The RubeTube

(If you do not know anything about the ACM-ICPC, it's the most prestigious programming contest in the world. I've had the opportunity to be a part of it for four straight years, and I've also had the good fortune to be a part of the top Philippine team every year and making the World Finals during my last two years. Not trying to boast here; just wanted to share why this particular contest is so special to me.)

I was on-hand to watch the awarding ceremonies for the ACM-ICPC Asia-Manila Regionals, which was held earlier this evening at the Holiday Inn near Robinson's Galleria. It was really cool to be able to meet up with our Ateneo contestants after the contest and to cheer for them during the awarding. I even had a nice little reunion with Topher and Allan, my teammates from last year.

You can view the results online here. Be warned though; they are not completely updated because they stopped updating the scoreboard one hour before the end of the contest, to maintain the suspense.

In summary:

• 1st place and automatic World Finalists - Team "Near", University of Hong Kong (also last year's Manila champs)
• 2nd place - Team "Makegumi", University of Tokyo (also last year's runner-ups)
• 3rd place - Team "Maximum Tomato", Saitama University
• Best Local Team/14th place overall - Team "Persistence", Ateneo de Manila University
• 2nd Best Local Team/15th place overall - Team "DLSU 1", De La Salle University
• 3rd Best Local Team/16th place overall - Team "UP Green-3", University of the Philippines - Diliman
  

Congratulations to team "Persistence" from Ateneo! The team members are Akie Mejia, Kenny Saavedra, and Michael Tan. The gap to the La Salle and UP Diliman teams was paper-thin; they all solved four problems and were separated by only 40 points! The Ateneo has held the title of best Philippine team for five years in a row now. Let's keep it up!

Also, congratulations to the other Ateneo teams on a job well done! We put up a good fight. I am personally very proud of all of you. It feels great to be an Atenean. To all the first-timers on the Ateneo team (including Rocky Camacho, one of my students during the summer), welcome to the Ateneo programming team family. I hope you are all excited to take part in future contests!

I also have some other thoughts on the contest and the current state of the ACM-ICPC in the Philippines. I will leave those for a future entry.

(Update: The official standings are now available.)

(Addendum: In less than a day since I posted this entry, I've had at least 50 people from Japan visiting my blog. You can see this from my Site Meter visitors by location (see below). They were all looking for the contest results. I'm not complaining about the extra traffic; I just find it amusing that the RubeTube has suddenly become the "official news site" for the Asia-Manila regionals.)

Labels: ACM-ICPC, Ateneo, contests