TopCoder Single Round Match #500 Announced for March 19th

GLASTONBURY, Conn., March 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- TopCoder®, Inc., today announced that it will hold its 500th Single Round Match (SRM) on Saturday, March 19th, 2011. To commemorate this milestone achievement, the match will offer $5,000 in cash prizes in appreciation of the dedication and passion for algorithmic competition as exemplified by the TopCoder Community. SRM 500 begins at 12:00 noon EDST (GMT-4).  Cash prizes totaling $5,000.00 will be distributed amongst top performing rated members in both the Division I and Division II competition groups. For full details visit: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchDetails&rd=14429

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TopCoder is a community of talented people passionate about software programming – students, professionals, computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, doctors and representatives from all fields and disciplines collaborate, learn, work and compete in the world's foremost professional and collegial innovation ecosystem.

TopCoder Single Round Match Stats

• The first ever SRM on May, 8th, 2001 attracted 81 competitors.
• Current matches attract 1,800 participants biweekly (~20X increase).
• Over the past decade more than 43,000 unique competitors have entered the TopCoder Arena to test their skills and talents against the best algorithmists in the world.
• In 2008 alone, over 44,000 unique individuals from around the globe spent more than 770,000 hours in the TopCoder arena competing and/or practicing in the extensive practice rooms.
• TopCoder Community currently lists over 280,000 total members, more than 40,000 of whom are rated with in excess of 7,000 active within the last six months
• Ten years worth of problem sets are available in the TopCoder Arena practice rooms – and registration is free. For full details on how to compete visit http://www.topcoder.com/wiki/display/tc/How+to+Compete+in+Algorithm+Competitions

"It has been rewarding to see the TopCoder arena grow from a small competition portal into a well respected social hub and powerful educational tool, where thousands of problems are freely available for practice with tens of thousands of solutions for review and dissection," said Mike Lydon, CTO of TopCoder. "The International nature of SRMs is fun to witness - seeing thousands of intelligent people from all corners of the world congregate during each event is an amazing experience."

About TopCoder Single Round Matches

The Algorithm competitions are timed contests where all contestants compete online and are given the same problems to solve under the same time constraints. The competitions are available in four programming languages: Java, C#, C++, and VB.NET. Each Single Round Match (SRM) consists of three phases: Coding Phase (75 min), Challenge Phase (15 min), and System Testing Phase.

The Coding Phase is a timed event where all contestants are presented with the same three questions representing three levels of complexity and, accordingly, three levels of point earnings potential. Points for a problem are awarded upon submission of any solution that successfully compiles and are calculated on the total time elapsed from the time the problem was opened until the time it was submitted.

The Challenge Phase is a timed event wherein each competitor has a chance to challenge the functionality of other competitors' code. A successful challenge will result in a loss of the original problem submission points by the defendant, and a 50-point reward for the challenger. Unsuccessful challengers will incur a point reduction of 25 points as a penalty, applied against their total score in that round of competition.

The System Testing Phase is applied to all submitted code that has not already been successfully challenged. If the TopCoder System Test finds code that is flawed, the author of that code submission will lose all of the points that were originally earned for that code submission. The automated tester will apply a set of inputs, expecting the output from the code submission to be correct. If the output from a coder's submission does not match the expected output, the submission is considered flawed. The same set of input/output test cases will be applied to all code submissions for a given problem. All successful challenges from the Challenge Phase will be added to the sets of inputs for the System Testing Phase.

About TopCoder, Inc.

TopCoder is the world's largest competitive software development community and platform with more than 280,000 developers representing over 200 countries. TopCoder hosts the largest and most comprehensive developer ratings and performance metrics available. The TopCoder community builds software and community platforms for a wide-ranging client base through a competitive, rigorous, standards based methodology. For more information about sponsoring TopCoder events and utilizing TopCoder's software services and platforms, visit www.topcoder.com.

TopCoder is a registered trademark of TopCoder, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE TopCoder, Inc.