Jason Whalls vs Matt Flees
Voted Flees because of his DK mountain strat. It was original at the time and still a good time.

Toshi Miura vs Iacopo Sorce
Votes Toshi. There are not many Japs around here. He is doing great job to get more. Plus good times in SMK.

Jonathan Steel vs Eise Smit
Steel. Very very good mkdd player. Could be using 60 Hz though...

Tuomas Dunkel vs Andre Wachsmuth
Tuomas. Tuomas has made the biggest improvement this year almost from nothing to near top 20 in MK64. MKDD pioneer during it's early days. He is also only active finnish karter around here besides me.  

Thanks Louis.

Moritz

And that's really what we should be about.  The coolest people are the ones who seem to like everyone so much that you can't tell if they particularly like or dislike anyone.

But back on topic, I have a strong showing for both Finn and Booth; I'd have given 'em two votes if I could but oh well.  (*registers new e-mail address*)

I think there is room for both types of people - those who love everyone and those who speak their mind. I think both are respectable in their own right. As for Booth, the only reason it seems like he likes everyone is because he never says a damn thing. If he'd man up, maybe he'd get my vote...oh wait...

Time for another 2 for 1 day. My apologies for leaving everyone in suspense, but I had a busy day between Kart and doing nothing yesterday...couldn't find time.

Finn Berger vs. John Anderson
While a vote for <Agent Smith> Mr. Anderson </Smith> sure sounds good, I voted for Finn. The turtle is one of the nicest, most helpful guys I've seen on these boards, and while I don't like him beating my times, I have to respect that.

Fernando Moritz dos Santos vs. Jerome Gava
Voted for Gava. As I don't know either well, I had to base this off of what I read in the bios and the opinions of the people whose judgement I trust. Those two things both had some complaints about Moritz, though I based it more off of his bio which wasn't particularly flattering. Gava had nothing bad said about him, though, and that's what I had to base my voting off of.

Kevin Booth vs. Martin McMullan
Voted Booth. I still say Booth got the stupid easiest match ever. No offense to Martin, but site owner/high ranked player/ex-world champ vs. mid-ranked player. I don't quite understand how he got 3 votes against though, unless people are just trying to dick him over. Yeah, that's it. I'll save compliments for later rounds since I'm sure I'm not gonna be able to get rid of him very soon.  

Nicolas Clementy vs. Nicolas St-Louis
Voted Clementy. I competed in SMK when Clementy was doing well, and again in MKSC where Clementy was a great competitor near the end of my playing days. Plus, he has that James Bond photo which is classic.

3/4 that day...I figured Clementy would have a stronger showing, but I guess St-Louis is more popular that I knew. That, or people mixed up the two names of the final two matches and thought it was Martin St. Louis...

Pierre L'Hoest vs. Matthijs ten Ham
Voted for Ham. I had a tough time with this match. I have lots of respect for what L'Hoest has done in SMK, but I also have some t-e.n connections, and I do have a special place in my vote selection for site workers, so Matthijs gained enough from those to put him over the top for me.

Paul Regeffe vs. Brent Wingert
Voted for Wingert. While I don't always agree with what he has to say, I do like that Brent is pretty outspoken on topics that most people would shy away from. He's also a pretty cool guy and he hangs out in the IRC chat room, so I get to know him far better than Regeffe. Plus, if I was the one who first posted about Wingert getting screwed on a 4th seeding, am I really gonna not vote for him when he gets moved?

Karel van Duijvenboden vs. Andrew Weatherton
Voted for Weatherton. I know more of Andrew than Karel, simple as that. He posts in the game I'm most familar with (Kart 64), he has hosted some pages, and he met Jones at E3 and got a stockpile of t-shirts. That's good for something, right?

Trystan Pugh vs. Rene Elsaesser
Vote for Rene. I said before the competition that anyone who got the (3 seed?!) Elsaesser brothers was boned. Peter was incredibly talented and Rene was a great contributor to the community, basically taking over (and improving on) Launspach's 1997 designs. Really an unfair match for Trystan.

Voted for all the lower seeds that day, and was 3/4 overall. The one match that went the other way (Matthijs), I figured would go that way as most people don't go to t-e.n as frequently as I do (despite having little interest in competing in GE and PD).

