Contest Rules

Procedure adopted by each university for registration

    • Select three students per team who will compete. This is frequently done with a local programming contest, but the particular selection mechanism is not prescribed by the regional contest rules. However, note very carefully, the ACM rules for eligibility.

    • Have a faculty member certify the eligibility of the contestants.

    • Have a representative of the school serve as (or designate someone to serve as) the team coach. The coach will serve as the official point-of-contact and ideally accompany the team to the contest site.

    • Have the team coach complete the team registration procedure at the ACM web site no later than November 19, 2017. The coach may also consider registering any reserve (alternate) team member. This member will be permitted to compete only under the approval of the Contest Director and only for reasons mentioned in the official contest rules at ACM Baylor.

    • Send the correct registration fees, as mentioned elsewhere to the Regional Contest Director - ACM ICPC Hanoi Region.

    • Each team member must be eligible, willing, and able to compete in the World Finals, and be enrolled in a degree program with at least a half-time load.

    • A team member may compete in at most two World Finals.

    • A team member may compete in at most four of five consecutive regional contests beginning with the first regional contest held after beginning post-secondary studies.(This implies that a team consisting of 3 post B.E./B.Tech. students is eligible)

Additional Contest Rules

  • It should be noted that the rules mentioned here are only subsidiary to the rules given at the ACM ICPC homepage.

  • Each school may register multiple teams for the preliminary contest. Each team's coach must fully register teams in the ICPC Registration System no later than November 19, 2017. A team is not eligible to compete in the regional contest until the regional contest director has accepted the team in the web registration system. Teams failing to comply with any of these requirements will be ruled ineligible to compete. Only registered reserves may be substituted for contestants . Such substitutions must be entered in the ICPC Registration System before the deadline. ACM guidelines suggest a contest roster which represents as many different schools as possible. This potentially increase the number of teams advancing from the region to the world finals. However, only one team per university can advance to the world finals. Keeping all this in mind, the regional contest director will accept a subset of size 1, 2 or more of the qualified teams from any one university for the regional final. This will be done no later than seven (7) days before the contest in November. Acceptance of teams is contingent on the availability of sufficient resources at the site.

General Rules

  • It is compulsory for every contestant to wear the ACM ICPC T-Shirts (provided along with the kit), while appearing for the contest.

  • The contestants are expected to be punctual in reporting to the corresponding contest sites, for the practice sessions as well as the final contest. No time-extensions will be entertained.

  • Good conduct is expected out of the contestants, while interacting with staff and students of this institution as well as other institutions.

  • A team may be disqualified by the regional contest director for any activity that jeopardizes the contest such as dislodging extension cords, unauthorized modification of contest materials, or distracting behaviour.

Note: Not adhering to these rules will lead to disqualification

ACM-ICPC Asia Official Regional Rules (September 20, 2014)

ACM-ICPC 2014 Asia Official Regional Rules (Version 09/20/2014)

(Confirmed version October 1, 2014 with no change to the early version; May need a few English editing in the coming week. )

ACM-ICPC 2014 Asia Official Regional Rules (Version 10/01/2014)

Sponsored by IBM. (Sentences in blue fonts are new to 2014 rules.)

(A few Chinese characters in this blog or pages are irrelevant to the rules and may be ignored. )

I. Mission: The ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is an activity of the ACM that provides college students with an opportunity to demonstrate and sharpen their problem solving and computing skills.

The ACM/ICPC Asia Regional Contests invite Asian students to meet, to establish friendships, and to promote fair competition in programming and in application use of algorithms and theory.

II. Fundamentals of the Rules of ICPC Regional Contests:

Rules for the Asia Regional Contests are additions to the rules of ACM ICPC Regional Programming Contests and ICPC Steering Committee Policies/Procedures. Please refer to hyperlink: http://icpc.baylor.edu/

III. 2014 Asia regional specific rules:

A. Asia Regional Contests, Organization, and Administration

1. The Asia Region covers all territories and countries in Asia except Arabic speaking countries in the Middle East.

2. Asia Regional Contests do not divide the region by political territories. A team that advances to the Contest World Finals represents the team’s university, not the team’s political boundary.

3. Organization of Asia (Super) Region

(a) Organization of Asia (Super) Region is organized as one single region Asia Region. The three administrative sub-regions are used for the purpose of World Finals teams selection.

(b) The Asia Regional Contest is administered under the direction of the "Asia Director, Asia Contests Director or Asia Super-regional Director," who is charged with executing Regional Contests within a set of rules and guidelines that have been approved by the ACM ICPC Executive Director. The Asia Director selects several contest sites in Asia each year, 18 sites in 2014, to hold the Asia Regional Contests. The Asia Director also appoints one Contest Site Director (RCD) to head each Contest Site Steering Committee. Site Directors (RCD’s) are charged with responsibilities of planning, organizing and executing the Regional Contests according to ACM/ICPC Operational Guidelines. (Note: This represents the Semi-autonomous spirit for all Asia Regional Contest Sites, their associated Steering Committees and Site Directors.)

