About Northeastern European Regional Contest

Introduction

Northeastern European Region Programming Contest is a part of the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.

ACM ICPC is a two-tiered competition among teams of students representing institutions of higher education. Teams first compete in regional contests held around the world from October to December each year. The winning team from each regional contest advances to the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals, typically held the following March to mid-April. Additional high-ranking teams may be invited to the World Finals as wild card teams.

Northeastern European Region includes Russia and all former SU countries except the Ukraine and Moldova. The main site of Northeastern European Regional Contest (NEERC) is St.Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics. For the teams from Siberian Universities and Universities from Far-Eastern part of Russia the Siberian group at Altai State Technical University was organized because the travel costs to St. Petersburg are too high for them. In the season 2000/2001 new Transcaucasian group was set up which central site is in Tbilisi at Georgian Technical University, in 2003/2004 season Transcaucasian group site was held in Yerevan.

Due to large number of teams desiring to participate in this contest, in 1998 NorthEastern European Region was splitted into six subregions - Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern, Central and Far Eastern. In 1999 West Siberian subregion was introduced, and in 2000 also the East Siberian one. Thus total number of subregions became eight.

In 2002 Uzbekistan joined NEERC and new Middle Asia subregion was introduced, transformed to Uzbekistan subregion in 2004. Since 2002 Transcaucasian group was considered subregion although it did not run subregional contest and teams from that group proceeded directly to regionals. It was transformed to two subregions - Georgia and Armenia in 2004, followed by Azerbaijan subregion in 2005. In 2003 Moscow was separated from Central Subregion and now it runs its own subregional contest. Kazakhstan also joined NEERC in 2003. Now there are fifteen subregional contests of NEERC.

The best teams from these subregions are invited to compete in North Eastern European Regional Contest.

Internet is used to provide participation of Siberian and Transcaucasian Universities in real time. The teams from the major Siberian Universities are gathered in the Federal node of the Russian Universities Network (RUNNet) in Barnaul and the teams of Transcaucasian Group - in Tbilisi or Yerevan to participate under observation of the representatives of the Jury, who specially arrive to Barnaul and Tbilisi or Yerevan. Starting from 2004 the contest is also held in Tashkent for Middle Asia teams.

Rules Overview

Contest rules are similar to the rules used in the Contest Finals of the ACM ICPC. Each team of 3 students is given one computer to solve proposed problems (usually 5-8 problems) within 5 or 6 hours. Checking of solutions is made during the contest. A solution is accepted when it works correctly on the given set of tests (the time is although restricted). If a program fails, the Jury reports it to the team and adds a penalty time for each unsuccessful attempt. During the competition participants and observers have access to the preliminary results of all teams.

The team which solved more problems than any other team is considered to be a winner. In case of equal number of solved problems, the team with the lowest penalty time wins. A penalty time is a sum of time of solving of each problem plus 20 minutes for each unsuccessful attempt for solved problem.

The official competition language is English. All problems on the contest are given in English ONLY despite the fact that most of the participants speak Russian. This is so because the main goal of this contest is to select teams that will partipate in the contest finals, where the knowledge of English language will be critical to the team's problem solving ability.