JWhalls   wrote on 09/25/04 at 17:14:24:

Wish I had his hockey skills, I only have his family name to brag about

Voted for Matthijs.
I'm one of those strange breed of lurkers that reads a lot of what goes on over at the-elite.net, but never actually bothers joining. (actually this is because I suck at goldeneye) But Matthijs was an obvious choice here, as he also got involved with mariokart and I'm just not familiar with the SMK scene. That's perhaps unfair to Pierre, but he won this one in any case.

Wingert gets my vote in the next one because he says what he thinks regardless of what people think about him and I think that maybe I've often wished I could do the same.

Weatherton in the next without blinking. It's purely a case of knowing someone and not knowing the other person, and andrew has done a ton of interesting things and posted about them to the MB.

Last one, Rene's site was the first one I saw when I bought the game back in 1997 and encouarged me to submit times and improve them. I had to stab him in the back here though, because Trystan is on my team in the other tourney. Trystan would have beaten a lot of other guys here.

I voted Pierre, Karel, and Rene...

Karel's a really nice guy and a great karter at SMK, too bad he didn't move on. Was really rooting for him.

Round 1, Group 14 Votes

Louis-Philippe Sabbagh vs. Thomas Harrington
Voted for Louis. I didn't even have to look at the opponent for this. Louis has been one of my best online friends for about 6 years now, and this year he has overtaken Booth as the person I talk to most online. It doesn't hurt that Louis has played Kart 64, SMK, DKR and a handful of other games at the same time as me, so from a competitive standpoint, I've gotten to know him very well. However, that has also given me the chance to know him as a person as well. While a great gamer (one of the best overall that I've played with, and with similar interests as me), he's an even nicer guy. I really have nothing bad worth saying about him. I'm going a little long on this one, and I have tons more I'd like to say about the guy, but I'll just save that for later rounds (as I hope he goes far), so I'll just leave it at that.

Jonathan Bernier vs. Rob Zeigler
Voted for Bernier. There wasn't much of a bio for Zeigler, but it would've taken a lot to save him against Bernier. Jon was one of the best gamers I have seen during his prime, and though he was mainly around before online videos became a regular thing (and I never did get a VHS tape of his stuff), I had (and have) loads of respect for his talent then and now. However, I never really got to know the guy, so he's taking my vote based on his skill, his grace as World Champ in Kart 64, and his contributions strategically to the game (K64).

Mike Simmons vs. Joseph Hurtgen
Voted for Hurtgen. A tough match for me. On the one hand, Simmons did make numerous contributions to Kart, but I've always felt like I didn't particularly get along with the guy, both in chat and postings in MBs/e-mails. I'm not sure exactly what it is, and many claim him to be a really nice guy, but he just rubbed me the wrong way a lot. Joe, if I'm remembering correctly, used to talk to me on AIM in my SMK days, and he was always quite nice to me, and if I am remembering the time correctly, I had few problems with him, though his brother struck me as a tool. In the end, my belief that Simmons was going to win regardless of who I voted for was what helped push my vote more toward Joseph.

Stephan Regat vs. Matt Brown
Voted for Brown. Not exactly a fantastically reasoned vote. I based this primarily on what the guys had to say in their bios, and Matt showed a bit more personality and humor, so that won him enough points with me to get the vote. Plus, I got to thinking...What can Brown do for me? And I like UPS, so that sealed the deal.

3/4 today again. That was about what I expected, though, as I knew the Hurtgen vote was putting me in the minority.

Nice to see more vote sharers coming around recently, btw. I figured sooner or later someone other than Louis or me would post.

Yes, I'm aware he has stuff up now, but that's not really all that relevant as now he's not leaps and bounds ahead of everyone. I was referring to the time frame where he was #1 or thereabouts.

where did that come from?

If they reseed players, maybe you won't be facing him.

Reseed early!  RAWR!

I think we have a pretty good idea of everyone's strength after just one round.  If reseeded then, it'd become a full 64 man tournament, and we could get bracketmaker involved, and make our predictions.  True, we COULD still do bracketmaker with only 32 remaining... but would make predicting less fun, less big upsets/bracketbreakers going to occur by then.