The Asia Director also appoints Local Area Contest Directors for National, Provincial, Multi-provincial and Invitational contests in the Asia (Super) Region.

(c) Asia Director heads the Asia Council and appoints committee chairs for various committees to assist Asia Director to promote and develop Asia Regional Contests, and to help to recruit new Asia Regional Site Directors in all geographic areas in the entire Asia. (Asia Council has been re-organized to several committees and all of old contest advisory councils have been cancelled.) The list of members in 2014 Asia Council can be found in Asia blog

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_b946da100102v2ox.html

(d) All organizations, activities, announcements, and resolutions bearing the name of ACM-ICPC in Asia must be approved by Asia Director, and information must be posted in the approved web sites only.

(e) There should be no third party web sites or platforms be used for the Asia Regional Site Contests including on-line contests, and neither for provincial/invitational contests. Asia Regional Contest site steering committees must post contest related information and announcement in their respective contest sites under their university network. They must also post rankings and list of staff names in ICPC headquarter contest sites. The Asia Regional Site steering committees and the associated RCD’s should not post any information to any web site other than the three web sites (ICPC headquarter web site, Asia blog, and Host university web site) without Asia Director’s approval.

All host universities’ RCD’s are required to acknowledge the ICPC Integrity Statement to protect ICPC Academic integrity and RCD’s autonomy and to prevent the third party’s control and involvement of ICPC activities. (Please see Appendix One )

(f) Asia Director may approve any seminars, forums, or training programs sponsored by any individual, or any committee, as long as these activities are beneficial to ACM-ICPC community.

4. Three Administrative Sub-regions

Each university competing in the Asia Regional Contests is homed in one of three administrative sub-regions based on the following geographical locations:

(a) Pacific & Indochina Peninsula (PP): Universities located in the West Pacific and South East Asia including South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Myanmar, Singapore, and Laos.

(b) East Continent (EC): Universities located in Mongolia, North Korea, Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau.

(c) West Continent (WC):Universities in Central, South and West Asia including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, Nepal and optionally Central Asian Countries. Other Universities in Central Asia countries may compete at West Continent Sub-Regional Sites. These countries are Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Teams from Azerbaijan and Armenia are also invited to participate in contest sites in West Continent Sub-regional.

5. Structure of Asia Regional Site Contests and At most two sites participation by a Contestant:

(a) The World ICPC contest is a 2- tiered competition (Regional On-site and World Finals) among teams of students representing institutions of higher education. The ACM- ICPC Asia Regional Contest, however, is a one-three tiered competitions. Please see item (III.A.6) for detail.

(b) The recommended organization of the Asia Regional Contest Site Steering Committee for each Host University site usually consists of the following members:

Honorary Chairs (Optional)

Chair (Regional Contest Site Director or Contest Site RCD)

Co-Chairs (Asia Director, by default, is one of the Co-chairs)

Committee Coordinator and/or Associate Site Director (optional)

Chief Judge, Judging Team and Contest Problem Setter/Creator Committee

System (Hardware/Software) Chair(s)

Registration Chair and Publicity Chair

Activities/Operation Chair

The Steering Committee for each contest site may implement additional rules and a different committee organization pertaining to that contest site. But the Asia Rules must be followed.

(c) Each University or college in Asia can organize teams to participate in the Regional contests at any Asia site. However, a contestant can participate, at most, in two (2) Asian contest sites during a contest year. A contestant may not compete in Asia Regional Contests for more than five (5) years. A contestant may not compete in World Finals for more than two (2) years. A team may participate in the Asia Regional Contest, bypassing the School, Provincial, Invitational, and National levels. Please observe that a team can only be advanced to World Finals from Asia Regional On-Site Contests from the team's home sub-region unless there is foreign preference or special preference teams been offered by a Contest Site Committee with approval by Asia Director.

6. Three levels of Asia Programming Contests:

(a) The Asia Contests Tree Structure.

The entire Asia Super-region is a tree with a root that we call it tier-1 node. Under this root node there are 18 child nodes in 2014. Each child node is an Asia Regional On-site Contest that we call tier-2 node. Under the Asia On-site contest (tier-2), we have First Round Online Sub-contest that we call it tier-3. An Asia Regional Contest Site includes both the On-site Regional contest (tier-2) and the (tier 3) First Round Online Regional Sub-Contest(s). The registration limit of two sites per year per student applies to both Asia Regional Site and their associated Online Regional Sub-contest. The tier-1 and the tier-2 two together form one Asia regional site.

(b) Applications for hosting Asia Regional On-site Contests, and First Round Online Asia

Regionals.

The ACM-ICPC Asia Regional Contest must be hosted by a faculty member. The faculty member must apply directly to Asia Director. The Contest Site Director must be an associate professor or above, or equivalent in a university. The Student Chapter members or student leaders can be volunteers in helping or working for the contest. A faculty member must write an e-mail application using his/her university e-mail account. Once approved, the university faculty applicant will be placed in a wait list to be a future host for Asia Regional. Some financial support will be provided from ACM-ICPC and IBM for Asia Regionals.

