Some months have passed since World Finals 2013. To inspire teams for participation in season 2013-2014 we want to share with you an overview video of WF 2013.

http://youtu.be/-62pCYyVBIo

Preparation to WF 2014 is now in progress, Hosts are working hard together with core organizers in Yekaterinburg. We wish them good luck and hope that they will get some sleep before the beginning of the contest.

Take a while to review your photos from World Finals 2013 and share them with community through follow the crowd.

See you in Yekaterinburg!

15:24 — Closing ceremony will start shortly and you can watch it on ICPC Live. That's probably it for this translation. Bye-bye, see you soon

13:59 — Petr's blog for today

12:15 — That's it for Dress Rehearsal. Tune in tommorow. Bye-bye, see you soon

12:07 — Contest is over. Results should be availabe shortly

12:00 — Peking University

11:31 — I now accept requests for team photos ;)

11:28 — NRU ITMO:

11:25 — Taiwan National:

11:23 — SPb State:

11:16 — Scoreboard is frozen for the last hour, let's have some more photos :) Moscow State:

11:11 — Problems are same as last year, with slight change in wording

11:09 — Scoreboard is available online (tip of the hat to SuprDewd)

11:03 — Teams previewed in this blog are now placed like this:

2: Shanghai Jiao Tong, 10

3: Tokyo, 9

4: Moscow State, 8

7: SPb SU State, 8

14: Taiwan, 7

17: NRU ITMO, 7

11:00 — Shanghai Jiao Tong:

10:58 — Stanford first with 10, Shanghai Jiao Tong and Tokyo trail with 9

10:55 — Current leaders:

10:48 — Stanford leading with 10, Shanghai, Moscow and Tokyo with 8

10:40 — Stanford and Shanghai Jiao Tong lead with 8, Tokyo, Moscow and National University of Singapore with 7

10:36 — In the meantime NRU ITMO is 72nd with 2 problems solved

10:34 — All problems are now available in Kattis. Problem J is solved as well which leaves us with only one task not solved by anyone — Problem H. Stanford is leading with 8, Tokyo second with 7

10:30 — Only H and J are not solved as of yet. National Taiwan is close to solve J though — they only have problems with output format. And H is Power Tower again!

10:28 — B, F and E are now solved as well. Tokyo and Stanford are leading with 6

10:22 — First 8 problems are available on Kattis. In the meantime Stanford and Tokyo solved 5 problems, SungKyunKwan, Moscow State, Tehran and Southern California solved 4

10:18 — And now with 5

10:16 — Stanford University is now leading with 4

10:13 — C is solved as well. Shanghai Jiao Tong University is leading with 3. First two problems are available in Kattis

10:11 — Problem A is now available on Kattis for you to solve!

10:09 — A, D, J and K are all solved now as well. University of Chicago is in the lead with 2 solved tasks (and unsuccessful attempt on A)

10:08 — SungKyunKwan University is first team to solve Problem I

10:07 — Problem L is quite easy — given set of ints, you need to find maximum, minimum and their difference

10:05 — Six teams got problem L correct already

10:02 — Contest is started. No submissions yet

9:57 — One more delay, but this is business as usual. Currently contest in the state of "Two minute hold"

9:52 — Teams are currently being instructed. 5 minutes before the start

9:47 — Tune in tommorow for ICPC Live

9:23 — It seems Dress Rehearsal would be a little bit delayed and will start in 34 minutes. Currently teams are exiting arena and will reenter it shortly

9:13 — Remember, this year you can submit problems yourself from both Dress Rehearsal and main contest — just go to Kattis judjing system

9:10 — Teams are currently called to stage in turn by Bill Poucher and got photoed with World Finals Cup and Bill himself

8:51 — Hi! Dress Rehearsal will start in 39 minutes, stay tuned

Hello from St. Petersbutg where long awaited World Finals were officially opened at last.

Before the openning there was lunch near Anichkov palace, courtesy of Yandex, from which I have very cute shot of 2004 World Champion, Pavel Mavrin a. k. a. pashka

The openning itself took place in Alexandrinsky Theatre, one of the oldest in Russia. It was for the most part quick-paced, with a lot of music and art, including a part of ballet and sand drawing.

And now the main part — for the first time ever everyone in the world can have their chance to solve World Finals problems and submit them for testing. Starting 15 minutes after scheduled contest start, at 6:45 GMT on July 2nd (Dress Rehearsal) and 3rd you can submit your solutions to Kattis judjing system, the very same system used by World Finalists themselves. Also do not forget to tune in to ICPC Live and this blog, where I will provide live coverage as well.

