ACM-ICPC 2012 Asia Official Regional Rules (September 7, 2012)

Sponsored by IBM



The 2012 Asia  Rules are the combined result of  merging 2011 rules, and new guidelines of 2012 items which include the new WF allocation formula and  the guidelines for  Contest Advisory Councils and Council Organization. The 2012 Asia rules also include some common sense rules in writing.


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. 2012 Asia regional specific rules:

A. Asia Regional Contest, 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 to hold the Asia Regional Contests. The Asia Director also appoints one Contest Site Director to head each Contest Site Steering Committee. Site Directors are charged with responsibilities of planning, organizing and executing the Regional Contests according to ACM/ICPC Operational Guidelines. (Note: This represents the Autonomous spirit for all Asia Regional Contest Sites.) The Asia Director also appoints Local Area Contest Directors for National, Provincial, and Invitational contests in the Asia Super Region.

(c) Asia Director heads the Asia Council and appoints the chief officers of all Asia Contest Advisory Sub-councils.  All organizations, activities, announcements, and resolutions bearing the name of ACM-ICPC in Asia must be approved by Asia Director and be posted in Asia Blog except those from contest site steering committees and those with advance approval. (Contest site steering committees post information and announcement in their respective web sites.)

(d).The memberships of the Asia Council consist of the following members: the current year contest site directors, and one representative (the chair, the chief coordinator, secretary general, or chief officer) from each active sub-council in Asia. The Asia Council members have the right to vote for the new revisions of Asia Rules under ICPC guidelines. The Asia Director will have final interpretation and approval for such amendments/revisions. All Asia contest sites are semi-autonomous under ICPC guidelines.

(e) Asia Director may approve any activities such as seminars, forums, or training programs sponsored by any individual, any committee, or any sub-council as long as these activities are beneficial to ACM-ICPC community. More detail explanations of contest advisory council organization are described in item A(8).

4. Three Administrative Sub-regions

(a)Each university competing in the Asia Regional Contests is homed in one of three administrative sub-regions based on past participation and geographical locations:

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

Continent East: Universities located in Mongolia, North Korea, Mainland China, and Macau.

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

(b) Asia will conduct 12-18 Asia Regional site contests distributed among these three sub-regions.

(c) Again, sub-regions are used for the purpose of World Finals teams selection.

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

(a) . The World ICPC contest is a two-three tiered competition (Regional 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 (A6) for detail.

(b). The recommended organization of the Asia Regional Contest Site Steering Committee for each site usually consists of the following members:
Honorary Chairs (Optional)
Chair (Regional Contest Site Director)
Co-Chairs (plus 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 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 the contest site.

(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, national levels, with the approval of the Asia Regional Site Director.

6. Three levels of Asia Programming Contests:

(a) Asia Regional Contests, including First Round Online Asia Regionals.

The ACM/ICPC Asia Regional 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.

Asia Regional final round must be an on-site contest. Asia Regional site is used for 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 on-site Asia Regionals and associated online sub-contests should be after May 1 and before December 15 of each year. Winning team of each Asia Regional is selected to World Finals. Additional teams may be selected to World Finals (WF) according to the formula described in item D(4).

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

(b) Provincial /Multi-provincial/Invitational/ National Contests.
The application for a Provincial/National contest by a faculty member is preferred. However, a student organization may host the contest by applying directly to Asia Director. 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 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. Team must be of 3 contestants. No team will be selected and advanced to World Finals from National/Provincials/ Invitational Contests. The contest date of Provincial/National must be after February 1 and before Oct 31 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”.

(c) Campus Contest.
Hosting campus contest by a faculty member is preferred. A student organization may host the contest by applying directly to Asia Director too. 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.

7. Asia First Round Online Regional Sub-contest and Asia On-Site Regional 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.  Each Contest Site Director may set up its own selection formula for teams to be advanced to On-Site Regional Contest (The selection formula used  by China sites in the Appendix 2 is a good reference for all). 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.

(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, the sub-contest shall not be ranked and all teams in the sub-contest should be copied (promoted) to Asia On-site Regional Contest by Contest Site Steering Committee.

(c) Multi-provincial Online Internet Contest and National 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 under the Asia Regional First Round Online Sub-contest and not be grouped together with “Asia Provincial/National Contests”.

