The End of Day 1
05.04.06 2:00 AM


By omgrace
TopCoder Member

After today's grueling tournaments, the competitors took a chance to relax... and compete some more. TopCoder provided a game room for the competitors to relax and hang out after the tournaments (also good for those that don't gamble!). Some of the competitor's skipped part of lunch this afternoon to play (they REALLY like to solve problems!). Here are some of the games TopCoder provided:



It looks like misof is trying to take over the world...or maybe he's talking strategy...



Playing monopoly and dividing the money up evenly (or maybe he's slipping himself an extra $20...)



Setting up an exciting game of scrabble. It's funny because when I walked over, I think I heard some of the guys talking about only using Linux commands...but that idea was quickly shot down. Also, with people from so many different countries, playing scrabble can get pretty interesting without the handy dictionary around.

The previous pictures were all from this afternoon before the algorithm semifinals. Congrats to misof and fuwenjie for qualifying for the finals! After the afternoon competition, everyone headed back to the game room to play more board games...or so I thought. Here's what the game room looked like in the evening:



This is a true "action shot" (so much so that SnapDragon didn't even look up for the picture!)



As you can see, this game was abandoned... because everyone was busy playing...



POKER!



Here's davidyang playing in an exciting hand of Texas Hold ‘em. The other bloggers didn't play (we were busy blogging....) but davidyang's hard work paid off because he won 3rd place and got this awesome giftbag:



The backpack includes a TopCoder jacket, t-shirt, tape dispenser (I think every programmer would be lost without one), a stress ball, and a TopCoder mug.



This is PART of the grand prize - custom made TopCoder poker chips!



Here's a close-up - TopCoder custom-made these for the tournament! They are pretty cool to the touch - AND you get a custom-made set of TopCoder playing cards! BUT, there's MORE!



You also get the awesome TopCoder backpack that was filled with goodies AND another backpack and t-shirt from VeriSign! Their prizes were *almost* as good as the prizes from the casino downstairs! Congrats to John Dethridge for winning the grand prize! I wonder if he'll try to use some of the poker chips in the actual casino... let me know how that works out!

Everyone split up after the poker tournament (some people didn't even play) and I think some tried their luck at the actual casino. Good luck at the tables tonight - I'll be back tomorrow with an update on the presentations AND the Gameworks event (I'll be sure to take pictures of SnapDragon playing dance dance revolution... are you ready for a DANCE OFF?!