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Welcome to night #1 - 06.27.07 1:30 AM EDT


By Petr
TopCoder Member

Here comes the first Las Vegas TCO evening, brought to you by AOL :) While some of the competitors still took their time to enjoy viewing the surrounding landmarks (from the left: pashka, VitalyGoldstein, Andrew_Lazarev),


most of the people involved have gathered in the Montego room at 7:00 pm to greet the opening of the 2007 TopCoder Open. I've managed to discuss the contest expectations with several of them.

kyky has given an inside preview of the component competition. Sergey (being a component design finalist himself) outlines cnettel as a clear favorite in the component development competition, despite the presence of the TCCC06 champion PE and 5 other strong contestants. That's a pretty interesting statement, as no European has managed to claim the development prize in a TopCoder event since roma's win in the TCCC04, and the last three events were topped by Asians and few expect them to forfeit that tradition.

When speaking about the design side, kyky admitted that he has put a lot of effort into the finals components (despite having to care about his family: he has arrived at the TCO with his wife and their little daughter). TCO05 and TCCC06 component design champion nicka81 confirms that Sergey is on his way for the win. Sergey himself perceives bendlund to be his main opponent in the game.

Meanwhile, the algorithm rounds carry a lot less determination on the results or even on the final round participants. With the first two semifinal rooms having tomek and ACRush as (arguably) major favorites, the third room remains totally unchartable. SnapDragon, the top seed, has not been performing great lately, and he was beaten for the 4th place in the ratings by his Room 3 competitor bmerry. Bruce has agreed to unveil his expectations on the Room 3 winner: "me!", he said. The room also features two TCO 06 finalists, ploh and andrewzta, and they are definitely not going to miss the action.

Marathoneer grotmol was quite definite on the most important result of his track: "It'll be fun!", he said, as no one still knows what it really will be like tomorrow. The organizers started to publish some information about it, however, as it was announced today that the tomorrow Marathon Match will take place in the renewed Competition Arena. Studio competitors were also not left clueless: they will be redesigning the studio.topcoder.com website on Thursday.

Join us tomorrow in the Competition Arena for the Marathon and Algorithm battles, as well as the Component Design and Development appeals start!



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