ACM ICPC World Championship in Sports Programming: Live Broadcast

Today, at 18 hours Moscow time, in the American Rapid City will begin the final of the most prestigious international competition for programmers - ACM ICPC. We invite everyone to see this event live (the live broadcast will begin at 5 pm Moscow time) and support the team of the ITMO University - one of the favorites of the championship. How teams from all over the world were preparing for the final, as well as the predictions for the victory, will be described below.

Flickr / icpcnews icpcnews / CC

Some facts

• Sports programming annually gathers more participants than the Olympic Games - this year 46,381 people from 103 countries take part in ACM ICPC competitions, while 11,544 athletes participated in all stages of the summer Olympics in Rio (4 times less).

• Interest in competitions is growing every year. According to Vladimir Parfenov, director of the regional semi-final of the ACM ICPC championship in Russia and the countries of North-Eastern Europe, dean of the Faculty of Information Technologies and Programming at ITMO University, in 2004, 8,000 programmers took part in the ACM ICPC world championship (including regional qualifying rounds), 2016 is already over 40,000.

• For the Russian universities have long been fixed position of the championship leaders - our teams 11 times became the absolute champions of ACM ICPC. Of these, 6 times the championship was won by the teams of ITMO University - and this is a world record (in 2017, ITMO University fights for the title of a seven-time world champion).

• The number of participants from Russia has remained high for many years: in 2004, 2,100 programmers from Russia took part in all stages of the championship, by 2016 their number had already increased to 3,400.

• The ACM ICPC championship format is called not only one of the most successful, but also one of the most complex: each team uses only one computer and should solve as many tasks as possible in a short time. Because of this, in the championship there are increased requirements not only for creativity, knowledge of algorithms and "materiel", but also for the ability to distribute roles and work in a team.

I would say that it is possible to succeed in competitions to a certain level, having only knowledge from the first category [knowledge of mathematics, algorithms, programming language]. Nevertheless, the knowledge from the second category [understanding the right tactics, skills of competent allocation of resources] greatly simplifies life and works as a catalyst. As in any sport: there are physical skills, and there is knowledge of technology, psychology, and so on. It is possible to succeed only at the expense of the first, but the second will work as a catalyst
')
- Pavel Krotkov, a graduate of the Faculty of Information Technology and Programming at ITMO University, participant and organizer of many programming contests in Russia and abroad, including ACM ICPC NEERC

• By the way, since October last year, Pavel and his colleagues, Maxim Buzdalov, ACM ICPC champion in 2009, and Darya Yakovleva, in 2016 among the top ten at the international programming competition Google Code Jam for Women, conduct the course “ How to win in programming competitions: Secrets of Champions ”, which ITMO University launched on the edX platform. About what advice champions give to beginners in sports programming, we wrote here: 1 and 2 .

• The team of the ITMO University is also responsible for the online broadcast of the championship (of course, not athletes-programmers, but video broadcasting specialists). While the championship participants are fighting for a champion title, the video team, analysts, director, director, designer, programmers and video editors are striving to turn the ACM ICPC final into an event that will be interesting for people from all over the world. By the way, this year we are organizing a broadcast in Russian especially for Russian viewers. On how the team works, what hardware and software solutions are used in the broadcast, read this material.

Participants training

Before taking part in the final, teams are trained at a variety of preliminary training. One of these training stages is held annually at the MIPT base (this is Moscow Workshops ACM ICPC).

The format of the workshops is quite tough: for 11 days of continuous training, student participants solve at least 100 Olympiad tasks. Also within the framework of the training program, consultations with lecturers and the study of lecture materials are provided.

Future winners do not neglect such training: in 2016, 8 out of 13 ACM ICPC winning teams participated in training camps. And in the current Moscow Workshops ACM ICPC, 170 students and trainers from 19 countries and 44 universities took part. The possibility of remote participation allowed the teams from the USA, Latvia, Romania, China and India to be trained by Russian specialists.

Forecasts: who will win

According to Andrei Stankievich, ITMO University team coach and a member of the organizing committee of the semi-final of the World Championship in Northeast Europe, the following universities will be among the contenders for victory this year:

• Russia : SPSU, ITMO and MIPT University (three of the best teams in the region "Northeast Europe")
• China : Xinhua University, Shanghai University of Transport, Fudan University, Peking University
• USA : Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Sweden : Royal Institute of Technology

According to Andrei Stankevich, they can compete with teams of other Chinese and Korean universities, as well as the traditionally strong team of the University of Warsaw.

“As the pre-final gatherings at MIPT showed, this year a very strong team is from the Chinese University of Xinhua. It includes students who, in their time, were in absolute first place at the international Olympiad. However, twice our team managed to get around them in a training competition, so there are chances.

Of the Russian teams, the teams of ITMO University, SPSU and MIPT showed themselves very well. Of the unexpected discoveries of the latest fees - a team from Australia (University of New South Wales) and a stronger than before, the KTH team from Stockholm. We can also mention strong teams from MIT and several other Chinese universities: Shanghai University of Transport, Fudan University from Beijing, and Beijing University. ”
- Andrei Stankevich

Vladimir Parfenov notes that this year the results of the Russian teams that reached the final turned out to be expected: the leaders performed consistently well, but the composition of the universities-finalists remained almost unchanged compared to last year:

Among the Russian finalists, the participants are old ([they] have reached the final stage before, but not in all years), since it is very difficult to prepare the team that goes to the final.

If we talk about the region [North-Eastern Europe], then this season St. Petersburg State University, ITMO University and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology are the three most powerful Russian teams, since Moscow State University, for example, has not developed a season. From other countries [of the region] Belarusian teams can compete with us.
- Vladimir Parfenov

Broadcast and other useful links

• Live broadcast
• Official competition site
• News, photos, videos and the latest information from the championship
• ICPCNews Group in Vk
• Tweets of participants of the championship, quest for guests, table of results and other insights