Hello everyone.

In the coming days I will finish the implementation of small changes in the rating calculation for new accounts. Here are the main innovations.

• The rating of the new account will be equal to $$$0$$$ for display (but it will be equal to $$$1400$$$ when calculating rating changes).
• Suppose, after the first round, the participant gained $$$d_1$$$ rating points (remember that the rating was considered equal to $$$1400$$$ in such calculations), then in the rating display after this round $$$500+d_1$$$ will be displayed. Thus, after the first participation, the rating is likely to increase from $$$0$$$ to a value in the region of $$$500$$$ (plus or minus $$$300$$$ approximately).
• Thus, before the second participation, the displayed rating is $$$500+d_1$$$, and the rating for calculating changes is $$$1400+d_1$$$. Suppose a new change is $$$d_2$$$, then the displayed rating becomes $$$500+d_1+350+d_2$$$.
• Thus, before the third participation, the displayed rating is $$$500+d_1+350+d_2$$$, and the rating for calculating changes is $$$1400+d_1+d_2$$$. Suppose a new change is $$$d_3$$$, then the displayed rating becomes $$$500+d_1+350+d_2+250+d_3$$$.
• And so on the first $$$6$$$ rounds. Promotions of the displayed rating will be equal to $$$500, 350, 250, 150, 100, 50$$$ (in total exactly $$$1400$$$). Therefore, after participating in $$$6$$$ rounds, the rating is “stabilized” and the displayed rating will be equal to the one used to recalculate the changes.

Thus, on average, for new accounts at an early stage, the rating will increase, getting closer to the real value. These innovations will help solve several issues:

• We are reducing the starting rating from $$$1500 $$$ to $$$ 1400$$$, so that new accounts make a smaller contribution to the overall rating.
• Currently, especially for inexperienced participants, there is an effect that their rating at the beginning of participation is constantly falling (from $$$1500$$$ to the value that is a true assessment of their skills). This, of course, leads to discomfort: you try, participate, solve some problems, but the rating drops.
• The previous paragraph gives additional motivation to create new accounts. If your current rating is less than $$$1500$$$, then there is a temptation to start from scratch with a fresh account. After the changes, such a start will require a noticeable long-term effort to climb at least your current rating. It seems that the changes should slightly reduce the motivation to create new accounts.

Apparently, a similar idea is used on AtCoder, but I don't know the details.

What do you think about such improvement? Sounds good?

Hello, Codeforces!

We have planned this round as a Div. 4, but testing showed us, that problems are more suitable for Div. 3. Therefore, instead of the previously announced Div. 4 we will hold Div. 3 round.

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Hello! Codeforces Round #644 (Div. 3) will start at May/24/2020 16:35 (Moscow time). You will be offered 8 problems with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. However, all of you who wish to take part and have a rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially. The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 8 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Note that the penalty for the wrong submission in this round (and the following Div. 3 rounds) is 10 minutes.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as trusted participants of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

The problems for this round were invented by MikeMirzayanov and prepared by me and Stepavly

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for platforms and coordination of our work. Thanks to antontrygubO_o, iankury, bfs.07, kocko, Ilya-bar, arsijo, pashka, Gassa, neal, vovuh for help in round preparation and testing the round.

Good luck!

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UPD: Editorial is out

Hello Codeforces!

On May/17/2020 12:20 (Moscow time) Educational Codeforces Round 87 (Rated for Div. 2) will start.

Please notice the unusual time.

Series of Educational Rounds continue being held as Harbour.Space University initiative! You can read the details about the cooperation between Harbour.Space University and Codeforces in the blog post.

This round will be rated for the participants with rating lower than 2100. It will be held on extended ICPC rules. The penalty for each incorrect submission until the submission with a full solution is 10 minutes. After the end of the contest you will have 12 hours to hack any solution you want. You will have access to copy any solution and test it locally.

You will be given 6 or 7 problems and 2 hours to solve them.

The problems were invented and prepared by Roman Roms Glazov, Adilbek adedalic Dalabaev, Vladimir vovuh Petrov, Ivan BledDest Androsov, Maksim Neon Mescheryakov and me. Also huge thanks to Mike MikeMirzayanov Mirzayanov for great systems Polygon and Codeforces.

Also thanks to Neal neal Wu for testing.

Good luck to all the participants!

Our friends at Harbour.Space also have a message for you:

Hi Codeforces!

We would like to invite you to a very special webinar called Digital Lockdown: AI against COVID-19, by Sergey Gordeychik, director of our Cyber Security programme.

