz

Movement

Raphael Segas continues to submit scary PRs, drastically cutting down on his AF. Raphael dropped 1.37 AF pts for the week, to push Marius Mollenhauer into unfamiliar territory - down to #3. #1 Jonathan Steel fought off Raphael by dropping 0.6 AF pts himself, and is currently 0.58 ahead of him. In the ARR front, Marius is on 0.09 and Raphael on 0.15, with four-placed Yannick Plebani much further back on 0.63.

#6 Vincent van der Fluit and #9 Rene Bauer had productive weeks, too. Vincent passed David Schiering once again to get back into 6th place - by only 0.03! Rene shaved off a whole AF point to pass Stefan van Dijke and finish within the top 10.

The two Tr?stans are keeping close together once again, passing #15 Fernando Moritz dos Santos and #16 David Grard at the same time. Trystan Pugh moved up to 13th place, after dropping 3.1. #14 Tristan Eyma made up ground on him, though, dropping 5.1 points instead. Their next target is #12 Jean Lecureux. They both also made Titan B, with Pugh on 2.03 ARR and Eyma on 1.93 ARR.

#18 Xavier Valentin passed Rodolphe Gouet and Stefan Baczynsky. Xavier, along with David Grard and Olivier Lavenant before him, and Rodolphe, Stefan and Emmanuel Debenest behind him, form a straight run of 6 Frenchmen.

#29 Mike Harjens passed #30 Jon Prentice, and has set his eyes on #27 Paul Regeffe and #28 Yoann Seznec, who are within 0.5pts ahead. Not far behind him, #32 Andre Wachsmuth made a bit of a move as well, passing both Cedric Will and Bo Garman. Andrew's 0.5 ARR cut makes him Titan D, and our newest Titan.

Rob Ziegler was removed by the proof mods this week. Rob joined us from Cyberscore and debuted quite high, but had never provided any proof. Rob spent most of his time on this site as 'frozen', and we've not seen him for quite some time. It was decided that he's unlikely to be interested in validating himself. As a result, most people from #40 onwards moved up one position (and their AF improved).

#42 Kristopher Will capitalized on Rob's removal, overtaking Tanguy Audenaert and is expected to pass #41 Francois Chu very soon. Kristopher's closest German rivals are #32 Andre Wachsmuth from above, and #48 Benjamin Zeller below.

Big week for Rickard Lindell in 63rd place, cutting 7.6 AF points. Rickard scored only 7 PRs, but his PB lap was Titan D and helped a lot. Rickard ended up passing his Swedish rival #72 Jonas Pettersson, as well as another nine players - including #65 Kieran Jessell and #66 Ivo van der Stap.

#89 Vincent Bal scored five small PRs, to keep his streak alive. Vincent is now right behind fellow Dutchman #88 Jeffrey Henraat, and not far from celebrities #84 Piet den Dulk and #82 Michael Jongerius (both Dutch). Although Vincent is comfortably leading his rivlry, #102 Alan DeLoriea powered into 2nd place within the rivalry after 17 PRs (most of them in Expert A region). Alan improved by ten places in the process, and is oh-so-close to being in the top 100.

Last week, Belgian #152 Peter Toch won a record for longest time between submissions. He pretty much hadn't submitted anything since the first month or two than the game came out. This week, Peter played almost all the tracks and massively cut down his stats. By massively, I mean almost triple-digits! That's right.. a -94.5 point cut in AF is possibly the largest I've witnessed for a weekly improvement, and it's even huge for a monthly improvement. All of Peter's PRs were in the mid-Expert range. He moved up 86 places and cut of almost 4 complete ranks in ARR.

Not to be completely overshadowed by Peter, #156 Dan Furst (just four places behind) had quite a hefty cut himself. Dan scored 31 PRs (everything except BP lap), and cut exactly 45 AF points. Dan is surrounded by quite a number of American players now, including Cory Sager just in front of him, and Brock Courville ten places higher. #275 Florent David had an equally sizeable AF cut of 41 points. Florent is one place behind Francis Schiering (sounds familiar?), and jumped from Beginner B to Intermediate A (five ranks).

