megahertz13's blog

The rainboy strategy
By megahertz13, history, 16 hours ago, In English

Hello Codeforces,

I have attached a screenshot of the most recent Ethflow contest. Notice the 26th place, rainboy. His strategy is to solve the problems in reverse order. Can anyone tell us whether or not this is a good strategy?

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16 hours ago, # |
← Rev. 2   Vote: I like it +26 Vote: I do not like it

only works cuz he's orz i.e. he should be LGM anyways, he just does this for fun

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16 hours ago, # |
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yes he is orz but does it work for like a master?

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    16 hours ago, # ^ |
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    ofc not, master(most likely) can't solve last problem.

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15 hours ago, # |
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tl;dr; Absolutely not, even if you start from the hardest problem you can solve and go backwards

It is clearly not a good strategy. First of all, just take a look at rainboy graphic. Do you really think he was expert before the contest? Also, he is currently at master. Do you really think someone who solved the 3 hardest problems on div 1 is only master? His max rating is "only" grandmaster, I would guess he is closer to LGM than to 2400 (Notice I am playing safe here, he is probably easily above 3000).

Also it kinda works for him because he is actually able to solve the hardest problems. If you want to simulate this strategy try to tackle the hardest problem you think you are likely to solve first, the go backwards. That said, even if you implement this strategy you lose a ton of points in the easiest problems (because the time of submission will be greater than the time it took for you to solve the hardest problem), while the advantage you get for solving the hardest problem fast won't be that much, as you typically solve the easier problems much faster. Think like that: for each minute you don't solve the last problem you lose rating in all the problems you could solve at the same time. If you go in non-decreasing order you solve first one relatively fast and don't lose a lot in later ones.

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12 hours ago, # |
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Well, some people strive on Codeforces to get high rating and wish that it could help them to land a job

Some others are doing it for olympiad grinding. Others were do it for fun and enjoy the competition thrills

... and then there's rainboy

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