Sergey is CIO of Inception Institute of Artificial Intelligence, and former CTO at Kaspersky.

During this webinar, Sergey will share his expertise and insights on how AI is being used both positively and negatively, during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Tune in for some practical examples of how companies are using AI to innovate and disrupt during a time of crisis, exploring topics like Medical Imaging for CT analysis, diagnosis and mass surveillance.

Join us on Thursday, May 28th at 12h (BCN) to gain knowledge and deepen your understanding about how we can use AI to solve both operational and societal problems.

By participating in this 1hour webinar you will get a certificate of participation, a special digital gift from Sergey, and have the chance to win a FREE 3-week module at Harbour.Space University, depending on the availability and prerequisites of the course.

Congratulations to the winners:

Congratulations to the best hackers:

And finally people who were the first to solve each problem:

UPD: Editorial is out

Hello, Codeforces!

I'm glad to invite you to Round 643 which will start at May/16/2020 14:35 (Moscow time). Please notice the unusual time.

There will be 6 problems in round, one of them will be interactive. If you are not familiar with interactive problems, you can learn about them here.

Round is based on Team Olympiad in Lipetsk which is being held for the fifth time. Problems were prepared by fake123, iura, Masha237, Villen3tenmerth, Inessa Shujkova (Lipetsk teams' coach) and me. I would like to thank antontrygubO_o for CF round coordination and testers: KAN, I_love_Tanya_Romanova, vepifanov, Merkurev, golikovnik, Ekler and some other people who asked me not to write about them :)

Of course, I'd like to thank all Codeforces team for this beautiful platform!

Scoring distribution will be announced later.

Wish you good luck and high rating!

UPD.1 Scoring distribution: $$$750-750-1250-1500-2000-3000$$$.

UPD.2 Editorial is available here.

UPD.3 Congratulations to winners!

Official participants:

1. NaimSS

2. tianxiawoyou

3. Lomk

4. wisteria0410ss

5. TheOneYouWant

Unofficial participants:

1. risujiroh

2. jiangly

3. 244mhq

4. hitonanode

5. turmax

UPD.4 Full problemset from the olympiad is available on gym: The fifth Lipetsk collegiate programming contest. Finals. 8-11 form

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Hello! Codeforces Round 642 (Div. 3) will start at May/14/2020 17:35 (Moscow time). You will be offered 6 or 7 problems (or 8) with expected difficulties to compose an interesting competition for participants with ratings up to 1600. However, all of you who wish to take part and have rating 1600 or higher, can register for the round unofficially.

The round will be hosted by rules of educational rounds (extended ACM-ICPC). Thus, during the round, solutions will be judged on preliminary tests, and after the round it will be a 12-hour phase of open hacks. I tried to make strong tests — just like you will be upset if many solutions fail after the contest is over.

You will be given 6 or 7 (or 8) problems and 2 hours to solve them.

Note that the penalty for the wrong submission in this round (and the following Div. 3 rounds) is 10 minutes.

Remember that only the trusted participants of the third division will be included in the official standings table. As it is written by link, this is a compulsory measure for combating unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the third division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1900 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the third division or not, if your rating is less than 1600, then the round will be rated for you.

Thanks to MikeMirzayanov for the platform, help with ideas for problems and for coordination of my work. Thanks to my good friends Daria nooinenoojno Stepanova, Mikhail awoo Piklyaev, Maksim Neon Mescheryakov and Ivan BledDest Androsov for help in round preparation and testing the round. Also thanks to Artem Rox Plotkin and Dmitrii _overrated_ Umnov for the discussion of ideas and testing the round!

Good luck!

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UPD: Thanks to ma_da_fa_ka, Jaydeep999997, abhishek_saini, infinitepro and socho for testing the round!

UPD2: Editorial is published!

Hello, Codeforces!

We are excited to invite you to Codeforces Round 641 (Div. 1) and Codeforces Round 641 (Div. 2). This round will take place on May/12/2020 15:35 (Moscow time). In both divisions, you will have 2.5 hours to solve 6 problems. Please notice the unusual time.

