Hi guys,

UPDATE: The site is up and running now. Thanks for your patience. We have upgraded the site for better performance. However, if you face any issues please report to feedback@codechef.com.

We will be taking CodeChef offline for about 4 hours from 00:01 IST tonight (1st October).  This is to carry out some maintenance work on the site. We will be back in a while and will come back better rejuvenated at that.

See you soon.

Regards,
Team CodeChef

The  Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad, India cordially invites you to be a part of online programming contests,Alkhwarizm and Limite-De-Plazo, organized as a part of our annual fest,  Effervescence.

These programming contests are brought to you in partnership with the Directi Go for Gold Initiative.

Alkhwarizm will start on 1st October , 7.00 pm ( GMT +5.30 hours) ( Other Time Zones )
Limite-De-Plazo will start on 2nd October , 7.00 pm ( GMT +5.30 hours) ( Other Time Zones )

Total prize money for Al-khwarizm and Limite-de-Plazo is 35,000 INR ( $775 ).

For registration please visit either of the links

Alkhwaizm

Limite-de-Plazo

Cheers!
Team CodeChef

As a part of our efforts to improve, we are load testing CodeChef. Hence the site may be down temporarily for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We will be back running smoothly from Friday onwards. Please bear with for a 2-3 days, we promise that we will be back as a quicker and lighter website. Any issues can be reported to feedback@codechef.com.

Regards,
Vishal

Hi CodeCheffers,

The Amritapuri warm up Contest has ended and with over 350 teams that registered we have the following top 10 teams on the leader board:

01. ANY Dream
02. Proof
03. pho3nix
04. madhav_iiith
05. pseud
06. TheFallen
07. coderush
08. knighttemplars
09. bigone
10. ){:|:&};:

Contest Statistics:

We regret having some major issues at our end during the contest. We definitely have a lot to learn and are aiming to amend all our flaws before the next team contests. For this we sincerely need your help.

Please send us your feedback about the Amritapuri Warm Up Contest either by commenting on this blog post or by sending in an email to icpc@am.amrita.edu or feedback@codechef.com with the subject as “WARMUP CONTEST FEEDBACK”.

Regards,
Team CodeChef

Hello everybody,

In our efforts to increase security in CodeChef, we have restricted log-in into an account from only one system at a time. So, now if a user is already logged in from a system and she logs in again from a different system then she will be logged out from the previous one. The feature also holds for team login. So now one team can be logged in from only one system. If users face any issue, please send a mail to feedback@codechef.com.

Thanking You.
Tojo

Hi CodeCheffers,

The September 2010 Challenge is now over and it’s time to announce the results

But before we do that we shall like to share some Fun Facts about this contest:

1. Special mention to Rajiv Kumar Aggarwal who stood 1st in the Indian winners and 2nd Globally, it was 7 months prior to this when Ajay Somani had done the same.
2. No ties among the top 23 in the Global List.
3. This month we have 4 Indians featured in the Global Top 20 winners.
4. Also this time around we have 6 new faces in the Global Top 20 and they are:
   Wu Yin, Rudradev Basak, Lai Luhang, nikhil, Damian Straszak, Krasimir Georgiev.
5. This contest has seen the maximum Unique Visitors ever at CodeChef.
6. Highest Number of Unique Participants ever that took part at CodeChef.

Also we shall like to share with our fellow participants that there was an issue with the Servers problem this month. Our contestant Rajiv Kumar Aggarwal pointed this out soon after the contest. The test data was found to be not comprehensive and did allow a few incorrect submissions. For details please refer our comment on the wiki page. It was a glitch from our side and we sincerely apologize for the same to all our participants. We intend to work towards it and will try and ensure that it does not repeat

Contest Statistics:

And now the leader-board of the September contest:

India:

01. Rajiv Kumar Aggarwal (winner of prize money Rs. 12000)
02. Rudradev Basak (winner of prize money Rs. 8000)
03. Nikhil
04. Suhash
05. Surendra Meena
06. Yash
07. Pankaj Kumar
08. Ashish Pant
09. Akangsha Goel
10. Gunjan Sharma
11. Rohitash Kumar
12. Shivmitra Mishra
13. Ishan Dutta
13. Sunny Agrawal
15. Arijit banerjee
15. Balajiganapathi
15. Anil Kishore
15. Ikal
15. Imran Khan
15. Madhava Rao Nasini
15. Anish Shankar
15. Sudipto Das
15. Pulkit;
15. Ishani Parekh
15. Siddharth Kothari
15. Utkarsh lath
15. Vamsi Kavala
15. Venkatesh
15. Vikas

