Hello everyone!

I'm writing this entry to invite you all to take part in the first edition of Info (1) Cup contest. It is an individual contest with algorithmic tasks and we will accept only C++ sources. The contest itself has 2 parts, both of which held online.

The first round of the contest starts tomorrow. As I promised, we'll host an online mirror of it, but due to technical reasons and due to the second round, you'll be able to take it in any frame of 5 hours in an interval of just 16 hours: from time to time . The day after tomorrow, official round 2 follow by its online mirror will go. The online mirror for this round can be taken in a larger interval of time: from time to time, but you can still compete only for 5 hours during a frame at your choice. You can still register to take part in the online mirror for any of the rounds at this link. PS: As in all the other contests that have online mirrors, I kindly ask you not to discuss the tasks until all the rounds and their online mirrors end. After that, on the official site, you'll find the editorials of the problems.

The first one consists of a national contest in which only invited Romanians can take part and which should be easier. We haven't decided yet whether we'll host an online mirror of it or not and I'll update the post later with this kind of information. We will host an online mirror of round 1 too. We invite you all to take part. We assess the difficulty to be similar to that of a div2 round or even a little lower, so if you are div1 we strongly advise you not to take part in this round, but rather in the second contest described below

The second one is the international contest that I can assure you anyone can take part in. However, as we want the contest to be as similar as possible to international OIs (such as BOI, or CEOI), we want just participants from the official teams of different countries to sign up at the official version. We'll also have an unofficial second contest, similar to an online mirror which you can take in any 5-hours frame for a couple of days after the contest (usaco system). The official round will have a fixed frame . If you consider the time frame good for your country and the country is not listed below yet, I kindly ask you to PM me with information about how to contact any person that may be considered to be in charge with the selection of your country's teams for international competitions to give them the link to the official registration form. Ohh and about the unofficial registration, you'll be able to make an account soon using the official site (LE: Now you can register for the online mirror). The contest will be full-feedback and will use CMS, 5-hours long with 4 problems with all kinds of difficulty level.

Also, about the prizes, we'll award medals and certificates to the winners of the official round,

Ohh and forgot to mention the scientific committee: I'm one of the members together with Alex Niculae and Costin Tudor

The list with the countries whose officials I've already contacted contains: Bulgaria, Moldova, Serbia, Russia, Poland, Iran, Switzerland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Syria, Egypt.

LE: As the contest will have an onsite edition starting from next year, we want the teams taking part to be European ones mainly. As the ogranizer told me about this rule right now, the rule WON'T apply to the nonEuropean countries already registered. I'm sorry for the incomplete information:( however, we still encourage all the students to take part in the unofficial edition and see how they'd be ranked if they could participate. After discussing with the organizers, we've achieved an agreement: that of registering teams outside Europe of up to 4 students. Now, any country can take part.

LE: I've made a terrible mistake: the time frame announced in the post was wrong! (it was 8th of May instead of 9th of April). Please accept my honest apologies...I've updated the post with the correct frame and I will send updated messages and mails to those that I've talked to so far and I hope this error didn't cause to much mess.