Hello everyone, we are happy to announce that the 1st Universal Cup is started officially.
Universal Cup is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing training for competitive programming teams. Our website is https://ucup.ac/ (in English and Chinese).
In recent years, Chinese problem-setter teams have created a great number of high-quality contests. We have reached an agreement with most of these setters, that they agree to provide contest materials to Universal Cup for hosting mirror contests before publishing the set in public. We believe that such an arrangement can provide good opportunities to teams who want to do better in the future competing.
Every year, with the permission of the problem setter team and without involving copyright disputes, the Universal Cup will hold mirror contests for some undisclosed competition sets. It is expected to hold at least 10 contests a year. We will simulate the actual situation in the competition, using the DOMjudge platform and executing the board freeze in the last hour. At the same time, we will provide an overall rating board, which will help the team to make a reasonable assessment of itself.
In the 1st Universal Cup, with the support of multiple problem-setting teams, it is expected to include at least 6 undisclosed ICPC/CCPC contests and 4 provincial collegiate contests. We are also inviting outstanding teams and players from all over the world to participate in the competition as well as helping us to promote Universal Cup. At the same time, we are also contacting various problem-setting teams to discuss cooperation matters. It is very welcome that any team would like to provide their sets.
We expect to host the mirror contest on some Saturdays. To resolve the timezone issue, we plan on hosting three time windows:
- 13:00 — 18:00 (UTC+8) on Saturday
- 19:00 — 24:00 (UTC+8) on Saturday
- 02:00 — 07:00 (UTC+8) on Sunday
There will be an independent scoreboard combining all previous results during each time window.
The first contest will be the 2022-2023 ICPC Shenyang Regional on January 28th. The second contest will be the 2022-2023 ICPC Hong Kong Regional on February 4th. The upcoming contests will be announced on the official website.
We require registration to participate in the Universal Cup, please follow the instruction on the official website.
Universal Cup Committee:
- Jingbang chenjb Chen
- Yuhao EvenImage Du
- Lingyu jiangly Jiang
- Yaowei Sugar_fan Lyu
- Qingyu Qingyu Shi
- Yaohui quailty Zeng
(Sorted by lexicographical order of the last name)
sro jiangly orz
Is it just me, or this blog doesn't show up in the Recent Action column?
UPD: Oh it does now....
I can't wait to join it
jiangly how to register in DOMjudge?
Please follow the official website's instruction. You need to send email to apply for an account first.
The default language is English, But when I go to rating section, It shows me the texts in Chinese. Does anyone else face the same issue?
UPD : fixed, thanks to chenjb
The english rating webpage is under construction right now, sorry for the inconvenience.
UPD: it is fixed now.
Thanks.
Thank you for the great initiative!
Can you consider having some time window during the weekend to start the contest instead of having everybody have to participate simultaneously? It's impossible to get a good time for every time zone unfortunately
At the OpenCup series, if the contest was not an online mirror of some official competition, you could often ask for virtual participation on Saturday instead of Sunday -- you didn't have a final scoreboard, but it still could be much more convenient for some teams
Hi, right now we are using the DOMJudge system. We've been worried about this timezone issue for a while. We don't have a solution as the previous opencup yet. So far, we fix the competition time always on Saturday, 1pm-6pm (UTC+8), which is 8am-1pm (UTC+3, Moscow time)). We will consider opening another window (in this case it will be another round of mirror contest) for North America for example if there are a lot of requests from these regions. We are also open for any advice that can resolve this issue. Thank you very much!
Great initiative, but yeah, for me, 10am is early, 9am is bearable, 8am is borderline acceptable, but that's 6am in Poland :x. Would be great if you could figure out some solution for that
We just discussed on this. Now we decide to host another mirror contest on the same day from 7pm-12pm (UTC+8), with a scoreboard sharing both standing. I believe that will be a good temporary solution?
Sounds great, thanks!
It is our pleasure. We want to do our best to make everyone who is interested feel comfortable and want to participate. Please also note that you need to register by email so that we can allocate the account accordingly. Thank you!
That would be amazing, thanks!
orz
Orz jiangly
Is it possible to update the contest schedules to google calendar like this?
Yes, we will publish the contest schedules soon.
Hi! I have a question about the rules.
So the rules say: "The ruleset of the contest is the traditional ICPC rule." Later there is the following: "there are no additional restrictions on the number of participating machines, pre-written codes and other requirements".
Am I correct to assume that:
Each member of the team can use their own computer, as long as we don't use two computers at the same time?
We can copy-paste prewritten codes, and it is not necessary to type them by hand from the team reference document, as it is at official ICPC events?
Hi! For 1, yes. For 2, I actually prefer to type them again in order to simulate the real ICPC event. I usually did that while doing previous OpenCups. However, we are not sure what teams usually do. I think we are OK with these and won’t punish if you paste a 500 lines of template lol.
Which way do you think is better and should we clarify it in the Rules?