Another insane-numbers man is #211 Jake Sopcak, who only just joined us two week ago at around 415th place. He didn't have a full set of 32 scores at the time, but he does now. Jake's 29 PRs saw him slice off a chunky 74.5 points, and move towards the top-200 barrier. His ARR dropped by 6.8 points, from Beginner A to Advanced B (skipping the Intermediate ranks).

Honourable mentions: #154 Niels Duijvesteijn, #178 Andreas Brilke and #246 Ben Goldberg (each moved up about 20 places), #315 Kevin Cook, #167 Marcel Felix (became Expert D).

New Records

Last week, several of Raphael Segas's videos found their way online. The scores in those videos were faster than his times at that moment, so we were all expecting to see him report them soon. And he did. Among them were two new Sherbet Land records - 1'14"798 / 24"089. His lap time was a 0.001 improvement on last week's, and the course time was 0.06 faster.

Raphael also improved upon his Mario Circuit record from last week by an extra 0.05, to 1'28"213. Last but not least, he re-beat Paul Maes' Dry Dry Desert from last week (by 0.01) with 1'31"344.

Trystan Pugh almost broke the 26 barrier in Mushroom Bridge, running a 26"009. Trystan is working on some videos of his MB runs, which are in high demand.

Jonathan Steel signed up for another two new records, to maintain his WR-tally lead over Raphael Segas. This time it was Waluigi Stadium which fell victim to his Steel-smash, with 1'38"767 and 31"414. His lap time beat David Schering's 31"43 from December last year, and David has vowed to take it back. But the course time is a 0.6 lead over the second-placed time, by Raphael Segas.

New Players

There were no new players this week.

New Movies

Andre Wachsmuth, lots of Hero and Titan times here.
Rene Bauer MCT 1'36'49, PB 1'09'1 on his site.
Ben Zeller DC 1'40'3 32'5 here.

Here comes the broom...

Derek @ Friday, May 13th [link]

...here to sweep away dishonesty from the ranks. That is to say, proof call underway! A few days ago I sent out emails to those who are being asked for proof. My goal for this call? Checkmarks for everyone in the top 100 (the honest ones, at least). If you are in the top 100, do not have your proof checkmark, and have NOT received an email from me, please get in contact with me immediately (derekclark@gmail.com). I've already emailed everyone meeting these criterium at the email address listed in our database; doublecheck it, please.

I've had a nice early response, with several people immediately validated, but there are a lot of guys in the top 50 who have not responded. The majority are Frenchmen, so I must ask you all for a favor. I need one of the site's Frenchman to contact me in the interest of helping me communicate the message to French players. I know a bunch of them are defectors and immigrants from the French ranks, and some of them probably already have proof. Perhaps their English is poor and they discarded my email without realizing its importance; such has been the case in the past. In any case, we need to get these guys proven!

I expect the call to conclude within the next two months; most cases will be taken care of before the month's end, I expect. Hopefully we'll get it done with the least number of freezes and removals as possible. Still, I must remind you: YOU ARE EITHER WITH US OR AGAINST US. plain

Have a great day, and enjoy your stay at the Mario Kart Double Dash Player's Page

<3, Derek rolls eyes

POQ poll

Alex @ Wednesday, May 11th [link]

New poll!

A few weeks ago we had a poll for POQ. The results are in, and it's not good - they're too close to call! Argh! The top two candidates had tied on votes, and the third-place candidate was just two votes below.

So, to be fair and stuff, we're having a winner-takes-all playoff between these three guys (in no particular order...): Paul Maes, Kristopher Will and Trystan Pugh!

The new poll page contains exactly the same info as last time, except that only three options are available now. As usual, you have about a week to vote.

Martin doesn't have that kind of time, people!