The host university must obtain additional funding locally and from registration fee. The host university is also required to host Provincial/National contest and to register the contest and teams in ICPC website before they are qualified for Asia Regional contest host. (Application procedure for hosting any level of contests in Asia can be found at the link: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_b946da100101klgd.html )

Winning certificates are to be signed by ACM-ICPC Executive Director, Asia Director, and Contest Site Director.

Asia Regional Site Contest final round must be an on-site contest. If the registration for on-site Asia Regional is too large, first round online Asia Regional sub-contest(s) may be held before the on-site Asia Regional contest. The contest dates of both On-site Asia Regionals and the associated online sub-contests should be after May 1 and before December 20 of each year. The Asia Regional On-site contests are to be scheduled between September 1 and December 20. Winning team of each Asia Regional On-site Contest is selected to World Finals. Additional teams may be selected to World Finals (WF) according to the formula described in item (III.E.3).

Asia Regional Site Directors or their representatives are required to participate the World Finals RCD (Regional Contest Site Directors) Symposium scheduled during the World Finals Contest earlier in the same calendar year for training purpose. If a new Regional Site Director or his/her representative does not participate in the World Finals RCD Symposium and the World Final Contest, the Asia Director may cancel his/her hosting authorization in the same calendar year.

(c) Application for Hosting Provincial /Multi-provincial/Invitational/ National Contests.

The application for a Provincial/National contest by a faculty member is required. A student organization may host the contest. But a faculty supervisor must supervise the contest. This faculty supervisor must be responsible for the fairness of the contest and the integrity of the entire contest operation. The faculty supervisor must send Asia Provincial Coordinator or Provincial Contests Coordinator an e-mail application using his university e-mail account to confirm this before the application can be approved. No financial support will be provided for provincial/invitational /national contests from ACM-ICPC or from IBM. ACM-ICPC certificates will be signed by faculty supervisor and be issued for winners.

Team registration for provincial and national contests must be done in ICPC web site. The Provincial/Multi-provincial/Invitational/National contests are independent of Asia Regional Contests. No team will be selected and advanced to World Finals from these Contests. The contest date of Provincial/National must be after February 1 and before Oct 20 of each year. All National, Provincial and Invitational contests (these contests are together called Local Area contests) will be all grouped together in an independent contest site in ACM-ICPC Asia Region titled “Asia Provincial-National contests”. National Contest may be part of the Asia Regional Contest if the National Contest is hosted by the Asia Regional host.

(d) Campus Contest.

Hosting campus contest by a faculty member is preferred. A student organization may host the contest. But a faculty supervisor must supervise the contest. No financial support will be provided for campus contest. ACM-ICPC certificates will NOT be issued for winners. Host universities may issue their own certificates. Registration must be done outside of ICPC web site.

(e) Team registration for all levels of contests must be of 3 contestants in a team.

(f) Application procedures can be found at

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_b946da100101klgd.html

7. Contest Registration and Advancing of First Round Online Sub-contest to Asia On-Site Contest:

(a) ACM - ICPC Asia Region has grown substantially in recent years. On-Site Regional Contest usually cannot accommodate large numbers of teams. It is also mandatory that each site accommodates all of qualified registrations. To accomplish such goal, it is required that each site conducts two cycles of regional contests – Asia First Round Online sub-contest and Asia On-Site Regional Contest. Each site should conduct Asia First Round Online Sub-Contest in advance to select an appropriate number of teams for the On-Site Regional Contest. All teams solving at least one problem in the first round online sub-contest and in the Asia on-site regional contest must be all ranked in ICPC contest web site. Each Contest Site Director may set up its own fair selection formula for teams to be advanced to On Site Regional Contest. Contest Site Director may also modify contest rules for the First Round Online Sub-contest within ICPC guidelines, while On-Site Regional Contest must follow Asia Rules and ICPC Regional Contest Rules. It is also recommended that foreign teams may be exempted from First Round Online Sub-Contest.

All additional policies and rules used by a contest site committee must be posted in contest host site home pages, and must not post in any third party web site.

Under the system enforcing limit of 2 Asia site registrations, Asia Region allows teams advanced or registered to on-site contest from any ONE of the following combinations (Site Directors/Coordinates are autonomous in making such decision.):

- Team may be moved from Online contest to On-site contest.

- Team may be copied from Online contest or re-register to On-site contest.

(The above two items will not have difference for site participation scores.)

- Team may be a brand new set of team members. (Asia Region allows team registration directly to on-site contest with approval from Site Director.)

- Team may be a mixed members from Online contest and/or new members.

Please note that winning team members from Asia on-site advancing to WF can not be changed for any reason.)

(b) If the total registration is low in the Online Sub-contest and all teams can be accommodated by On-Site Regional Contest, the First Round Online Sub-contest may be skipped. If the first round sub-contest is skipped, all teams in the sub-contest should be moved or copied (promoted) to Asia On-site Regional Contest by Contest Site Steering Committee.

(c) Repeat: A contestant can register in at most two (2) Asia Regional Sites. Each site includes the On-site contest and the first round Online sub-contest. The number of online sub-contests a contestant can participate is still limited to two (2) Asia sites.

