Up at the top of the charts, William Lacey made a move to tie 4th-placed Trystan Pugh for AF, cutting three-quarters of a point with PRs on CM, SL and RRd. He also pushed Jeffrey Gutierrez down to 6th in the process. Worst GOD ever Cooper Lovera also played RRd 3lap to move himself up a single place on that chart. He remains in 20th. Not too far behind Cooper, Myles Bukrim passed compatriot Josh Layne for 27th and Finn Berger moved slightly closer to Josh with a small cut of his own. The most impressive action by far, however, was that of Glyn Valentine. Glyn cut 12 from his AF to move up 14 places into 33rd and hit a number of impressive times to improve to Legend A overall! Will Glyn's potential carry him to his goal of overthrowing world champion Michael Jongerius?

Outside the top 50, the battle between Marcos Vinicius Alves and Matthias Rustemeyer raged on as both men made almost exactly the same cut of 3.5 to each move up 3 places into 57th and 58th respectively. Lifelong AAA member Matt Nissenbaum moved up 4 places into 77th to close in on the Legend ranks and get nearer to his nemesis Darius Austin. Christophe Tremblay continued his progress to tie Marc Pouget for 111th while Guilherme Arantes made some small cuts but remained in 173. Special mention must go to SMK legend Karel van Duijvenboden, who finally joined the MK64 site in November and made it all the way to 175th with his first set of times!

Over on SC, two men in the top 10 made exactly the same improvment. Myles and Zoran Tintor both cut 0.4 from their AF but both remained in the same position: Myles in 4th and Zoran in 8th. Matthias passed two more players to move up to 36th and Marcos closed in on the top 50 with a cut of almost 10 to reach 51st. Lucas Marquardt made an awesome 77 place leap with his 49 AF cut that got him to 109th.

Back on non-SC, Austin Gates made some small cuts to reach 254th, getting spectacularly overshadowed by Mat Abernethy, who made an absolutely colossal cut of nearly 168 AF! Mat's 191 place jump saw him fly all the way up to 268th after joining in October. Aiden Foyel cut 14.5 to rise 10 places into 324th and Daniel Pabst climbed an excellent 49 places to pass fellow German Marvin Mester for 377th. Juan Choque was another new player making some great progress, slashing 60 from his AF to reach 408th with a 77 place jump. Tim Stoll nearly made it into the top 500 with a 23 place climb, ending up just outside at 501. Kristopher Lamp went up 7 places to 522nd and Pete Robinson doubled that with a 14 place rise into 532nd.

Plenty of new players for November:

Karel van Duijvenboden - 175 - Elite A
Matt Gingery - 460 - Advanced A
Lucas Marquardt - 476 - Intermediate C
Alex Kangas - 491 - Advanced F
Melanie Jones McMillan - 630 - Beginner D
Nicola Strogieri - 639 - Newbie A
William O'Brien - 645 - Newbie D
Kyle Labelle - 662 - Newbie D - 280 SC
Eric Taverna - Newbie D - 665

And one shortcut only player:

Olivier Aeby - 360 SC

And that's all for November! Watch out for the December update, soon to follow...

In other news: if you also play some of the other mario kart games, you may want to check the new update of the combined kart rankings. Mario Kart Wii just got added to the rankings.

Robin Usher is the person who has been succesfully doing this job during the past 21 months. Robin also did this job for a whole year in 2005/2006. So, the total time he spent on this is an amazing 33 months! This beats Louis-Philippe Sabbagh's total of 24 months, when he was an updater in 2003-2005. The other updaters we had (Dave Crawford, Lars Nouwen, Vincent Tolhuis all spent between 6 and 12 months on the job).

Robin really needs a break now though, as he's also doing POW updates and he's going to be quite busy next year. So, someone needs to take over his database updating job.

Of course I'm not asking you to beat Robin's record and sign a 33-month contract now... :-) However, it would be great if one of you can step up and offer their help to keep this site succesful in the future. If you're interested to help, please let me know by sending me an email (click on my name for email address).

November Week 4
Glyn Valentine continued his strong improvements by passing two more players and bringing his ARR down to 1.125.

November Player of the Month
No shocker here: he cut his ARR by more than half and moved from 47th to 33rd. Will Glyn Valentine succeed in his quest to dethrone MJ? His progress this month is definitely a good start.

