2010 TopCoder Open

This week started the 2010 TopCoder Open - the main event of the year on TopCoder. The tournament consists of 6 categories, in which all types of competitions, common for TopCoder, are grouped. Online competitions for 4 categories of 6 have already begun and will end in early August, the finals will be held October 11-14 in Las Vegas. The prizes include 100 trips to Las Vegas (depending on the category of competitions - either to participate in the final, or simply as an observer), $ 150,000 (alas, only for those present in Las Vegas) and 650 T-shirts (the prize is democratic, but pleasant) .



By the way, the TCO cartridge is NSA , but the new sponsor is Yandex . As usual, sponsors have from this not only publicity, but also selfish interest - they are looking for new employees from among the best programmers in the world: “Just let us know you exist”.

1. The most popular type of competition is, of course, Algorithm Competition . Historically, the first of all types of competitions on TopCoder; the only one whose results have no practical value for the organizers; but much loved by both contributors and sponsors. Each year, about 3 thousand people participate in this category (for comparison: the number of active TopCoder participants usually fluctuates around 5 thousand).
   Competitions are held in several stages: first, three rounds of qualification select 2000 participants for the main rounds, then five online rounds gradually sift out the worst of the best, until there are only 24 finalists competing for first places in Las Vegas. Each round has a standard SRM format - 3 algorithmic problems of varying complexity for 75 minutes + 15 minutes to search for errors in other people's solutions.
2. My favorite type of competition is Marathon Competition , held under the unofficial motto "You've never needed all that sleep, anyways." The competition is held in three rounds, which determine the 12 finalists. In each round, one problem is given that does not have an exact solution, and 2 or 4 weeks to write an approximate solution (heuristics) that gives the best result in a limited time. Tasks are much more complicated than in Algorithms, and require much more time for a decent solution, so this type is less popular - less than a thousand participants.
3. The remaining 4 categories - Design , Development , Studio and Mod Dash - have a similar structure: instead of separate tournament contests, the same contests are held as usual (software development, graphic design and bug fixes), the winners of which receive points in proportion to the difficulty of the tasks. The results of the tournament and the distribution of prizes are held on the total number of points scored by participants. Each individual contest has its own prizes, independent of tournament ones, so these categories are the most profitable. But even the most difficult ones are very much like regular work :-) In each category, up to a hundred people are usually involved.

And finally - a little about the prizes.

Category	Total prize	Prize for first place	The number of cash prize	Number of T-shirts
Algorithm	$ 24,600	$ 15,000	24	350
Marathon	$ 22,550	$ 15,000	12	100
Design, Development	$ 30,250	$ 20,000	15	50
Studio	$ 30,000	$ 20,000	14	50
Mod Dash	$ 12,350	$ 10,000	five	50