Alex @ Sunday, May 8th [link]

Movement

#3 Raphael Segas had 10 new PRs for the week, of this 6 were also WRs! He increased his lead over #4 Yannick Plebani by an extra AF point, but is still more than one point away from catching #2 Marius Mollenhauer.

#5 Paul Maes likewise increased his lead over Germany's #6 David Schiering to over 0.5 points. Raphael, Yannick and Paul are the only three Frenchmen in the top 10, and they are all one after the other.

#11 Rene Bauer only reported 4 PRs this week, but they were enough to pass #12 Jean Lecureaux. Rene will need to pass Luke Mulders if he wants to reach the top 10, and he might be able to do it with a couple of strong PRs.

#16 Trystan "I'm so totally retired" Pugh cut off a whole AF point this week, following 4 PRs of his own. Trystan didn't pass anybody, but he did greatly close down the gap between himself and #15 Olivier Lavenant and #14 David Grard... wow, David's already down to 14th!?

#20 Xavier Valentin quietly sneaked into the top 20 at the end of the week, passing fellow countryman Emmanuel Debenest to do it. Places #17 - #21 are all French players, and they are all within 1.5 AF points of each other - so it's actually quite tight in that region.

#33 Bo Garman passed four players this week, and is now the second highest played from the USA, after Jon Prentice (at #29). Bo also beat Matthew Hofstad's pride and joy (the BC 3lap USA record Matt earned four months ago) by a whisker.

#44 Kristopher Will had one of the bigger weekly improvements of recent times, scoring 20 PRs. At his rating, that's not terribly easy. Though he was border-line top-50 material last, week, his 8.9 pt AF cut has propelled him 7 places clear of the border, and guarenteed his top-50 status for some time to come. He also made Hero B this week.

#65 Kieran Jessell has come back following two months of no-PRage, with almost half of his times improved. Kieran cut 3.5 pts off his AF, but landed into the middle of a hotly contested region - the #60 - #70 ranks are all very close together. Fortunately for Kieran, those players were not very active this week, and he can overtake them while they're not looking.

#97 Dan Coats is .... in the top 100! Dan scored 24 new PRs, -27.7 AF change, and passed 17 players. Dan's strength is laps - his laps conistently outrank his course times. In particular, his Baby Park is 33rd, quite a way ahead of his AF rank of 100.5.

Two recent-yet-not-so-recent players, #172 Niels Duijvesteijn and #178 Scott Goodell both improved about ten places. Niels sent 30 PRs after a 2-month absence, but Scott scored 14 PRs for this week alone. Close behind them is #186 Markus Hobelsberger, who is very recent (last week). Markus's AF went from 220 to 198, or 21.5 points. But Markus didn't pass just 21 people, but 27 people - there's a hot spot in the 200-210 region (6 people on 212pts)

#238 Peter Toch has submitted PRs for the first time since this site aired. The earlier recorded PRs of his date from Dec 2003, which is when the database was being born. If anything, Peter scored himself the record for longest period between submissions for this game, because it's hard to beat 17 months smile

Peter's 5 PRs actually went a long way, improving his rank by 5 places.

Another player making a return was #262 Jeff Byrnes, with 20 PRs. His previous submission dates roughly 11 months ago. He immediately jumped 20 places.

Honourable mentions: #23 Kyle Clayton (made Titan C), #50 Benjamin Zeller (top-50?), #157 Arnaud Guepey (gonna be top 150 very soon)

New Records

All-French podium finished this week, with Raphael Segas scoring himself a whole ton of records to close the gap between himself and Jonathan Steel to only two WRs.

One of Raphael's strongest courses has always been Wario Colosseum, and he managed to improve both records to 1'58"551 and 58"773 respectively! Marius Mollenhauer came close to breaking the 1'59 barrier this week, but managed to break the 59' barrier by 0"002 smile

Raphael's next pair of records were in Sherbet Land - 1'14"858 and 24"090. He's the first guy under 1'15.

Raphael also beat Yannick Plebani's 1'28"59 in Mario Circuit from 3 months ago, with 1'28"265. Xavier Valentin came close a few days later, with 1'28"50. On the lap,
Raphael's 28"065 edged Jonathan Steel by 0"06.