Bye-bye, see you soon!

A live scoreboard for the ACM ICPC 2013 world finals will be available here: http://ahmed-aly.com/ICPC.jsp

This is just a sample for how it will look like, I might make some small modifications.

The scoreboard displays many information about each team, like the university, the country, the region, the team name, the members TopCoder handles, the members real names and the coach name. Also you will be able to filter the scoreboard by the region or the country. And the scoreboard highlights the champion for each region and shows some icons for the cup and the medals winners.

Edit 1: I added a chatting widget (you can hide it), and the practice contest scoreboard is available now.

Edit 2: Now you can pin your favorite teams to the top of the scoreboard, and you can hide some columns, and there are some statistics rows in the bottom of the scoreboard.

Edit 3: Here is the final ACM ICPC 2013 world finals scoreboard: http://ahmed-aly.com/ICPC.jsp

So, what is the last team I want to preview. Do you have any guesses? So many variants... Well, you must have guessed it right — it is SPb NRU ITMO 1.

Let’s start with small facts about each of team members:

• Mikhail won several trips to the next TCO through various side competitions (like photo competition) during TCO 2011

• Niyaz tweeted in April: “Playing dice with Gennady. This is the only game in which he can possibly lose”

Well, I cheated — one fact for two teammates :)

So, 2 of its participants are world champions already. And the third one will probably be. Why everyone thinks they will be champions again. Only once this team was behind another World Finals team in 2013. They won 13th OpenCup with overwhelming advantage (150 points ahead of second place, just 20 points shy of perfect score), although team finished third in previous edition. 7 wins and 4 second places on stages, OpenCup onsite win, NEERC championship — and that’s all in just 10 months. Well, during last OpenCup they ousted a team that featured 2 TCO, 2 GCJ, 2 Hacker Cup and 3 World Finals wins total. So, does anyone else have a fighting chance?

Well, yes. They are humans after all (despite some rumors). And World Finals are known for tricky problem sets. Well, in 5 days we’ll see.

Line up:

Mikhail Kever — Codeforces rating 2530, TopCoder rating 2969, 2012 World Champion, TopCoder Open 2011 finalist, Google Code Jam 2013 finalist, Facebook Hacker Cup 2012 and 2013 finalist

Niyaz Nigmatullin — Codeforces rating 2523, TopCoder rating 2818, 2012 World Champion

Gennady Korotkevich — Codeforces rating 3088, TopCoder rating 3657, TopCoder Open 2013 semifinalist, Google Code Jam 2013 finalist, Facebook Hacker Cup 2013 finalist, 6 time Gold (2007-2012, 1st place in 2009-2011) and Silver (2006) medalist in IOI.

Gold chances? Well, 95%. There is always 5% chance for something really odd to happen

Next team is Tokyo University team called “University of Agitsune”. Its name has an interesting history. The team members name themselves like 3 animals — rabbit (usagi in Japanese), eel (unagi) and fox (kitsune). If you combine a rabbit and a fox, you will get usagitsune. If you combine an eel and a fox, you will get unagitsune. Replacing by dash letters that differ, we can obtain u-agitsune. And as University of Tokyo is sometimes referred to as U-Tokyo, reversing the rule, we get the team name (credit for this explanation should go to qnighy).

Last year 2 of its members participated in OpenCup under name “Kroliki” (transliteration of Russian word for rabbits). This is not a coincidence, as Makoto Soejima learns Russian. They finished 7th in general classification with one second and one third places on stages.

This team finished first in Tokyo Regional Contest, one problem ahead of second place, and third in Kaohsiung Regional Contest. They also finished first in Japan Domestic Contest.

Line-up:

Kazuhiro Hosaka — Codeforces rating 2400, TopCoder rating 3101, TopCoder Open 2011 finalist, Google Code Jam 2009, 2012 and 2013 finalist, Facebook Hacker Cup 2011-2013 finalist, Gold medalist in 2008 and 2009 IOI, Gold (2009) and Silver (2008) medalist in IMO.

Kensuke Imanishi — Codeforces rating 2436, TopCoder rating 2614, Google Code Jam 2013 finalist, Silver medalist in 2010 and 2011 IOI.

Makoto Soejima — Codeforces rating 2814, TopCoder rating 3468 (currently TopCoder algorithms admin), TopCoder Open 2010 and 2011 champion, Google Code Jam 2011 champion and 2010 and 2012 finalist, Facebook Hacker Cup 2011 and 2013 finalist, VK Cup 2012 finalist, Silver medalist in 2008 and 2009 IOI, 3 times Gold (2007-2009) and Bronze (2005) medalist in IMO.

