My team (me + flashmt + nguyenhungtam) was probably never noticed by anyone, but we were actually aiming for medal. And I think we performed ok in the final, ending up at #15, still need some more luck & brain to win medal. Anw, I decided to share my story.

Back story

In the ACM history, a Vietnamese team has never won any WF medal. 5 years ago, team of ktuan (only Vietnamese red target on Topcoder) had high hope, but ended up at #17. 4 years ago, team of ConanKudo also had high hope, but messed up in the first 3 hours and ended up at #17.

So I really wanted to win medal. I've been planning this World Final for several years..

Team formation

I've chosen flashmt as teammates for several years, but were not able to choose any third member. Since I only want to select Vietnamese, we have only few good options (darknstd, infrmtcs — both IOI silver medalist). After the WF 2015, I read this comment by fhlasek about the story of his team, and decided to pick an IMO guy instead. Thus, I picked nguyenhungtam who was IMO medalist but has very few experience with programming / algorithm and trained him from that.