One of the most important all-Russia (it's even greater! It's all-region) sport programming contests has approached us. Of course, I mean the ACM-ICPC NEERC 2010/11 World Programming Championship semi-finals. The names of those who will go to the jewel of Egypt, Sharm el-Sheikh will be known in less than a week. Undoubtedly, for some people this contest will become "the flop of 2010". I hope not to become one of them.

As you already know, the Saratov university delegation is going to get on the train tomorrow with some special extra luggage - we are taking about 300 T-shirts with us. Today we spent half a day sorting them into boxes, signing and counting them again. I even managed do divide 68 by 2 incorrectly that nearely led to the shortage of T-shirts :) However all the hardships are over, the presents are packed and we are ready to go. Let me remind you that all the official team members will receive Codeforces T-shirts (unfortunately, the reservists, coaches and the team leaders do not count).

The previous year in St. Petersburg was marked by our hasty visits to all the nearby pharmacies, it was marked by the fact that on the eve of the contest every team had a member with the fever of 38 degrees celsius, it was marked by the fact that one can never have enough paracetamol before the contest. We don't wish anybody to share this wonderful experience, so dress warm, take care of yourselves and of your teams' health!

Have a good journey and see you in St. Petersburg,
МikeMirzayanov

This year the ACM-ICPC regional contest of our region celebrates its 15th anniversary! We heartily congratulate the organizers, members of the jury and the technical committee. We would like to give our special congratulations to the Competition Director Vladimir G. Parfenov. Thank you very much for your work not only in organizing this competition, but also in developing the programming community throughout our region. Much has been done over 15 years. All the achievements of our region teams on the ACM-ICPC finals are also due to you. I have to say that NEERC is organized on the top level and has highly interesting sets of problems which all the participants find very exciting. We wish you new successes and new achievements!

This year the Saratov university delegation does not arrive in St. Petersburg empty-handed. We've decided to give presents to all participants. Each St. Petersburg NEERC participant will receive a Codeforces T-shirt. For us, delivering so many T-shirts will help to clarify who among our team members is the strongest programmer:)

The Codeforces team and Saratov University.

School Team Contest #3 (Winter Computer School 2010/11) will be held on November 13 at 11:00 (UTC). This is the final team event of the series, and we will be glad to see both permanent participants and new teams.

The contest has been prepared by me, Artem Rakhov, Nikolay Kuznetsov and Ivan Fefer. All of us will soon go the ACM-ICPC regionals in St. Petersburg, and now the guys have to combine the preparations for the semifinals with writing problems for you. Special thanks for the translation of problems to Maria Belova.

Everyone can take part in it out of the competition (informal). Make up your mind :)

We decided to sum up contest results using the ITMO rating system, according to which team gets a score from 0 to 200 per contest. It will be used two best participations out of thee possible. I will not reveal secrets, saying that Gennady Korotkevich showed great results and secured the victory ahead of schedule!

Good luck in the upcoming competition, MikeMirzayanov and stern, but fair jury.

UPD. Statements in PDF: russian version and english version. The statements will be available when the contest starts. 

Good day!

We are pleased to inform you that on the night of December 31, 2010 on January 1, 2011 will be not only fireworks, champagne, gifts and presents, but we will summarize the Codeforces year. Great news that Thomas Cormen gave permission to use his name in Codeforces annual award. So, we are pleased to announce the annual Codeforces award — the Cormen Medal!

It will be three awards this year:

• the best Codeforces participant
• the best secondary school Codeforces participant (based on Winter Programming School Olympiads for Schoolchildred results)
• the best problemsetter

The first of the medals will be awarded to participant who will have the highest rating at the end of the year. The second medal will be presented to the best participant of Winter Programming School Olympiads for Schoolchildred 2010/2011. Finally, the third prize will get the most active and successful author of problems for Codeforces competitions (Codeforces team members not considered in the tabulation of results).

Wish you high ratings,,
MikeMirzayanov and Codeforces team

Hello.

Now you can create teams and invite other users Codeforces. I remind you that the first distance Winter Computer School Olympiad will be for teams, and for official participation in it only teams will be allowed (all team members should be registered to the serie).

P.S. It is only the first version of the teams interface. We are working on extending it. Suggestions are welcome.

Saratov State University in announcing Southern Subregional Programming Contest 2010. It will be held from the 19th to the 23rd of October.

For the right to reach the Regional Contest will be competing universities of Astrakhan, Volgograd, Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Penza, Rostov, Samara, Saratov, Tambov, Ulyanovsk, Krasnodar and Stavropol regions and from the republics of Adygea, Mari El, Mordovia, North Ossetia, Tatarstan. Totally 63 teams will participate in the competition.

In addition, on 19th October will be held IX Regional Team Highschool Olympiad, which is a qualifying stage for the All-Russian Team Olympiad in Informatics for schoolchildren. The top five school teams will win the right to participate in the final stage of the Olympiad.

On the official website http://contest.sgu.ru/ you can view the results during the competition.