Problems of this round were prepared by Rebelz, A.K.E.E., mydiplomacy and me BlueSmoke.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to:

• 300iq, for responsible and interesting coordination;

• WZYYN, Elegia, skip2004, vintage_Vlad_Makeev, fpdqwq, wangziji, Suika_predator, wrg0ababd, AcF-_-FcA, Shuba_Buba, duyiblue, xiaolou0411, LiM_256, Hazyknight, Sad_reacts_only, djq_cpp, little_waxberry, for their hard-working testing and suggestions;

• Rewinding, for giving suggestions and support throughout the whole preparation of this round;

• Glamorgan, for proofreading and polishing our statements;

• MikeMirzayanov, for excellent Codeforces and Polygon platform.

We have made an effort to create interesting problems, strong tests and clear statements. Wish all of you good luck and have fun! Since the round is rated, we also wish you guys have huge positive $$$\Delta$$$ in this round!

UPD: Tester list updated.

UPD: Tester list is updated again. Apart from that, score distribution is here:

• Div.1: $$$500+1250+1250+2000+2500+(1750+1750)$$$

• Div.2: $$$500+1000+1500+2250+2250+3000$$$

UPD: Hey, it seems that Div.1 is really hard and has bad discrimination. And also, in some problems pretests are weak. We are sorry about our mistakes, and hope you will like these problems after reading editorials here: https://codeforces.net/blog/entry/77284

UPD: Congratulations to the winners!

Div.1:

• Um_nik

• maroonrk

• ainta

• Dmitriy.Belichenko

• ko_osaga

Div.2:

• xiguadeyisheng

• goie

• iotang

• bbmirbek

• ldmhoang

Hope you have a nice day! Also you can view a blog by our tester Hazyknight about his opinions of this round: https://codeforces.net/blog/entry/77276

I almost copied my previous blog post to separate two discussions: about Div. 4 in general and about Round 640. Please, visit this blog post to discuss Div. 4 rounds.

Hello Codeforces!

Yes, it is not a mistake I decided to run the first Div. 4 round: Codeforces Round 640 (Div. 4)! It starts on May/09/2020 17:35 (Moscow time).

The format of the event will be identical to Div. 3 rounds:

• 5-8 tasks;
• ICPC rules with a penalty of 10 minutes for an incorrect submission;
• 12-hour phase of open hacks after the end of the round (hacks do not give additional points)
• after the end of the open hacking phase, all solutions will be tested on the updated set of tests and the ratings recalculated
• by default, only "trusted" participants are shown in the results table (but the rating will be recalculated for all with initial ratings less than 1400 or you are unrated participant/newcomer).

I urge participants whose rating is 1400+ not to register new accounts for the purpose of narcissism, but simply to take part unofficially. Please do not spoil the contest to the official participants.

Only trusted participants of the fourth division will be included in the official standings table. This is a forced measure for combating with unsporting behavior. To qualify as a trusted participants of the fourth division, you must:

• take part in at least two rated rounds (and solve at least one problem in each of them),
• do not have a point of 1600 or higher in the rating.

Regardless of whether you are a trusted participant of the fourth division or not, if your rating is less than 1400 (or you are a newcomer/unrated), then the round will be rated for you.

Please, read some of my thoughts about the problems of this round:

• Don't expect A+B level problems :-) It is a real contest with easy but problems. I hope most problems fit in range D3A-D3D problems.
• I'm not sure about order of problems. Try to read all problems or at least most of them. Testers expressed skepticism about the order of the problems but suggested different pairs of problems to swap.

We are just starting, so the complexity of the problems may deviate somewhere from your or my expectations. Wait and see.

The first "thank you" is sent to antontrygubO_o, who helped with the review and selection of problems.

Many thanks to the testers: pashka, 300iq, vovuh, Golovanov399, spookywooky, kocko, Sho, igor_kz, Sho, scott_wu, bfs.07.

I hope you enjoy the problems, and the round will be interesting!

Please, leave in comments your thoughts about exactly this round. If you want to write something about the general idea of Div. 4, then visit this blog post.

UPD: Editorial is published!

Hello Codeforces!

Initially, here was an announcement of the first round for the fourth division. But currently, in comments there is the huge discussion of division 4 rounds in general. Honestly, I read all (almost all) comments.

I decided to replace the text of this post to match the comments better. Also, I'll write one more post separately to discuss problems. And this post will be about division 4 rounds in general.

About Div4 rounds:

• I'm not afraid of a queue or servers overload: it is technical challenges and my task is to resolve them. The previous biggest rounds were not overshadowed by technical problems and judging delays, they went well. I see no reasons why something should work much worse in the rounds for Div. 4 (and if it does, then this should be fixed).

• I don't think that Div. 3 rounds are too dificult. Actually, they are quite good for beginners. They are noticeably easier than Div. 2. Almost every round trusted participants solve all problems, many participants solve all without one problem. I think in general they are OK.