Double GOD Vincent Tolhuis kept his excellent year going with some non-SC improvements, keeping him in 12th but moving to just half a point behind Luke Barnard. Zoran Tintor narrowed the gap between the two men, cutting almost a point from his AF and passing both Eddie Taylor and Greg Lewis to reach 14th. Next on the move were the shortcut legends Greg Ihnatenko and Myles Bukrim. Greg got very close to passing Mike Simmons for 25th while Myles fought back against Finn Berger with some small cuts. Finn himself stays right behind Myles in 29th but still managed to close the gap by a fraction. The last mover in the top 50 was another returning player, John Santamaria, who moved past Peter Elsaesser into 43rd.

Over on SC, Zoran remained in the position he has occupied for some months, stuck in 8th despite yet more PRs. Brent Wingert passed two players with his AF cut of just over two and Matthias Rustemeyer just kept rolling on by passing another 6 players to climb into 38th. Behind him, Sterling Neblett surged into the top 50 at 43 with a cut of nearly 15, reducing Jean-Francois Dubreuil's climb to just one place, up to 46. Another very familiar name in 2008 was up next: Marcos bettered his rival Matthias' rise by a place as he rose 7 places into 57th. Austin Gates passed 20 players down in the lower reaches of the charts, ending up in 267th.

Back on non-SC, Marcos and Matthias continued their rivalry with Matthias closing right up behind Marcos after passing 9 other players. Marcos just managed to stay ahead in 60th with some small cuts but Matthias is within a point. Brent Wingert slipped down a place to 69th despite some small cuts of his own thanks to Matthias. Nicola Gatti is now just nine places from his goal of becoming Italian champion after passing 15 players with a 15 point AF cut to reach 84th. Robin Usher also lost a position despite some cuts, down to 90th after Nicola's progress.

Jacob Goldfinger nearly broke the top 100 with a cut of exactly a point, moving up to 102. Christophe Tremblay went up 5 places to 115th and Pat Bertovic up two to 147th. Matt Vanderwouw and Guilherme Arantes both made small cuts, moving up to 171 and 173 respectively. Just outside the top 200, Michael Tunzi made an astounding AF cut of nearly 126 points, catapulting him up 124 places into 209th! It was unfortunate for Tim Gauthier that he did, as Tim's excellent 79 point cut to get him into 244th was overshadowed by Michael's superb month. Austin made a similar move to his SC jump, passing 22 players to reach 257th. MKWii champion Alvin van Asselt also found himself moving backwards into 310th despite making cuts while Aidan Foyel was the third person to move up more than 50 places, passing 70 players to reach 334th. Daniel Pabst joined that club as well, leaping into 426th by passing 64 players. Terry Doleschal moved up into 437th with his 7.5 AF cut and Tim Stoll made a 24 point cut to reach 524th. Alvaro Fababu and Pete Robinson made very similar cuts to Tim, sending them into 539th and 546th respectively whilst amidst all this, Kristopher Lamp passed a few players to reach 529th.

New players:

Mat Abernethy - 459
Juan Choque - 485
Wesley Holbrook - 488 - 332 SC
Matt Kilpin - 537
Raphael Prata - 565
Daniel Sampson - 674

And some players sending in their first shortcut times:

Tim Stoll - 264
Zach Powell - 267
Tim Gauthier - 351

That's all for October, but I'll be back very soon with the November action!

Week 1
The biggest mover this week was Michael Tunzi, who climbed 20 spots on the AF charts and moved from Elite D to Elite B with lots of new PRs.

Week 2
This week's award goes to Sterling Neblett for his shortcut improvements. Sterling moved up 6 spots on the SC ranks into 43rd, and drove a particularly impressive RRy sc flap that ranks 3rd overall, beaten only by our SC champs Karlo and VAJ.

Week 3
For passing 13 players, including the great Robin Usher (grrr), Nicola Gatti was the player of the week.

Week 4
This was a slow week, but Matthias Rustemeyer stood out by making some cuts in both his nonSC and SC times that got him the title of Universal Legend.

Player of the Month
He also had consistent cuts throughout the whole month, cutting his NonSC AF by 10 and his SC AF by 7, so Matthias Rustemeyer is the Player of the Month.

Player of the Season (Fall)
Easily the most impressive movement of the months August-October was done by Nicola Gatti. He started outside the Top 200, but then began driving strong Legend times to show his potential and quickly moved over 100 places up the charts, finishing at 84th. His target of fellow Italian Iacopo Sorce is now only 10 spots away, but from Nicola's strong YV and MMF times it looks like he has potential to go much further than that.

I'll follow up with the October awards soon, and after that maybe we'll be back to giving out the weekly awards...every week! Imagine that.