Last but not least, Paul Maes took down the Dry Dry Desert course record with 1'31"356. Raphael had temporarily held this record with a 1'31"41 from earlier in the week.

New Players

Welcome to...

Alessandro Straface Rossano from Italy (Beginner C, ~432nd)
Nicolas Huver from France (Expert C, 116th)
David Florent from France (Beginner B, ~404th)

New Movies

Too many movies to fetch the hyperlinks to.. but I'll go through them:
Raphael Segas 1'28'2 MC, 1'14'7 24'0 SL, 1'31'3 28'45 DDD, 1'58'7 WC (some are WRs but not submitted yet)
Vincent Bal 22'9 PB lap
Rene Bauer 1'05'28 BP
Bo Garman's 2'21'3 BC (for Matt smile

)
Kristopher Will 2'02'0 WC
Rickard Lindell 24'9 LC, 22'6 PB
Gregor Fran 1'16'9 24'9 LC, 1'09'9 22'3 PB

You can see the links to them at the New Vids topic.

Hook, Gloom and Bone.

Alex @ Monday, May 2nd [link]

Movement

#6 David Schiering scored 6 PRs this week to make up a lot of ground on Paul Maes. David is current 0.1 behind Paul in AF. Both Paul and #7 Vincent van der Fluit lost some ground at the end of the month, having their AF drop a little bit. David's PRs were enough top keep him in the clear, and he managed to pass Vincent in the process. It's still pretty tight between them. Also, David now has the 5th best ARR score of 0.81, passing Paul Maes and Paul Tanney's 0.88 and 0.94, respectively.

#10 Luke Mulders surprised many with his huge, gigantic, humungous, colossal, (etc, etc) improvements, beating all of his PRs. He had amassed his collection of PRs over some weeks, and managed to cut off 15 AF points in a single submission. This made Luke go from 29th to 10th overnight, and an instant Titan B - his ARR plummeted from from 4.3 to 1.6! With Luke's ascent towards the top 10 once more (he used to be in the top 10 about a year ago), #7 Vincent van der Fluit's title as Dutch #1 is under contention. #9 Stefan van Dijke is yet another who stands in Luke's way, one position ahead.

And a similar sequence of events have unfolded with one Tristan Eyma.. remember him? Tristan also submitted a whole ton of PRs gathered over many weeks, to make one huge, gigantic, humungous, colossal, (etc etc) drop in his AF - over a 50% reduction, from 43 to 20.4! Tristan easily made it into the 20 with this score, pushing #21 Bart Janssen-Bouwmeester out of that elite group. #20 Emmanuel Debenest is now on the edge of the top 20, but is quite close to passing Stefan Baczynsky for 19th. Back to Tristan - his ARR cut was equally huge, gigantic, humungous, colossal, (etc etc), going from 6.1 (HB) to 2.8 (TC)! Tristan (Eyma) is now one place behind Trystan (Pugh) in both the AF and ARR charts.

Luke Mulder's improvements caused many players between #10 and #20 to lose more ground in their AF scores than usual. This worked in #12 Rene Bauer's favour, with the German in the clear (0.8 cut in AF), while everyone around him was dropping down. Rene managed to #13 Fernando Moritz dos Santos, and is just 0.03 from passing #11 Jean Lecureux as well!

#36 Steven Zwartjes is starting to look more menacing, and continues his streak this week with another nice set of PRs, taking off 6.5pts in AF to pass six players (including John Anderson, David Taylor and fellow countryman Koen Mensink). Steven's next victims will be Rob Zielger, Yohan Foog and Andre Wachsmuth, unless they make a comeback and hold him off. If this week is as good as his last, Steven will catch up to #31 Mike Hartjens, and hopefully we may then see both of them square off in a good battle. Mike, in particular, passed Cedric Willo this week, and also made Titan D - Mike is our newest Titan!