(d) Each Asia RCD may cancel on-line contest with approval by Asia Director even with a large registration in on-line contest for special reasons such as protecting the integrity and maintaining the autonomous spirit of ICPC contests. If RCD cancels the on-line contest, RCD is required to post a selection criterion to select teams to actually participate the on-site contest.

(e) National Online Internet Contest and Provincial level Online Contest hosted by Asia Regional host university are considered as Asia First Round Online Sub-contest if these contests are used to select teams for Asia On-Site Regional Contest. These Contests will be treated as the Asia Regional First Round Online Sub-contest and not be grouped together with “Asia Provincial/National Contests”.

8. Organization of Asia Council and Committees.

(a) Asia Council memberships consist of voting members and non-voting members. The members are appointed by Asia Director in a yearly basis, and are ACM volunteers. ACM volunteers are not allowed to receive financial compensation other than travel expenses from Asia Contest Site Committees, provincial contest hosts or industrial sponsorship for helping in ICPC activities.

(b) The voting members consists of all current year RCD’s. For example, there are 18 RCD’s or voting members in 2014. All RCD’s report to Asia Director directly. All RCD’s must protect the integrity and autonomous nature of ICPC contests by acknowledging the Integrity Form and Sponsorship Form.(Please see Appendix One.)

(c) Asia Council voting members vote on the Asia Rules and other associated resolutions.

(d) Under the Asia Council, there may be some committees appointed to assist Asia Director and to provide volunteer service to ICPC community. All committee chairs also report to Asia Director. Committee chairs are not in any supervisory or management responsibilities over any RCD. These committee members or committee chairs are non-voting members in Asia Council. They may suggest proposals and submit opinions to Asia Council through Asia Director. (Note that any member of ICPC community may also submit proposal to Asia Director directly.) The list of members in 2014 Asia Council may be found in the Asia blog at the following link:

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_b946da100102v2ox.html

(e) One such important committee is the “Promotion, Recruiting, and Support (PRS) Committee”. Members in this committee are to help to recruit new RCD’s and to promote ICPC activities in their designated area.

(f) All of the old contest advisory councils in between Asia RCD’s and Asia Director are cancelled effectively from 2014.

(g) Upon request to Asia Director, non-voting members of Asia Council will be invited to attend WF activities with hotel expense self paid and activities meals paid by ICPC WF. Voting members are RCD’s and are required to attend WF activities with hotel and activities meals paid by ICPC WF. Transportation for all members of Asia Council to WF are self paid.

B. Rules on Eligibility of Team Member, the Team, and Registration

1. Rule of Contestants’ Eligibility Decision Tree

(a) A team consists of exactly three contestants.

All contestants are urged to study the Regional Rules of the Eligibility Decision Tree in ACM - ICPC Headquarter web site for the eligibility of all contestants throughout the world. (http://icpc.baylor.edu/)

(b) Remarks on eligibility rule:

Technically, it is possible that a team may consist of three first year graduate students if each of them meets the rule qualification in a four-year program or university. Students from two years colleges are also qualified to participate in Asia Regional Contests.

(c) Participation of two Asia sites for the same year in Asia Regional Contests is considered as one-time competition in Asia under the eligibility rule.

2. A student can represent only one university. There will be at most one team advancing to WF from the same university.

3. A student may compete in at most two(2) Asia Regional Site Contests, home or not-home administrative sub-region. If there are more than one online first round sub-contests under a Regional site, a student may compete in all sub-contests under the same one Asia Regional Site.

4. The coach of a team must be a faculty or a designated staff member of the team’s university. A coach from outside of the team’s university will disqualify the team.

5. Because of the problem of ‘no-shows’ by teams who register and confirm participation in an on-site contest but do not actually participate in the contest, it was decided that: If such team do not cancel their registration at least ten (10) days before the contest date, and do not show up in the contest, this team's contestants will be disqualified for all other contest sites in the same contest year.

6. Registration:

The university name of a team must be already in the ICPC registration database before a team can register. The team coach should request the Contest Site Director to ask ICPC manager to enter the Team’s university name in the database if needed. This registration prerequisite applies to Asia Regional Contests, Asia Regional Sub-contests, and Local Area Contests.

7. A team must register in the sub-contests:

In most case, teams are promoted (copied) from sub-contests to Asia Regional On-site Contest by contest steering committee. No direct registration is allowed to Asia Regional On-site contests without the approval of Asia Regional Contest Site Directors.

8. Registration Fee:

The Steering Committee of each contest site determines the registration fee of each team. In previous years, the regional registration fee ranged from US$0 to US$200 around the world.

9. Verification of Registration for the Asia On-Site Regional Contest:

The coach of each team is required to verify and complete the personal information of all contestants before the Asia On-Site Regional (or Final Round Regional) contest. Without such verification, the team will not be accepted for Asia On-Site or Asia Final Round contest and therefore be disqualified.