• Now I don't like the idea to run in parallel Div. 3 and Div. 4 rounds (like we do for Div. 1 and Div. 2). Div. 3 rounds are harder to prepare and I don't think we can host them more than once per ~2 weeks. It means that such rounds will not give new contests for newcomers and grays/greens (I think Div. 3 are already interesting rounds for them to take part). But separate Div. 4 rounds will be easier to prepare (even than Div. 3) and probably making them we can offer more contests for low rated participants.

• I'd like to repeat: Div. 3 and Div. 4 rounds doesn't affect the rate of Div. 1 and Div. 2 rounds. The coordinators focus only on Div. 1 and Div. 2 rounds. All Div3 (and future, if any, Div4) rounds are prepared without any help from the coordinators.

• I do not think that by hosting Div. 4 rounds, we will lower the quality of problems. Now, I don't plan to use absolutely A+B level problems even for the Div. 4. I think problems of level like Div3A-Div3D are good candidates.

Thanks for your attention to this idea!

Hello, Codeforces!

Paul stingray Komkoff is my hero! He found some issues in the network configuration. The most important of them was about flow control auto-negotiation: in case of our network routers the number of dropped packets reduced in times. Thanks!

To be sure that it really helped to fix the issue I ask you to take part in Testing Round 16 (Unrated). It will start on 07.05.2020 17:05 (Московское время). Probably, it will contain 3 easy problems which are not prepared for now (I'll use some old problems, I think). The only reason to host the round is to check the system under a load. It will be an unrated round.

I am upset about what happened with the last round. Once again, I apologize to both the participants and the writer, coordinator and testers. I wrote Monogon about the incident and apologized.

I am sure that the only way to absolutely prevent unrated rounds is just don't host them. And this is not my way. The most popular rounds were hosted without noticeable technical problems. And I'm sure the main records are yet to come. I ask the writers and coordinators to look forward with optimism and try to please us with problems.

Please, join to the testing round. See you!

— Mike.

UPD: Thank you for testing! I think the system worked great. It seems recent reconfiguration improved system performance and stability. We have some rare "Judgement failed" after database update (I'll try to fix them asap).

Hello, Codeforces!

I'm very glad to invite you to Codeforces Round 639 (Div. 1) and Codeforces Round 639 (Div. 2). This contest will take place on 06.05.2020 17:35 (Московское время). In both divisions, you will have 2 hours 15 minutes to solve 6 problems. The score distribution will be announced closer to the start of the contest.

Of course, this round would not be possible without the help of many people, who I'd like to thank:

• isaf27, for coordinating this round, and helping with solution ideas.
• My ICPC teammates Kuroni and strongoier, and coach cnh355, for encouraging me to pursue competitive programming. In particular, I'd like to thank Kuroni for being so spectacularly bad that a barely-orange user like myself actually has a place on our team.
• 300iq, antontrygubO_o, Ari, ffao, fpc_coder, gamegame, Kuroni, entropy07, McDic, richzli, and VilgefortzOfRoggeveen for testing and providing valuable feedback.
• KAN for checking the problem statements, making them even clearer.
• MikeMirzayanov for providing the Codeforces and Monogon Polygon platforms.

I've done my best to write clear problem statements and strong pretests. Don't forget to read all problems, and I hope you enjoy the round. Good luck!

Because I know you all have so many questions, I have compiled an FAQ:

• Q: Is it rated?
• A: Yes.

UPD

Here is the score distribution.

Div. 1: 500 — 1000 — 1500 — 1750 — 2500 — 2500

Div. 2: 500 — 1000 — 1500 — 2000 — 2500 — 2750

UPD Unfortunately, this contest is delayed due to problems in the Codeforces system. It is temporarily scheduled, but I will update this announcement when a final decision on scheduling has been made. It is sad that my contest is delayed, but let's be grateful that the issue was detected early instead of arising in the middle of the round. On the bright side, this may be the earliest announced score distribution in Codeforces history.

UPD The final decision on scheduling is to keep it as is. The contest will take place on 06.05.2020 17:35 (Московское время).

UPD Unfortunately due to the long queue and other issues, the contest is unrated. There was also a bug that gave us trouble in answering your questions. I'm sorry if you asked a question that went unanswered for a long time. I promise we did our best to answer as many questions as we could! Despite all the problems, I hope you enjoyed the problemset!

UPD Editorial