#52 Simon Laflamme clearly doesn't like being out of the top 50, and made a comeback this week, trying to regain his old status. Simon passed four players to get back to 52nd, and we suspect that he'll manage to sneak back into the top 50 with a few more PRs. Simon now separated POQ-candidate #51 Kristopher Will and ex-champ #53 Cesar Martin.

#57 Sam Hoar was recently congratulated for breaking into the top 100, but it looks like he had set his sights onto the top 50 instead. Sam 28 PRs this week saw him pass 15 players, most notably Lars Nouwen, Kieran Jessell, Jonas Pettersson and Ivo van der Stap.

Upon popular request, a new rivalry was advertised this week for some players in the #100-#115 region. The active players chosen from two weeks ago were Vincent Bal, Arnaud Teil, Pete Robinson and Alan DeLoriea. #112 Alan was inactive this week, but both #102 Pete and #103 Arnaud are quite close right now. Pete has the upper hand in the rivalry because of his stronger AF, and both Pete and Arnaud improved 3.9pts in AF this week. Vincent Bal has run away with the rivalry lead for the moment, chopping 6.6 off his AF to pass fellow Dutch #100 Bart Savelkouls and #98 Misja Fockens, and make it into the top 100! Vincent's ARR of 9.46 makes his Expert A, while Pete and Arnaud are around the 10.0 region (EB), and Alan on 10.4. But these things can turn around in a single week, so let's see what happens by next week...

#115 Dan Coats if flying, cutting 55 points from his AF with his 26 PRs this week. Most of Dan's scores are in the mid-Expert level, but got a couple of Hero times too. Dan was promoted from Adv A to Exp C due to those huge, gigantic, humungous, colossal, (etc etc) cuts in his ARR from all these nice new times. Sure, he's a new addition and still settling in, but next thing you know, he's in the top 100, right? Let's wait and see.

#186 Scott Goodell produced 16 PRs to shave off 15.3 AF points this week, easily giving him a top-200 finish! He stopped just short of becoming Advanced A, needing 0.15 ARR points if he wants it this week. But Scott should look out behind him for #192 Florent Lecoanet, who made it into the top 200 as well. Florent's 28 PRs saw him jump over 40 players this week, and since he's so new to the site, you can expect another big performance next week!

#209 Stephen Walls has taken the lead in his rivalry, against #222 Enzio Fruijtier and #219 Dion de Graaf. Stephen and Dion cut off 19 and 22 AF points this week, while Enzio came through at the end of the week to report some PRs that took off 11 points as well. The wins are still relatively even distributed, with each player having at least 8 wins against the other two. Stephen's stronger total times give him many wins in the course times, which give him the lowest rivalry-finish.

Another new guy, with huge, gigantic, colossal... I mean, humungous (etc etc) improvements can be found in #283 Douwe Hogendoorn, who cut 60 whole AF points! Yickes! It figures, because he's Dutch, and they're all crazy at videogames. We hope Douwe can keep up his blistering pace to get to the top 200.

New Records

Continuing from last week, Emmanuel Debenest beat his Dino Dino Jungle course time once again, this time 1'43"195 (0"2 better). His time was in response to Raphael Segas's 1'43"263 from the day before. Again in DDJ, Raphael took the lap to 33"236, leading Emmanuel by 0.15 and Marius Mollenhauer by 0.2.

Raphael also beat his own Mushroom City lap, from 31"485 to 31"443.

New Players

Welcome to...

Paul Gardino from the USA (Intermediate A, 287th)
Kevin Cook from the USA (Beginner A, 348th)
Markus Hobelsberger from Germany (Advanced B, 212nd)
Jake Sopcak from the USA (Beginner B, ~415th)
Conan Casey from Canada (Advanced D, 249th)

New Movies

Marius Mollenhauer LC 1'16'1 here.
Rene Bauer DDD 1'31'8 here.
Bo Garman MB 1'20'5 here.
Rickard Lindell LC 25'2, PB 22'7, MB 27'0 here.