Hello, codeforces community! This is a follow up to the blog, Competing Everyday?.

This may sound like a flex but the point is to help the Pupils and Newbies who are stuck with their rating.

I had been struggling to get to Specialist level for a half a year despite solving CP problems almost everyday. It got very frustrating to the point that I almost quit.

Fortunately, in October I got some free time and I thought to change my strategy. I noticed that my rating depends on the problems which I can solve during the contests (roughly speaking), so why do not I practice contests instead of individual problems. To further check this line of reasoning I asked the same thing in the previous blog. A couple of high rated coders shared that they used the same strategy.

As you can see in my rating graph, I went from a Newbie to an Expert now (Hopefully it stays like that XD), that too in less than a month.

The method is simple but surprisingly it worked for me. It can also be the case that all that practising I did for half a year was improving me but the only issue could be the speed of solving a problem. Anyways if you are not able to break 1400 mark then you can give this a shot.

That was my little experiment and I am planning to continue this further.

If you got any suggestions to improve on this method further or if I have misunderstood anything, please let me know. I hope this helps the community.

UPD

This way of practicing may not work for everyone. It worked for me that does not mean it is the best way.

I will try to answer all the question with the knowledge I have. If you are an experienced coder and can correct my replies then please do, as I am also still learning.

I was not expecting such a huge positive response, thank you all!