As students prepare for IOI 2018 to be held in Tokyo, Japan, we present to you a contest series on CodeChef to help students prepare for their respective national selection rounds. The problems and leader board will be completely based on the IOI, with all contests having original problems related to popular concepts that the setters (who themselves are eligible for IOI-2018) have noticed in Indian selection rounds over the past years.

Even though the contests are modeled after Indian rounds, they can be beneficial for aspirants from all countries. The contest will have CF Div-2 Difficulty. The best part is, subtask difficulty ranges widely, ensuring that programmers of all skill levels are engrossed for 3 intense hours.

The topics that will be covered are:

1. Clever Ad-hoc Problems (minimal Math required)
2. Greedy Algorithms
3. Sorting and Searching
4. Dynamic Programming
5. Basic Graph Algorithms
6. Basic Data Structures
7. Miscellaneous Algorithms (Easy)

More details are available at: https://discuss.codechef.com/questions/113355/invitation-for-ico-preparatory-series The first contest is on Friday, 13th October 2017, from 8 PM to 11 PM IST.

Contest Link: https://www.codechef.com/ICOP1801

Note: Only C, C++ and Java are allowed.

Hope you enjoy the contests and wish you luck!