10. Team Members Substitution in World Finals and in Asia Regional Contest:

The team members for the team advanced to World Finals must be identical to the members participated in the Asia On-Site Regional Contest. No substitution or reserves will be allowed in the World Finals. Any alteration on the team will disqualify the team to the World Finals. However, Asia Regional Contest may allow reserve team member registration and may allow the substitution of the team member in the Asia regional contest provided that the team composition change is entered in the ICPC registration system web site before the Regional On-site Contest. Any change to the team after that regional contest is not allowed.

C. Rules on Conduct, and Team number Assignment Recommendation.

1. Electronic dictionaries are not allowed. Paper dictionaries, however, may be allowed. Contest Site Director may alter this rule. The World Finals rule on reference materials may be different from this rule and the rules used by Contest Site Director.

2. No personally owned diskettes, mobile phone or calculators are allowed.

3. Notification of accepted runs may be suspended at the appropriate time (normally one hour before the end) to keep the final results confidential for the purpose of suspension. Notification of rejected runs may continue until the end of the contest.

4. A very good method of assigning team numbers to teams so that judges would not know the team name and the team university name. This method is described below for your reference. The team numbers should be assigned randomly before the contest. Team numbers should be used in PC^2 or any judging system. University names should not be used in the PC^2 or any judging system and should not be revealed to the judging team during the contest. The Contest Site Director is responsible for posting the matching list of team numbers and university names in the audience area within 60 minutes after the contest starts.

D. Rules on Organization of Judges/Problem Setters Committees

1. The Chief Judge and Site Director of each contest site are responsible for organizing the judging team. No member of the judging/problem setter committee should be the coach of any contest team. It is highly recommended that the judging team consist of faculty from other universities and/or industry professionals. The use of an international judging team is also encouraged, if possible. The size of the judging team is recommended to be equal to the number of contest problems in the contest

.

2. The Chief Judge and the Contest Site Director make a final decision in selecting the contest problems, in modifying the submitted contest problems, or in adding additional contest problems.

3. The Chief Judge is encouraged to take care that there is one problem in the set that is fairly easy, and at least one or two problems are of medium difficulty since the WF slots distribution formula will count only the accepted teams that have solved at least one problem.

4. All contest problems in Asia Sites must be written in English only. No multiple

languages are allowed in creating contest problems. Exception must be approved by Asia Director

5. Contest Site Directors must enter the names and their affiliated universities of

all problem setters and all judges in the Staff List of their respected contest sites within one week after each Asia On-Site Regional Contest.

6. Judging Committee and Options: Asia Contest Site Directors at his/her own choice

are required to adopt one of the following two options for the organization of judges and problem setters committee. If it is difficult for some sites to adopt any option, care of fairness should be taken care of when organizing the judges/problem setters committee. Reasons for no-adoption requires approval from Asia Director.

Option (a): The problem setters/judges of the host site should be a committee of

at least 5 members. If any problem setter/judge committee member expects his/her university team may advance to WF from a contest site, that member and that university may not contribute more than one contest problem.

Option (b): No host team can be advanced to WF from the host university site. But the host team may get some preference from other sites under its home sub region. The preference was recommended to Asia Director for approval. Further restriction: A team cannot be advanced to WF, if the problem setter/judge is from the same university of that team.

E. Rules on Team Rankings, Contest Site Scoring, and World Finals Slots

1. Team Rankings:

The official ranking for each contest site is school ranking or “University ranking” for the contest site. RCD’s may at their discretion rank teams according to their local requirements and needs and is called RCD rankings.” Typically, RCD rankings are the ranking for all teams. University rankings are the rankings of the first team of each university. Other teams of the same university will be ranked as a tie with next university. The University rankings may be used for WF slots allocation. If local resolutions have additional constraints to the university rankings such as WF medal awards or preference teams, the university ranking will be further refined to “WF-Slots Rankings" by deleting the medal award teams and the preference teams.” For this case, teams will be awarded WF slots by using WF-Slots rankings.

(a) It is mandatory that each Contest Site Director must rank the teams who solve at least one problem. The rankings must be done in both the first round online sub-contest and the Asia Regional On-site contest.

(b) Official standings (University Rankings) will first be ranked from the top team of each university/college. Other teams from the same college will then be ranked as ties with that of the next ranked team of another university. Each Contest Site Director may select the first 6 or more universities to award special prizes or may apply some good criteria to award teams. If the first round online sub-contest is skipped due to low registration or cancellation, the sub-contest should not be ranked.

(c) Teams (host teams) from host universities of Asia Regional sites do not have preference for world final slots. If the host team’s score is very high and is very close to the WF qualifying line, and if there is slot available, Asia Director may at his discretion provides preferences to these host teams.

(d) Some contest sites may have special constraints embedded in university rankings. After removing the special constraints of a contest site such as medal award teams and preference teams, etc. from university rankings, the resulting “WF-Slots Rankings” will be used for allocating WF teams.

(e) Special teams:

Teams with one or two members or high school teams are kind of special teams. RCD may allow their competition in the contest. These special teams are not allowed to be ranked, and are not allowed to be advanced to next level of contests. The high school teams are not allowed to register in ICPC registration system.

2. The following defines the Contest Site Participation Scores of the year:

(a) The contest site initial participation scores:

Counting for site participation initial scores will only count teams accepted and solving at least one problem in the preliminary online sub-contests and in Asia Regional On-site contests.

