One of the winning competitors, Adam Bardashevich attests that their win was “a result of long-term training and accumulated experience”. Mr. Bardashevich, together with Gennady Korotkevich formed the winning pair that took first place at the third open programming tournament organized by the popular social network “VKontakte” with the assistance of Codeforces platforms. The championship final took place on 3 July in St. Petersburg at the main office of the social network.
The winning prize of 2.5 million rubles was divided amongst the best eight teams, each receiving a portion corresponding to powers of two. The team from ITMO university took the 1,048,576 (220) ruble prize, while second and third prizes were significantly less (524,288 rubles to students from Ural Federal University and 262,144 rubles to MSU respectively). Fourth to eighth place each received a cash prize of 131,072 rubles.
The winning team was made up of two ACM programming competition champions, students from the Chair of Computer Technologies at ITMO University. Unlike the “ACM ICPC”, where teams consist of three participants, a “VK Cup” team consists of one or two. Furthermore, the grading system at “VK Cup” is uncommon. The fewer contestants that solve a problem, the more points are given for it. All Russian-speaking secondary school, university students and young specialists between the ages of 14 and 23 could take part in the “VK Cup”.
“In Russia there are many different competitions for programming. You could even say that they are more popular in Russia than for example the US. It’s always interesting to participate in them, and the problems given are particularly interesting, and each competition has its own twist,” says Lidia Perovskaya, Tutor of the Computer Technology Chair at ITMO University. “Also the prize at VK Cup is one of the most considerable compared to other prizes.”
Next year’s competition will have new students from ITMO University as these winning students have already participated in the final for two years in a row, the limit according to tournament rules.
