In his profile it says he's ranked 3rd on the boards.

Yes that means he has the 3rd most points.

That's the total number of points. Most of the veteran players do not use points as a way to gauge how good a player is. We mostly use Ghostranking, and MM has the highest ranking currently as well as all time.

I kid with Mapu, but MM is probably the best overall Diplomacy player on our site.

He should give Nigee and y2k a big hug for that one.

Oh hey, it's man crush Monday. Adorable!

Eh, I disagree. In the games I've played with him, I've found him to be underwhelming.

I would honestly put Julien or TheWizard above him. The Hanged Man is another potential candidate.

.. and that VillageIdiot guy. I mean wow, right!

Quite so! The way he sliced through the opposition to win "Game for noobs-2", secured a glorious 2-way in "newbie-21", and slaughtered the seasoned warriors to achieve victory in "newbie-22" is the kind of performance they sing songs about!

In all seriousness, though, it is quite an impressive record.

If you find MM underwhelming, you need yo play against him face to face. The Wizard is amazing as well, though. No doubt about that.

I guess my expectations were just so high that he fell short of them. That, or he plays a really bad england. I think he was england in my last three games with him.

Oh, but you mean in gunboat? That makes more sense.

I've always felt truly great players are best experienced in groups that include them and good, yet unremarkable, opposition. In such situations the way the great players manipulate the whole board is a thing of beauty.

When you get seven great players on the same map I find to some extent they cancel each other out and what you get can be a quite dull affair. Similar to watching two great F1 drivers in very similar cars, there's a lot of following each other about and waiting for mistakes, and very little overtaking.

Well yeah there was that one gunboat I was in with him, but I would include press in that too.

I think it has more to do with what Octavious says. I've only seen MM play with other great players - the kind who aren't as apt to be fooled. It often does become a dull affair, and ends in a 5WD or something like that.

I've found that MM in a high-level game is completely boring but also pretty much impossible to kill, which is borne out by his high number of draws in high-level games.

I've found Julien to be incredibly persuasive, but he has a habit of going quiet before a stab (he doesn't like to lie, apparently), and English isn't his first language, so he's pretty easy to pick out after a while. The last few times I've played him, I've mercilessly cut him out.

VI just always seems to do well in my games and get in the way of my plans for a solo. Of course, he'd probably say the same thing about me!

Never played Wizard . . . THM got eliminated very quickly (by VI) in the one game we've finished together.

MM, Dejan and The Wizard are the most impressive players I have met here. Can´t say who is better because each one have is own style and every game is different, but every time I played with one of them I really learned something (but from my last results seems I have forgotten most of it, lol).

If we're circlejerking about players we've been impressed with, I'd add uclabb's name to the mix. Learned quite a bit from playing with him and THM.

Well, we're less circle-jerking than trying to disprove Mapu's statement that MM is the best of all time.

jacob, babak, djbent

If we're talking old players also Ivo, Polar Bear, and Treefarn

I've been impressed by gen lee and mad marx

Yup played wiggy a couple times, usually end up throwing him a bone and allowing him in the draw. I like to believe the confidence boost will only help him become a better player and just seems to make him so happy.

MM's in a current game i'm in but it's anonymous and barely started so i'll have to weigh in on that topic afterwards.

Hey I'm in that game too! Let's see if VI's helped me become a good enough player to make it out!

Devonian .... he's massive on vDip

He did very well in the Masters over here too.

Mapu is a funny guy!!

First off, I just can't figure out gunboat, it's against my nature, the thought process... I can manage, some parts, but certainly not one of my greatest strengths...

As far as F2F, I'm clearly below average by any definition, outside of our Boston get together, but that was just because I had a bit of clout with the webDippers...

Even in press games here, I always feel like I don't really know what I'm doing... When I say that, people think I'm being patronizing, but I just thought of an example that might help me explain. The first full game of diplomacy I ever played was on webDip. Somehow I knew about The Diplomacy Pouch, so when I got a great power, I read about opening moves. I did this for all of the first ten games I joined, got a bit of insight about each great power for each game, which was helpful for the first few years of each game, but after that I didn't really "know" what I was doing. I didn't know any stalemate lines, I didn't know what a Lepanto was or even what a Juggernaut was. That said, I won everyone one of those first ten games I joined. So, I didn't really feel like I knew what I was doing, but I was getting results, and the results sort of speak for themself regardless of whether or not it makes any sense in my brain of limited understanding.

As far as being underwhelming, I had a hunch after I won the first ten games I joined on this site that there was no way for *me* to live up to any expectations of what I did, and that I would underwhelm *everyone* as long as I played on this site. That said, goldy, when is the last time you were in a game and put all your time and energy into convincing two or three people that the absolute highest priority for all of you was to team up and make sure to kill off the underwhelming guy? When I won those ten games, we didn't have anon games, everyone could see my profile, and believe you me I got more than one triple and even quadruple teamings that started from the pre-game and saw me die and 1903 and 1904, so perhaps I felt a need to react to some of the attention I was drawing, but I digress.

Another underwhelming stat, it's been nearly three years since I won a press game, 22 games and counting. How sad is that? TheWizard, THM and uclabb win all the time, which clearly suggests they are much better than I am, and for sure wins are what matter... Still, my GR has been steadily dropping for all of that three years and I'm still ranked #1 overall, which isn't really underwhelming... My all-time best GR of 1039 is 1/3 again as high as second best, which in all honesty seems like a very big gap. I know GR isn't the end all and be all, but again, those numbers sort of speak for themself regardless of how inept I may be at getting a solo.

Another underwhelming feat of mine was at Boston F2F. On Saturday, Babak got a solo against six players that all failed to qualify for the final table Sunday. Regardless, extremely impressive, something I could not imagine ever pulling off F2F. For me, when I joined Babak at the final table, I as Austria was facing a pre-game triple alliance (IRT) that formed to immediately eliminate me from the game. I did manage to top that final board, which I am still quite proud of, which had none of the glitz and glam of Babak's solo, but in the end it does speak for itself.

Sorry to go on and on, sort of fun to reminisce, especially since I likely won't be playing too much in the near future, having a 4.5 month old growing older every day... I may not be the best, and I may be underwhelming (especially in my own eyes), but when I step back and think about some of the things I have accomplished, some of them simply speak for themself.

Heh, I didn't mean to diminish any of your accomplishments, MM. Your streak coming onto the site is undeniable and nobody (myself included) is attacking you or your ability to win games (Which I'm sure you still have. I'm in a bit of a dry spell myself. We all hit them). I'm well aware of the tendency for other people to gang up on you in games, but that is also why in the past three years you've become very particular as to who you'll play with and under what conditions. Again, I didn't mean to attack you or make you defend yourself like that.

Mapu was saying you were a GOAT, and rather than have the thread be a circle-jerk, I just put out some names of players whom I have personally seen do really well in the Masters.

What happened to Gen Lee anyway? He, Partysane, and Zmaj used to crush me in live games.

I was just trying to start a healthy debate the same way they will debate things like Bird, Magic, or Lebron? on ESPN.

And seeing MM do well in that 24,000 GB game against pretty much the finalists in the GB Tourney was very impressive. No kissing asses or circle jerks -- just giving the man some well-deserved props.