The fake teams will be removed by applying “accepted team solving at least one problem”. The points counting will count unique individual contestants who solve at least one problem in each contest site by union of on-site and online. The number of unique teams for each contest site is obtained by the total number of unique contestants divided by 3. These initial participation scores are divided into two parts for each site – numbers of unique schools and numbers of additional teams beyond the first team (second plus team) in each of all universities.

(b) The Site Reduction factors:

Applying reduction factor will remove the double contest sites’ registrations. The example of Site Reduction Factor for double registration:

If the percentage of students with double registration is 40% in Mainland China, for example, then the reduction factor for all China sites will be 0.8 = (0.6 + 0.6+ 0.4) / 2. The site participation score is the result of initial score points multiplied by the reduction factor.

(c) To avoid the WF teams from being clustered in a few contest sites, the number of schools will be reduced to 0.5 point in counting for all schools beyond the first 200 schools in a contest site. And the number of second plus teams will be reduced to 0.5 point for all second plus teams beyond the first 800 teams.

(d) Contest Site Participation Scores:

The 70-25- 5 formulas will be applied to the site participation score calculation:

70% for the Total number of distinct universities from item (c) above;

25% for the total number of distinct teams beyond the first team from item (c);

and 5% for the total number of teams in the provincial and national (non-Asia host) contests.

The contest site final participation score will be the sum of 70-25-5 formula.

3. WF slots allocation and Administrative sub-regions

(a) Each university fielding a team that wins a Site Contest will advance the team to the World Finals if the Contest Site is in the team’s home administrative

Sub-region. In the event that a university qualifies for more than one Site Contest in the home sub-region, the university must decide only one team to represent the university to the World Finals. In any situation, a university can send only one qualified team to the WF.

(b) These WF slots for Asia are determined by ICPC headquarter consisting of participation (basic) and bonus slots. The participation/basic slots for Asia for 2015 WF are 35, a fixed number. ICPC headquarter used the 2013 Asia Regional contests’ participation to obtain the numbers. (Note that the distribution of these slots in the 2015 WF is 30:30:35 in the world. Asian students and coaches should appreciate the recognition from Headquarter for Asia ICPC development with the highest number 35.) Asia Director in turn uses the following guidelines to allocate WF slots to each Asia sub-region and to each Asia contest site. (Please refer to the posting about WF slots allocation formula from ICPC headquarter:) http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_b946da100101pu86.html

(c) The medal award bonus slots for 2015 WF are assigned to universities whose teams had received medal awards in 2014 WF, provided that these universities will earn a university ranking of 10 or better in any 2014 Asia Regional.

(e) There may be additional bonus slots for Asia Region for 2015 WF. These slots will be decided after 2014 Asia Regionals by Headquarter in consultation with Asia Director.

(e) Asia Council had considered a few proposals during the meeting in June 2014 Ekarterinburg about how to distribute the 35 participation slots for 2015 WF. After consultation with Headquarter, Asia Director has decided to adopt the following formula which can be accepted by majority of Asia Council voting members.

(1) 32 slots (Source of data for calculation is from 2013 Asia Regionals.):

These slots will be distributed to three administrative sub-regions according to the contest site participation scores formula specified in item (III.E.2) applying to the Asia Regional Contests in the previous year. The rounding off of participation scores may end up to 31 or 33 slots. The one less or one more slot will be applied to the next item of the “Remaining 3 Slots.”

(2) Remaining 3 slots (Source of data for calculation is from 2014 WF.)

These 3 (or 2-4) slots are Asia Performance slots and will be distributed to three sub-regions. The 3 sub-regions will be ranked by the average of the total number of problems solved in 2014 WF excluding the medal award team, but including the honorable mentioned teams.

The allocation of the remaining 2-4 slots to the three sub-regions by ranking from top to bottom is one of the following: 1:1:0, 2:1:0, or 2:1:1.

(3) If the data from 2014 WF judging teams cannot be obtained, Asia Director may at his discretion uses the following for the ranking of three sub-region: The top rank sub-region with the highest number of teams been ranked in the 2014 WF excluding the medal award teams; The next rank sub-region with the next highest number of ranked teams except the medal award teams; the last one is the third rank sub-region. Allocation of the remaining 2-4 slots will be same as those specified in the above item (2).

(f) Once the number of slots to each sub-region is decided, the slots will be distributed to contest sites in the sub-region. The following guidelines will be observed when distributing slots to each contest site in the sub-region:

(1) The EC sub-region will use the EC resolution posted in the Asia Blog and using the 2014 Asia Regionals rankings. The EC resolution can be found at: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_b946da100102v0lg.html

(2) The PP sub-region will accept Asia Director’s decision in using Contest Site scores from 2014 Asia Regionals and using a formula similar to 0.3-0.6-1.0 methods.

(3) If the WC sub-region does not come out a resolution, Asia Director will apply the same formula from PP sub-region to WC sub-region.

