Vietnam ACM / ICPC qualifiers are tense to the end

6 minutes before finishing 5 hours of competitions at the Asia-Pacific international programmer contest, two Vietnamese "chicken" teams still hold the first place, second after the upstream spectacular. However, heavy competitors from China won a convincing victory.

On Saturday morning (November 25), Hanoi weather is cold and foggy. About 7:30 minutes, the area of ​​Da Nang Gymnasium of the Foreign Language University, Hanoi National University has gathered enough candidates and members of the Organizing Committee. At exactly 8:10 am, the entrance to the exam school is locked after all candidates have settled in position. Some supporters tried to find a way to put the dictionary into their team but were stopped because they did not comply with the procedure that required to submit the dictionary before to censor the Organizing Committee.

HEAT group, champion team of ACM / ICPC Hanoi.Photo: Hoang Ha

Coming to the ACM / ICPC qualifiers, Hanoi test scores are 43 teams, including 10 foreign teams from China, Korea, Japan, Hong Kong . The Vietnamese side also converges quite a number of names. prestige like Hanoi Polytechnic University, Technology University, Hanoi National University, Ho Chi Minh City Natural Sciences, Military Technical Academy .

Talking to reporters outside the exam school, coaches of 5 teams from Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Sciences Lam Xuan Nhat, said students from Shanghai Jiaotong University (China) would be The most worrisome player, because they are very experienced in competition and have won many high prizes in international programming examinations.

As expected, just 15 minutes after the deliberation, Shanghai Jiaotong University's HEAT team completed the first test, then left the sentence at number 1 for the first 4 hours of the competition. Volunteer students as well as many others were there, watching the results on the big screen hanging outside the school, admiring the admiration of the three members of the HEAT team with a second year female student.

Closing right after the group of HEAT is KARMA, (Ho Chi Minh City University of Natural Sciences), with the completion of the first lesson takes 23 minutes. However, this team relegated not long because then it was pushed down . the 20th, and then to the last minute of the battle to regain its form. From here, there is fierce competition between teams from China, Korea and Vietnam. While KARMA has slid down deeply, Coltech 3K, (University of Technology, Hanoi National University) has risen again, always present in the top 5 for about 2 hours. Particularly for Hanoi-Chicken (University of Technology, Vietnam National University), it made a spectacular reversal when leaping to the 6th row, due to continuously submitting correct answers with 4 complete solutions. Also "the chickens" have made the school test and the No. 1 opponent must be startled because they are the first group to complete 7 of the 8 exam questions, when the time is only 1 hour to finish .

ZSU-Andes, ZSU_Pyrenean, Chinese gogogo; Eclipse of Korea are foreign teams "excellent" chasing each other very closely in nearly a dozen leading positions. After more than 2 hours of competition, gogogo manager Wang Can was optimistic: " Gogogo has not started well. But they are regaining their form and I still have the right to hope to win a high award. Most likely The HEAT team will be champions but not yet, Lesson 8 is about Dominno, which is a disadvantage for Chinese teams because this form is not their specialty. Vietnam, I don't think they are that strong , "said Wang Can.

The winners.Photo: Hoang Ha .

According to the general assessment of many coaches and professionals, this ACM / ICPC exam is difficult and complicated. After the first 3 hours of hard work, many candidates began to show tension. Some students took lollipops to suck, some others stood up and walked to relax, someone who just worked and kept looking at the big screen displaying online results in the corner of the room . Half an hour before the dot system automatically "disconnected", some teams probably "knew what to do" so they no longer focused on the exam but turned to laugh or calmly eat bread donated by volunteers to the table.

After 4 hours of competition, the organizers stop showing online results to ensure confidentiality until awarding. The majority of those present at the event predicted the champion team was Hanoi-Chicken. However, according to the organizers, in the last 4 minutes, teams HEAT and ZSU_Andes overturned the situation, recapturing the second place from Hanoi-Chicken and KARMA by the completion of less exam questions. .

No team can solve all 8 problems, there are 10 groups to return to empty hands because no cards are completed. However, with 4 teams solving 7 lessons and 5 teams finishing 6 lessons, the contest was rated very successful.

For the first time this event took place in the country, the Vietnam Computer Association also proved quite professional in the organization with few errors and no significant incidents occurred. Contributing to that is the great effort of volunteers with a team of more than 60 people, divided into groups such as: service, guidance, technology .

Yun Jiang, a second-year student - a formidable opponent of many teams at ACM / ICPC Hanoi, looks like a high school student. Photo: Hoang Ha .

The event ended with the award ceremony taking place in the afternoon of the same day with the cup of gold, silver, and copper which were given to teams: HEAT, ZSU_Andes and HaNoi-Chicken respectively. Ranked 4 and 5 are KARMA and Coltech 3K.

Sharing with VnExpress , Hanoi-Chicken member Le Huy Binh said: " We are students in the 4th year. Maybe that's why coding is not as mature and fast as the first-year students. Chicken's performance is quite slow, but the group is not under pressure, there are some unfortunate errors but we do not pay attention to the results ".

Yun Jiang, the only female member of the championship team, also expressed: " I was very happy and surprised because I won the first prize, because I just thought my team would be in the top 5. Vietnam is very good, however, what they lack is the competition experience, so they missed the opportunity to complete the exam better . "

As a rule, the team with every qualifying score will automatically be present at the final round held in Japan in March 2007. However, since the HEAT team used to take a test at a different point and many other reasons, the Organizing Committee has not yet made an official announcement on this issue as well as how other teams will compete for tickets.

Nguyen Hang