But in Codeforces you have penalty based on sum of times, not maximum one, that changes A LOT. However I really like idea of maximum time, that shouldn't be changed.

Yes, also an unclear situation :) I don't know. I think I might have done that once.

What's your view on the AtCoder question? Since you came up with the format (right?), your opinion is probably the most important here.

What the f%ck man?

>>>/b/

It seems you don't know Petr, let me introduce him.

I started competitive programming 10 years ago. At that time, all football kids dreamed of becoming Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. All tennis kids dreamed of becoming Federer and Nadal. All TopCoder kids including me dreamed of becoming Petr and tomek. The highlight of this Petr/tomek era was the Final of TCO 2008. If you don't know what happened, watch it.

A few years later, ACRush also reached another planet by reaching #1 in TopCoder and winning GCJ by a huge margin. In this era, Petr and ACRush always dominated all contests in competitive programming.

A few years later, tourist reached another planet too by winning all contests he participated in. As you all know, it is Petr/tourist era now, they dominate all contests these days.

Did you notice that someone appeared in all three eras? Do you think he will decline in a year or two?

Putting ridiculous stuff aside, Just wait until some of the people you mentioned get full time job or are out of regular "acm style" practice for other reasons and their ratings will drop in no time. Petr is an exception and maybe opencups and other contests here and there helps him to stay in shape.

This is stupid. It's called competition. Competing is fun. Trying to be "more the best" than the best is fun, especially if you have the means for it.

Why shouldn't Petr compare himself with tourist? Right now tourist provides him with a challenge, and Petr is up for that challenge.

I'd also argue that Petr seems more like a guy who'd stop participating sooner if there was nobody in the same league with him rather then if there are more great people to compete against :)

Regarding the link you provided in a later post where you say that messages like this are your "style": this is not about style. You've written some great and informative messages in the past. Not this time. In fact, a comment like this should have never been sent from your account, as it's more MAXIMAN tier garbage.

Man I seriously fucking wonder how you are a fucking +133.

Had I wanted to maximize the chances of winning, surely the way to do it is more practice instead of trying to explain myself on camera during the round? So I'm at least very lazy and a narcissist, you have to give me that :)

On a more serious note, thanks for sharing your opinion. I can see how my constant comparison with Gennady can look disrespectful to the other contestants, and I apologize for that and will try to be mindful of that going forward. Having said that, I do want to improve myself when competing, so when I see people doing better, I try to learn from them. Heck, even when I do win I try to look for ways I could improve.

And remember that I'm watching you as well :)

Yes, I've read the editorial and agree that it was nice. However, I didn't appreciate that during the round since the initial look at the problem statement was a bit off-putting :(

It's nice idea, but it can solve problem only for top participants. For other will be enough to know frozen results for making roughly prediction of their expected place.

By the way, button "Read problems" also is bad solution for such situation. It wouldn't stop all, some of competitors would make fake accounts only for problem reading without rating lose.

Aim higher: why not Wayne Gretzky or Mario LeMieux? :)

I don't get you. I guess you do not follow "all at once" strategy, so if you follow typical strategy you will be committed to participation either way after 3 minutes by getting A accepted. How often for you is the case when you are healthy on the start but become sick before first submit (even if you start solving from harder ones)?

Random question, do all contests sites use a "chess" style rating system?

Or are there any contest sites which use similar systems to say, Tennis, Golf or Formula-1 racing where for each event, points are awarded on some scale. Bigger events award more points, and higher placing awards more points. In the end the top people play in the "grand slam" events and place high so their "rating" is still highest.

But for a low person like myself, that would also be particularly nice because whatever I did, I got SOME points. For non-zero score, of course!

This would encourage always submitting something. Just a thought. :-)

Thanks for sharing! This is a nice perspective which I was missing because for me trying to win is an integral part of enjoying the competition, together with solving difficult problems and with discussing the said problems afterwards with friends :)

It's bad for spectators who just want to see current standing during competition and don't want to participate. Also you can create fake account and make a submission to see real scoreboard.