(4) 0.3 – 0.6 - 1.0 formula within each administrative sub region:

The formula of 0.3-0.6-1.0 indicates 0.3 for foreign team and 0.6 for repeated domestic team to encourage international participation and to take care of the double registration complexity.

The numbers are applied to each team in the sub-region until Site Slot Shares in the sub-region are exhausted (Asia Director may elect different formula other than that of 0.3-0.6- 1.0 when the situation demands.)

(g) Preference Teams awarded by RCD’s or by Asia Director:

(1) A contest site steering committee (RCD) may offer slot to a team from other administrative sub-region with a criteria approved by Asia Director. For example, each of all three India sites in 2014 will award teams from other sub-region to earn the WF slots from the India site if the out of sub-region team is qualified to WF for the site and if there is at least one India team in the site is advanced to WF.

(2) All five EC (China) sites will award 2014 hosting universities WF slots if the host team can win a ranking of 10 or better in other contest sites in China.(Please refer to EC resolution in the Asia blog.)

(3) If the additional bonus slots are available from Headquarter, Asia Director may award those slots to those universities with great contribution to Asia ICPC development providing the team from those universities win a university ranking of 15 or better in any Asia Regional contest. If the available slots can not accommodate all preference teams, the number of times in hosting Asia Regional contests, the year the university was in the WF last time, and etc. will be used for deciding the university preference to win the WF slots. Other factors such as geographic balance may also be put into consideration for selecting Asia Director's preference teams.

(h) The WF slot shares of PP sub-region can not be used by teams from another sub-region without advance approval for preference teams by the contest site steering committee and by Asia Director. Similarly, the WF slot shares of West Continent sub-region can not be used by teams from another sub-region without advance approval for preference teams by the contest site committee and by Asia Director. The same is true for EC sub-region.

4. Absence in WF by an advancing team

It is the team’s obligation to do everything to attend World Finals once the team has accepted the WF invitation. If the advancing team can not participate the WF for any reasons including visa issue, examination schedule conflict, financial difficulty or student job status, the team must inform ICPC headquarter and Asia Director at least two months before the WF. Failing to do so, the team’s home university will be penalized that the university will be prohibited from sending team to WF for the next two years. This allows Asia Director to have enough time to obtain a replacement team. (No team member replacement can be accepted.) It is very important for all team members to take care of the passport, visa, school issue, job situation, and travel problem as early as possible.

5. Unforeseen Situations

There may be some unforeseen situations or cases not included in these rules of ACM-ICPC Specific Asia Regional Rules. If the situation does occur, Asia Director will use his best judgment and professional practice to make the fairest decisions for the solutions.

F. Rules on Contest Environment

1. The contest language software will be made available by Contest Site Director to the contestants in advance of the Regional Contests. More specific details on the contest environment, including RAM and hardware configurations, software versions, and printers will be announced by the Contest Site Director and may be different from those used in World Finals.

2. Contest judging software (e,g, PC Square or other judging software) will be provided from ACM-ICPC website http://www.ecs.csus.edu/pc2/pc2code.html

Other judging software may be used. But the advance announcement by the Site Director is required.

IV. Other Administrative Items

A. Submitting documents.

At the end of the contest, each Regional Site Director is required to submit the following items to ICPC web site within one week after the contest:

1. Contest Ranking: University names, problems solved, and time consumed.

2. Contest Problems set.

3. Each Regional Site Director is required to enter the names of RCD, Coordinator, Judges, Contest Problems creators/setters and other contest staff to ICPC Staff list in ICPC web site.

4. Required documents to be submitted for provincials, nationals, and Invitationals are same.

B. Guidelines of Travel Stipend for financially poor teams

1. In order to encourage Asian teams of financially poor universities to participate ICPC Asia contests, the Asia Director prepares limited budget each year to tokenly support limited number of teams traveling to Asia contest sites from financially poor universities. These supports are only for teams attending Asia on-site Regionals contests.

2. Teams from financially poor universities may apply for such travel stipends before the Regional Contests. Forms may be available from Site Director. The travel stipends support checks or funds may be given at the contest site or after the contests are over. The checks or funds will be issued to the team coaches according to the data provided during registration.

3. This Travel Stipend Policy is a guideline. Asia Director reserves the right to modify the guideline or not to issue any travel supports.

C. Funding, Industrial Sponsorships, ICPC Integrity and Acknowledgement.

1. IBM Sponsorship

(a) ACM-ICPC has received major sponsorship from IBM since July 1997 for World

Finals events, ICPC organization and regional contest activities, ICPC web site and the development of PC^2. IBM also provides additional funds available to support part of the regional contest activities for each Asia site.

(b) The Asia Regional Contests are self supporting for each contest site. Each Regional Contest Site Director is responsible for obtaining financial support from local industries, government entities, and universities in addition to IBM support.

(c) All regional and provincial/national contests must award ACM-ICPC/IBM certificates, use ICPC/IBM badges, and provide conforming ICPC/IBM T-shirts. All Regional Contests must comply with ICPC/IBM sponsoring agreements regardless of whether ICPC/IBM sponsored funding, or local IBM funding is provided.