OpenCups allow prewritten code. We didn't use prewritten code when participating as ICPC team, but after that we used it.
I see. I think we are going to allow prewritten code as well. Let me write it a bit more clearer in the website later.
Oh, so does "there are no additional restrictions on the number of participating machines" mean that each team member can use their own computer, but only one member can write a code at a time? If so, I think it'd be better to clarify it in the website (Indeed, my team would have used three computers for coding at a time if I hadn't read this comment).
Sure, we already update the webiste.
Thanks. I will remember you forever!
Great initiative!
I cannot access the website, I get the message "Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead". Even if I tell my browser that I don't care, I cannot access the website because the firewall of my internet provider says "Security Alert! For your protection, and the protection of ..., access to this webpage has been blocked".
Can you fix it?
Hi, I am sorry to hear that. However we don’t know how to add our website into your trust list. Could you try with other service, like mobile phones first?
Now it works, no idea why.
OpenCup allowed to register 5 (?) people in a team, provided that only three of them actually participate in a given contest.
Would you also consider such a feature? Since I'm in not ICPC-eligible anymore I don't have a fixed team and people who I've talked with about participating aren't sure how often they can participate.
I think in that case, you can only register a team that 'contains' yourself simply. That would be fine, I think there are a lot of features that we don't know how to support at this point. We actually just assign you an account and name it with a fixed form. And you can also update the information in any team form you like. Thx for your understanding.
Hello! Will there be a message if my application was not approved? I sent it around 24 hrs ago but did't get any reply.
Hi, don’t worry. I think it is because of the Chinese New Year as well as weekend. We will reach back to you on Monday.
Would it be possible to add a clause like this to the rules regarding copyright status of the submissions? Some companies may require it to allow employees to enter coding competitions.
Sure, we’ll do that
Thanks for the great initiative!
The Georgia Tech ICPC is interested in participating, but it seems that both time windows are not suitable for NA regions. Could you consider adding another one if possible?
Hi! We have just discussed the time window for North American teams. So far, there are still only a few NA teams registered to participate. If there are more teams, we will open a third time window from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT. Would you please tell NA teams about this?
We have decided to set such window starting from the first round.
Will the cup allow participation on a.m. (UTC+8), like 7:00 — 12:00 or sth?
We provide three fixed time window and you can choose one of them to compete.
But Saturday afternoon is too hard to have time. Could you please, add one more so that we can have the time to compete? Thank you.
If afternoon is not suitable, you can choose the window 19:00 — 24:00 (UTC+8) on Saturday or even the one 02:00 — 07:00 (UTC+8) on Sunday. We basically select these three windows base on the timezone of various countries and we also don't want it to be intersected with other known events (opencup, icpc regional, etc).
It is possible that in the future, our platform supports to start at arbitrary time in a certain period. But now it is not and I cannot promise you when that will happen.
Btw what's the level of these contests? Are they in the similar level to the previous div.1 opencups?
I think generally it is around div.1 opencup level. But even div.1 opencup contests have a large variance in difficulty.
What is the format of the trial contest? Is it a 5-hour contest too?
Yes, it is the Nanjing Regional 2022.
Thank you.
Is trial rated? or from Stage 1?
starting from stage 1
The date of the stage 2 contest conflicts with the PtzCamp. Would it possible to move it to another date?
We will discuss, but not likely will change.
any update?
The stage 2 contest will be used in the contest 3 of Petrozavodsk Camp. For the teams participating in the camp, the camp standings can be added to the results by contacting us.
Hey, will there be an editorial or discussion thread after each contest?
Yes, you will be invited to a Discord channel if successful registered. Also please feel free to discuss under each stage’s announcement.
Will it be possible to upsolve problems? In particular, now I receive the TOO-LATE verdict for the trial contest.
Do you mean upsolving the trial contest?
I mean in general: I don't really think I need to upsolve the trial contest, but I assumed that the Trial contest would represent all conditions of normal contests, including upsolving, hence I asked
Yes, in general I think all contests will be published to QOJ (and Gym maybe) after three windows. However, it might not if the problem setter chooses not to. I don’t see this will happen very often and so far all contests in the plan (at least 5 of them) will be published.
Now the upsolving is available in the DOMjudge system. You can submit your solutions in the ended contest.
Hello. Do you think that it would be possible to add the problemset to the gym section after the live contests have been completed? UPD : Thanks:) I've found the problemset
Discord invitation from mail has expired, is it possible to receive a new one?
me too.
Hello, our team (NYCU_Yamada) sent a registration email about three days before, and there are yet no replies. Is it too late to register now?
Hi! Don't be worried. We do not process registration applications on a daily basis. It will be processed before the next stage :)
Hello jiangly, Nice!
.
%%% jly
Why Du Yuhao is using Dai Jiangqi's handle EvenImage here?
This contest was great
It would be even better if participating in these domestic mirror competitions could increase my CF rating