Let’s start with previewing some teams that will participate in World Finals. I will write about 6 teams that I believe are favorites to win gold medals, but anything can happen. Feel free to post your top 6 (top 3, top 12, top n) in comments.
Photo by Yan Tsench
First to go is Moscow State University team ST. It's name has become a brand that has a very long history. My own team, Moscow SU x13, competed against a team with the same name. It usually consist of Moscow SU students that are originally from Saratov.
This is the second time this lineup participate in World Finals. Last year they were 10th and won bronze medals. With last minute (more like last 5 seconds) submission they got 2nd place in last NEERC, which is repeat of 2011 performance. They won last Moscow subregionals.
In last 6 seasons of OpenCup they placed 7th, 8th, 5th, 6th, 4th and 4th in general classification, 2 second places as well as 6 third places on separate stages as well as third place in finals of 11th OpenCup.
Personal achievements are also very solid:
Sergey Fedorov — Codeforces rating 2406, TopCoder rating 2802, TopCoder Open 2012 wildcard round participant, 2 (2009 and 2010) gold medals in IOI
Aleksandr Kaluzhin — Codeforces rating 2206, TopCoder rating 2294, 2 (2007 and 2008) silver medals in IOI
Sergey Rogulenko — Codeforces rating 2601, TopCoder rating 2926, TopCoder Open 2011 semifinalist, Google Code Jam 2010 finalist, gold (2008) and silver (2009) medals in IOI.
Very solid team and individual achievements would put this team in list of favorites in any programming competition. I’m absolutely sure they would win medal and their chances for gold are at least 50%. What do you think about Moscow SU ST?
Another fact: all of these students graduated from Saratov PhTL(Lyceum of Physics and Technics). I graduated from other Saratov School, but we often participated in local contests of Phys, Math, Programming, and Saratov training camps. I believe that ST(Saratov Team) have all chances to win some medal(maybe gold? maybe cup? why not?).
P.S I'm sorry — my English is bad...
Team MSU ST has three gold medals and three silver medals from IOI... Although ITMO #1 has six gold and one silver medals in the same competition:D
MSU ST's medals are more evenly distributed through
Could you please give some info on the roles/specialties of the team members? Also, are they still doing push-ups for incorrect submissions during the contest? (or have they moved past the stage of making such submissions?)
Some guesses on top 6 (in what I think might be an ordering): ITMO, Shanghai JiaoTong, MSU, Tokyo, SpbSU, Warsaw.
Next 6 (much more sketchy): Tsinghua, Belarusian SU, MIT Unpredictable (hi ilyaraz...), Ural FU, Stanford, and Charles University in Prague.
I would recommend to add another team from Asia: National Taiwan U.
Opps, I kept on thinking that I forgot some team but couldn't figure out which one. Are they these guys? http://mirror.codeforces.com/team/2495
They are kelvin, peter50216 and seanwu. Their handles are famous both in codeforces and topcoder.
Also it's worth mentioning that kelvin and peter50216 are TCO Algorithm finalists this year.
the left boy is so young and handsome.