So recently I became red on CF and my happiness knows no boundaries. For achieving the red color, I would like to thank those who helped me the most.

dmikhalin, my first informatics teacher who inspired me to do competitive programming

gmusya, teacher in B parallel of the main programming club in Russia, who answered many of my questions and helped my a lot

And all the teachers of parallel A!

I'd like to tell a timeline of my progression. Three years ago when I ended 8th grade I got a giant boost of motivation after I learned segment tree and dsu from CF EDU (that's actually useful try it). In summer school I got to expert (that was so cool, I still remember how I solved problem F from div 3, back then it was difficult). Then I continued to grind CF. Before 9th class I learned that there is a strong programming club from Tinkoff, so I decided to try to get there. Easily the best decision, this club gave me a gigantic boost during these three years. I got to parallel B, which I think is the place where you learn most of important techniques.

In 9th class I also managed to get to ROI (Russian Olympiad in Informatics), craziest thing was that I was top 5 among 9-graders from Moscow on regional stage. However I couldn't get silver medal there, by 16 out of 800 points, which was sad. 2 weeks before ROI I also managed to get CM (could've happened a lot faster, but goodbye 2022 killed me).

Summer after 9th class, high motivation to get revenge and again grinding CF. I also really wanted to get Master before school and bit by bit I crawled in the 2100 zone, getting Master on 5th August 2023. After that I participated in two rounds, first one gave me positive delta, I felt worthy of Master, another one — not so good, E was bad :).

Then was a giant pause for rated rounds, I just couldn't find any time. And then I drop back to CM, solving only one problem on div 1... That felt so awful, I needed to comeback asap. Luckily there was div 2 really close, and I managed to solve all 6 problems! I guess a miracle happened or something, but I got again to Master and a really good one, the idea of getting to IM wasn't so distant anymore.

I could tell about experience from other olympiads (IZhO, Open Olympiad and most importantly ROI), but then the post would be too long (and it already kinda is). Shortly, gold in IZhO (very surprising), gold in Open Olympiad (there not so surprised) and ROI... First day had completely destroyed me, instead of getting in top-30 like it was predicted by training tours I got in top-300... I was depressed the whole day after that result, wanted to get the gold medal (and had enough skill), just got really unlucky). Second day was good, I performed like I should've in both days, so I managed to get at least a silver medal, yay...

Growing when you're 2100+ is really slow, div 1's are only twice a month. I thought I would be able to get IM on round 959, when I was in Germany with my parents, but no, and the worst part was that I got totally killed by problem C! Of div 2!!! I think I spent more time on it than on all other problems combined. I felt really sad that day, like something was taken from me. The worst part was that I had only one chance left before SIS (summer camp) and then school. Pinely Round 4 was really strange for me, I solved D in 3 minutes, and problem A-F felt like there was an extra one (probably D). Having 6 problems solved in like an hour, I thought that it's over and no IM, as G is super hard, but decided to give it a try. By some higher powers I managed to solve it 5 minutes before the contest ended (I still don't understand how that happened), but stunning +131 delta and I went to SIS all happy with a new title.

After that getting GM was more of a measure of time, but still an impressive achievement for me. I'm happy that it happened before my 18-th birthday (which is like in two weeks btw!)

So that's my story and my "yay gm" blog (sorry for cringe, I am on cloud nine today).

P. S.: AMA! I'll try to reply fast :)