Saturday, April 20, 2002
By Adam Loss,TopCoder Staff Writer

Three times happened to be the charm for dmwright. After advancing to the semifinals in the 2001 Collegiate Challenge and the 2001 Invitational, dmwright finally came out on top and won the 2002 Sun Microsystems and TopCoder Collegiate Challenge on Saturday, April 20, at the University Park Hotel @ MIT.

Perhaps Stanford University should rename itself "TopCoder West". That's because Stanford's jonmac was the champion of the 2001 TopCoder Invitational, giving the school two of the first three TopCoder major tournament champions.

dmwright, the number two-ranked TopCoder member, started the championship match off by opening the Level Two problem, while derkuci, Joe, and malpt all tackled the Level One problem. derkuci was the first to submit his code and earned 228.56 points. malpt and Joe finished shortly thereafter, gaining 227.96 and 223.09, respectively. derkuci, malpt and Joe all headed for the Level Two problem next.

Meanwhile, dmwright took a good amount of time on the Level Two problem, shocking most spectators, who were expecting a top score. "The Level Two problem was very technical," said dmwright. "I had to be careful because it was easy to make an error." dmwright finally submitted the Level Two problem for 274.20 points, and opened the Level Three problem. When asked about his strategy for opening the Level Two problem first, and then going for the Level Three problem, dmwright responded, "Even if it took a little longer to code, the Level Two and Three problems are worth more points, so I figured I could outscore the coders who attempted to code the Level One and Two problems in succession."

As the minutes passed the room became more animated as spectators watching soon realized the difficulty of the problems that the competitors had been presented with. Twenty-seven minutes into the match, derkuci abandoned his attempt at the Level Two problem and moved on to the Level Three problem. malpt did exactly the same soon after.

Eighteen minutes into his effort on Level Three problem, dmwright made the decision to move on to the Level One problem in an effort to secure points, as none of the other coders had yet to submit on either the Level Two or Three.

After a brief effort, dmwright submitted on the Level One problem for 219.05 points. As the "Coding Phase" ended, dmwright lead with 493.25 points. derkuci was second with 228.56, malpt was third with 227.95, while Joe was fourth with 223.09.

derkuci kicked off the "Challenge Phase" with a successful challenge of the Level One submission of Joe. Those additional 50 points gave derkuci a total of 278.56 points. derkuci then tried to break the Level One and Two codes of dmwright. If he has been successful with either challenge, he would have won the championship. To his dismay and the delight of dmwright, however, he was unable to, and after everyone's remaining code passed the system test, dmwright was declared the winner with 493.25 final points. derkuci finished second with 278.56 points, malpt was third with 227.96, while Joe finished fourth.

"It's really nice to win after making the semifinals in last year's Collegiate Challenge and Invitational," said dmwright. "My adrenaline was flowing, and I really got absorbed in the problems. I was able to block out all of the spectator activity, and finally submit code without any bugs in it. Bugs in my code have cost me in past major tournaments."