(d) As an ACM ICPC leader, RCD’s are responsible for compliance with the ACM ICPC sponsorship requirements. IBM is the primary sponsor. All printed materials must clearly display that fact. All printed goods, such as T-shirts, bags, and signage, and all contest materials must clearly display that fact, listing IBM first. (See Appendix Three.)

2. ICPC Integrity

(a) ICPC autonomy requires keeping the ACM ICPC Policies and Procedures and the ICPC Rules in spirit and well as in word. The ACM ICPC must control the integrity of all ICPC contests. Asia Director cannot approve any ACM-ICPC Asia contests from becoming the external Third Party (ETP) contests. Individuals are welcome in helping the contest in the committee under RCD’s management. RCD must manage the committees and individual volunteers, not in other opposite direction. Individuals help RCD as individuals. RCD’s manage the committees and individual volunteers. Volunteers do not manage RCD’s.

(b) In order to protect ICPC academic integrity and ICPC Semi-autonomous nature, most RCD’s and all new RCD’s are required to sign the “ICPC Integrity Acknowledge Statement” to prevent any external third party (ETP) from running ICPC activities, controlling and interrupting the RCD’s in executing the ICPC Asia Regional hosting functions. (See Appendix One for Integrity Statement.)

V. Appendices

A. Appendix One: ICPC Academic Integrity and Autonomy Statement:

All RCD’s especially new RCD’s must understand and preserve the ICPC Integrity and Autonomous Spirit and sign the “ICPC Integrity and Autonomy Statement:

**** Beginning of Statement ****

ACM ICPC Asia Site Contest Integrity Statement

Instructions: Please sign each item and please have your supervisor sign at the bottom of all items. We need two signatures. However, if you are a Dean or in a position higher, you may sign all places. Please send a signed copy in Adobe PDF format to Asia Director.

My Asia Regional Contest Site: _______________________

1. ____________ (If you want to run the online contest, do not sign here.)

I will cancel the online contest and concentrate on the on-site contest to cut cost. My on-site contest will allow all teams’ registration and I will set a criteria to pick teams to actually participate the on-site contest. I will not release contestant contact information to any 3rd party.

2. ____________ (Your signature)

(a) I guarantee that I will submit the contest home page design and contest brochure to the Asia Director for approval.

(b) I also guarantee that any link in the home page to a non-ICPC entity or organization must be approved by Asia Director. I will maintain the integrity of the ACM-ICPC contest. I guarantee my contest will be 100% ACM-ICPC activities. If I receive an Industrial support fund, I understand I will allow a link to Industry Support and I will allow their advertisement for their services, activities and recruiting. I will not allow any external Third Party (ETP) to run or control our own contest activities.

3. ______________ (Your Signature)

I guarantee that the contest problems setter/creator or volunteers must be organized under my contest committee and under my management. If paying them is necessary, they will be paid thru our contest budget, not through any external Third Party (“ETP”).

4. ______________ (Your Signature)

I understand that, if I violate the integrity of the ACM-ICPC contests listed above, my contest site will be cancelled or my contest site will not advance teams to the World Finals.

Your Supervisor or Dean’s Signature: _____________________ Date: ___________

B. Appendix Two: Additional Stricter Special Rules for EC (China) sites:

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_b946da100102v0lg.html

C. Appendix Three:

1. Guidelines of Sponsorship Interpretation:

http://hi.baidu.com/cjhwang/item/a3432f58d7ed7710abf6d7f2

2. Each new regional contest site director must sign the acknowledgement in confirming IBM sponsorship:

*******Beginning of IBM Sponsorship Compliance Acknowledgment

I (we) acknowledge that we will comply with the Sponsorship Compliance Guidelines published at: http://hi.baidu.com/cjhwang/item/a3432f58d7ed7710abf6d7f2

In particular, I (we) understand that ACM-ICPC has contract with IBM that IBM is the World Sponsor and is the primary (first) sponsor for ICPC Asia Regional contests including my (our) ACM-ICPC Asia Regional Contest Site. We will put the “ACM-ICPC Asia Regional sponsored by IBM logo” on all of our contest material including the web site and banners.

We acknowledge that we will put IBM as the primary sponsor for our contest. The IBM and ACM-ICPC logo will be clearly displayed. It will be clearly printed on T-shirts, on bags, and on contest materials as the primary sponsor. In cases where more sponsor logos are displayed, the IBM logo will be displayed first, and be of equal size of other sponsor logos.

We acknowledge that we will use the IBM fund to purchase T-shirts and bags (optional) for the contestants, and prizes for the winners. We also acknowledge that IBM is to be recognized for the prizes purchased using IBM funds.

My Contest Site: ____________

Signature 1 __________________ Date: _________________

(Coordinator in charge of operation, T-shirts and banner logo decoration);

Signature 2 __________________ Date: _________________

(Dean, Vice President, or Director who is supervising the contest expenses.).

****** End of Acknowledgement

(END of Rules!)

More detail:

http://icpcasia.blogspot.com/ (Dr. C J Hwang and ACM - ICPC Asia)

and

http://icpc.baylor.edu/welcome.icpc