Global:

01. Oleg (winner of prize money $400)
02. Wu Yin (winner of prize money $300)
03. Burdakov Daniel
04. Nilesh Dalvi
05. Nikolay Kurtov
06. Balakrishnan Varadarajan
07. Kungfu Panda
08. Mark Greve
09. Lai Luhang
10. Max

Congratulations to all.

Ladies and Gentlemen and Coders all around!

We are happy to announce “The First Warm-Up Contest” in preparation for the ACM ICPC Asia-Amritapuri Regionals.

What is this?
It is an online programming contest lasting 2.5 hours, along the lines of ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.

When will this take place?
On 25th 24th September, 2010 from 20:00hrs to 22:30hrs IST.

Who is organizing this contest?
Amrita University in partnership with Directi as part of the Go for Gold Initiative.

Who should participate?
The contest is primarily intended for Indian student programmers, in teams of three, who plan to participate in the Oct. 17^th ACM ICPC Asia-Amritapuri Online Contest.

However, others are free to participate as well.

Why should you participate?
The purpose of this contest is for Indian teams to familiarize themselves with participating in programming contests in general, and the ACM ICPC in particular.

What are the prizes?
The top two teams of three participants from India will have their registration fees for the ACM ICPC Asia-Amritapuri site waived if they qualify for the on-site contest in December!

You may add a coach and a reserve for the ICPC, but the original team composition must remain the same in order to receive the prize.

Visit the contest landing page to participate.

Hi Guys,

A few weeks ago, the Chef came to a realization: he needs to go on a diet.  If you’ve seen him lately, you’ll know he’s practically bursting out of his clothes.  So, in an effort to stop overloading on the code he loves to devour, he’s decided to start consuming only the highest quality code.

Only the top two finishers in India and internationally will be eligible for prizes.

We have a few reasons for making this change.  For a while, our community has been telling us that CodeChef’s prize structure could do more to encourage people to do their best.  We agree.  With this new prize structure, we think there’s more incentive for people to put forth their best effort.

*Edit* Additionally, we will be re-allocating the saved resources to other project in the pipeline in the CodeChef Community. *Edit*

Prizes on CodeChef will now be as follows:
First Place Indian: 12000 INR- Second Place Indian: 8000 INR- First Place International Contestant: $400- Second Place International Contestant: $300

As always, please let us know what you think about this new structure.  Your feedback is extremely valuable to us and helps us make CodeChef better.

Now get to cuttin the flab off your code!

Cheers,
Team CodeChef

Hey Guy’s, it’s time to disclose the Programmer of the Month for September, Anton Lunyov. He’s a 23 year old student from the Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics of National Academy of Science of Ukraine. Anton has been participating on CodeChef since its inception in March 2009. He’s been extremely active in the past few month’s and been amongst the  winners in many of our challenges. He also did exceedingly well in both the July Cook-Off and the August Cook-Off. Lets find out what our Programmer has to say.

Name: Anton Lunyov
Age: 23
Institute: Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics of National Academy of Science of Ukraine
Userid: anton_lunyov

How/When did you start programming?
I started programming relatively late in 10-th grade after I enter the lyceum “Erudit”. I met many talented students there and wanted to be like them.

What do you do when you’re not programming?
I am a postgraduate student of my institute so I prepare my PhD thesis on spectral theory of differential operators, study scientific publications on different topics. Programming is just a hobby. I also like to play table tennis.

What do you like most about CodeChef?
I like to solve hard and challenging problems and compete with the world’s best programmers who participate here.

How many hours a day do you program?
Approximately 4-5 hours. But it depends on many things.

What is the secret to being a good programmer?
You should work hard and solve many problems per day from various online judges. But I guess without a deep knowledge in math you don’t have any chance of being a good programmer.

What are your plans for the future?
After I complete my PhD course I will continue the work of theoretical scientist in the field of operator theory but I guess I will still participate in many programming contests because I enjoy it very much.