Their personal achievements make this team one of favorites without any doubt. My guess is they have about 70% chance to get gold.

SPbSU 4 team is up for preview today. This is team’s second season in this line up, although it was not eligible for ACM ICPC last season as Egor Suvorov was still a high school student.

This team is the only team participating in World Finals that finished ahead of NRU ITMO in this year team competition — they won OpenCup GP of Ukraine. They finished 3rd overall in 13th season, while previous 2 seasons they finished 9th and 2nd (3 points ahead of NRU ITMO). During this seasons they won 3 stages and finished second and third once. In last NEERC they finished 4th (with 4 tasks passed during last hour) despite the fact that they were second one minute before end.

Personal achievements are splendid as well:

Egor Suvorov — Codeforces raintg 2607, TopCoder rating 2895, Facebook Hacker Cup 2013 finalist, VK Cup 2012 finalist, Silver (2011) and Gold (2012) medalist in IOI

Pavel Kunyavskiy — Codeforces rating 2564, TopCoder rating 3019, Google Code Jam 2013 finalist, Gold medal (3rd overall place) in IOI 2011

Dmitry Egorov — Codeforces rating 2397, TopCoder rating 2773, TopCoder Open 2012 Wild Card Round participant, Silver medal in both IOI and IMO 2011

Overall I think this is one of a few teams that have chance to win World Finals. At the same time I think consistency is not one of their strengths, hence I think they have 50% chance to win gold.

Second to go is Shanghai Jiao Tong University Mithril team. I have a little trivia to share about this team actually. SJTU won World Finals three times — in 2002, 2005 and 2010. One student usually can participate in no more than 2 finals, but from what I heard (correct me if I’m wrong) in China there is a custom rule that student can’t participate in more than one World Finals. Hence Bin Jin started as substitute in his team.

SJTU won Jinhua (2 problems ahead of second place) and Dhaka Regional Contests. They were highest placed (3rd) Chinese team in the Battle of Giants (team match between Russia and China)

Line-up:

Xiaoxu Guo — Codeforces rating 2264, TopCoder rating 2485

Bin Jin — Codeforces rating 2428, TopCoder rating 2743, TopCoder Open 2009 winner, Google Code Jam 2011 finalist, World Finals 2010 Champion as part of SJTU Rhodea team

Jingbo Shang — Codeforces rating 2309, TopCoder rating 2813, VK Cup 2012 finalist, TopCoder Open 2012 finalist

This team has very good results, but what is more important — experience of winning big things. I think they have at least 60% chance to win gold.

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?

Hi there!

This is the first post in the ACM ICPC World Finals official blog. This year Yandex is the local partner of the World Finals host — Saint Petersburg National Research University ITMO. We have a lot of former ICPC finalists working at Yandex, and some of them including me will work as analysts during the World Finals contest. Let me introduce my friend Egor Kulikov from Yandex in Saint Petersburg, who will be the ICPC blogger. I am more than sure that he will provide an expert coverage on different aspects of the World Finals, and that's why.

First and foremost, he was my teammate in the Moscow State University team for the World Finals 2007 in Tokyo, where we took bronze, so he knows everything from the inside. We had trained for five years to get there. The competition at MSU is always very strong, so in our case we basically had to win NEERC 2006 just to outrun our main rivals from the same university. They had already been to the World Finals once before and were thought to be obvious favourites, but it was like the goal of all our lives to advance to the Finals, so we did.

In high school both of us participated in mathematical competitions. We won prizes in Russian National olympiads several times and became the national team candidates for IMO. We did not qualify into top-6. However, this failure was one of our major motivators to get to the World Finals. Although we didn't know much about algorithms and data structures, we started programming, as there was no system of math olympiads for university students at that time. Participating in various contests and training camps, listening to the lectures, and learning algorithms by the word of mouth has become our main education in Computer Science since then.

Last but not least, Egor has become a World Champion twice: Google Code Jam 2010 and TopCoder Open 2012. There are only two other people on the planet, who did both, and you know one of them: it's Petr Mitrichev, our the same year student from MSU :) They are both my friends, so if you want to know more about them, you can read my answers on Quora about Egor and Petr.

Stay tuned for our ACM ICPC World Finals 2013 coverage!

P.S. If there appear some good posts in English about this year's finals, we may add them into this section of the site.