I did it! My main goal for 2022 was to reach red and I succeeded in the very last contest by getting +2 delta and going from cursed 2399 to 2401!
I got a DM recently asking me how I became red, so I'm writing this blog to quickly summarize what worked for me and what did not.
I am a slow learner and can't remember and learn algorithms as well as my friends do. I can't even implement SCC on my own! But that doesn't matter, codeforces now days doesn't require almost any advanced algorithms in <3000 rated problems. It might sound surprising to some beginners, but knowing BFS, DFS, union find, Dijkstra, MST, hashing, inverse elements, euclidean algorithm, fast nCk calculation algorithm and segment trees is enough to reach red! So learning advanced algorithms won't help much when trying to reach red. Basic problem solving skills are way more important.
It is very important to build intuition