For the fifth consecutive year, except for official competition, teams are invited to an informal entertaining contest Code Game Challenge. Under Code Game Challenge teams will write programs that will be placed in the simulation game world, to directly compete with other participants! Teams will be given specifications for a game object. These specifications will include a set of interfaces to be implemented and a goal for the object to achieve when in competition with other team's objects. Capabilities include observation of the progress of other team's objects and measures that can be taken to block that progress. The winning team object will be determined in a game environment while competing with others.

On 23rd, October at 07:00 (UTC) on the site http://acm.sgu.ru/ will be held an online contest on the subregional contest tasks. The official onsite standings will be integrated to the online ranklist!

Good luck!
MikeMirzayanov

Good day!

Winter Computer School is announcing a series of team and individual programming contests for schoolchildren. This school is organized by the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and sponsored by Yandex and ABBYY. The contests will be help on the Codeforces platform.

The series will consists of three team and the individual competitions. We invite schoolchildren (students enrolled at a school for secondary education) from the Russian Federation and other countries to take part.

The jury is already actively working on. All the competitions will include a wide range of problems and it will be useful and interesting for both beginners and experienced participants.

The winners will receive certificates and prizes!

The first contest is for teams and will be held on October 24 at 07:00 (UTC). The duration of the contest is 5 hours.

The full schedule (UTC times are given):

To participate in contests (as in team and individual) you must have an individual account at Codeforces. Attention! Do not register accounts for the teams, because after a few days it will be announced a new features to organize teams from registered Codeforces users.

All ongoing competitions will be open for informal participation for students and other Codeforces users, who do not participate in the official standings.

We hope that these Olympics will help you tighten up your knowledge of programming and help to prepare for the upcoming Olympiads – All-Russian Team Olympiad, All-Russian Olympiad and other competitions.

To become a member please register on a series of competitions. Here is the complete list of registrants.

Register now!

P.S. I should add that the Codeforces project has prepared a special award for the best participant!

Good luck to all participants,
MikeMirzayanov and the Jury Team

UPD. An interface to create teams is available.

What can be better than good news? Right you are - excellent news. The news I'm going to share with you is such.

We're glad to tell you, that VK company is now the primary sponsor of Codeforces project! It's a great honor for us - because VK is not only the largest social network in Russia and one of the largest in the world, it's also an example of a high-tech, innovative approach and dynamic development.

VK's help will allow us to continue the development of the platform, to run interesting contests for you on a regular basis. We have ambitious plans to fill Codeforces with useful educational content.

It's also important for us, that Codeforces programming contests community attracts not only its makers and participants.

"Codeforces contributes a lot into the development of collegiate programming in Russia. I'm glad that we have a chance to support this project. I hope it becomes even more interesting to participate in and win Codeforces contests", - says Pavel Durov.

"A powerful developers team is the main driving force of our company. It's at contests, like Codeforces, where we find young and talented programmers, who can solve difficult technical tasks", - added Andrey Rogozov, the head of VK development department.

Wish you high rating,
Mike Mirzayanov

You may read complete rules here.

The text contains only preliminary rules of Codeforces contests — something surely will change. In particular, I hope to help the community to find the illogic in the rules. However, I have already discussed the format with programming contests dinosaurs and made unrated alpha contests — it seems rules are OK.

I think than the format 5 tasks x 2 hour is quite good. For this reason, in the near future we will not change it, but of course, experiments are possible.

1. Before the competition all participants are divided into rooms, each room contains about 20 participants. For now random strategy works, but after a while it will be somehow correlated with the rating.

Hello!

Today will be the first alpha test of the new format of the competition. Registration will be limited - as soon as about 60 participants have register, I'll close it. Invited to participate, only those who have read rules draft. The document is in Russian, so I expect most participants from Russia. After some time we will translate the rules into English, and make this type of rounds really international.

In this round will be used folklore problems and the duration had to be reduced. For sure, it will be non-rated. Codeforces not guarantee that everything will work well - so be patient.

Many thanks to those who gathered to take part. I hope it will be interesting.

This post contains few words and many pictures. I decided to publish statistics on Codeforces visitors for the past two months. Why? I believe that it might be interesting. I took pictures from Google Analitycs.

Codeforces was born little more than 4 months ago. During this time, we held 16 contests (though one of them was non-rated). There are more than 4000 registered users, and every day we get about 30 more. There are 1797 coders participated in the contests, many of them participate in our contests regularly. The average number of registrations for one competition is growing, and I want to believe that soon it will conquer psychological barrier 1000 users. Also codeforces social network is popular: more than 400 posts, almost 6000 comments. The leader of the hit parade of posts is this post, has collected to date 184 comments. Bravo, SkidanovAlex! And of course I say thank you to everyone who helped make the project: those who help in the development, who make the problems, translate texts and write the alternative solutions, participate in community life, and just take part in contests. Thank you!

Below you will find a few more pictures and statistics, the total traffic of about 250KB.