8. Organization of Contest Advisory Councils.

(a) The contest advisory council has been a very good way to mentor the new contest director/coordinator, to assist the contest steering committee and to expand the Asia contests to more new host universities. Contest sites are more dynamic while contest councils are more stable and good in helping others

(b) Asia Director may approve and organize many sub-councils  in Asia which covers the Asia territories similar to the organization of Asia regional contest sites. The responsibilities of these sub-councils, placed  in between contest site committees and Asia Director, are providing coordination, assistance and guidance to contest site committees, and making recommendation of host candidates of Asia Regional and provincial contests to Asia Director. There will be no supervision or management responsibility authorized to any sub-council over the contest site committee or over other sub-councils. Any supervision issues of contest site committee or sub-council should be directed to Asia Director.

(c) AS of the date of this rules, there are some very active models of sub-councils such as Thailand Contest Advisory Council, Northeast China Contest Advisory Council, Taiwan Contest Advisory Council, Bangladesh Contest Advisory Council, China Contest United Advisory Council, and Japan Contest Advisory Council ( ICPC Japan). Many other councils created  are either active or in the ready state to become active.

(d) The typical organization of council (sub-council) in Asia is strongly recommended as follows:

 (1) Chief Executive Officer (Chair, Coordinator, Executive Secretary, Secretary General, etc);

 (2) Associate (Vice) Chief Officer;

 Both Officers are appointed by Asia Director with a two years term and are renewable. Nomination of   Officers may be made  by individuals, committee, or election nomination. Nomination is to be submitted  to Asia Director for consideration and/or for approval.

(3) Standing Committee;

 Standing Committee consists of current year contest site committee directors and chairs of all smaller councils in the specified territory. Chief Executive Officer and Associate Chief Office are also part of the Standing committee. Additional 1 - 4 Advisors may be appointed by Asia Director to be included as Standing committee members upon nomination to and approved by Asia Director.

Standing committee members are ACM volunteers and not allowed to receive financial compensation other than travel expenses from Asia Contest Site Committee, provincial contest hosting universities or industrial sponsorship for helping in ICPC activities.

Standing committee may pass and submit proposal and resolution to Asia Director pertaining only to the associated territory. The final proposal and resolution must be approved by Asia Director and posted in Asia blog to be effective. (Note that any member of ICPC community may also submit proposal to Asia Director directly.)

 (4) Problem creator support team and chair;

Members of this support team may receive financial compensation in addition to travel expenses in helping the contest problems setting or creating. Qualified members of this committee include those coaches whose university teams had earned a rank in the World Finals during the last ten years, and those well-known problem creators in ICPC community. List of support members’ names are strongly recommended to be displayed in the web site for reference. Host universities of the contest committee may select one or more members of this support team for help or for working together as a team in the contest committee. Nominations to the support team are welcome from all ICPC community and individuals.

 (5) Contest software/hardware support team and chair.

Members of this support team may receive financial compensation in addition to travel expenses in helping ICPC software/ hardware  activities. List of support member names are strongly recommended to be displayed in the web site for reference. Host universities of the contest committee may select one or more members of this support team for help or for working together as a team in the contest steering committee. Nominations to the support team are welcome from all ICPC community and individuals.

(6) If the council is large or matured, the Asia Director may require the council to be structured as in the above typical organization to avoid the conflict of interest.

(e)  The council chief officer will be recommending the Asia regional contest hosts and site directors/coordinators within his/her territory to Asia Director at least 1-2 year in advance. The Chief Officer may recommend him/her-self to host the contest, but the rotation of contest hosts should be the norm. The council chief officers are also responsible to recommend the hosts for national/provincial contests within its territory to Asia Director.

 (f) The directors/coordinators of contest steering committee and the chief officers of councils report to Asia Director directly. Each contest site with its associated steering committee is semi-autonomous under ACM-ICPC guidelines and Asia Rules. Contest site steering committee and contest advisory council are sibling to each other and working together toward the ICPC goals in Asia. The advisory council will provide guidance, assistance, and coordination to the contest steering committee as a supporter or mentor, especially for the new contest sites. The advisory councils are not above the contest sites and have no responsibility/authority in supervising or managing the contest site steering committees.

(g)  Advisory council chief officer or representatives are also invited to WF with self-paid rooms, and with event meals provided. It is recommended that the contest steering committee may provide token seed money for hotel room for advisory council representative to WF, such seed money support is not mandatory, but encouraged.

(h) The Chief Officers are required to prepare annual financial report to the council standing committee if the council has received funding from industry or other supporting organization. The report should include the expenses report of the previous year and the planning budget of the current or coming year.

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

1. Rule of Eligibility Decision Tree

(a) A team consists of exactly three contestants.  All contestants are urged to study the rule of the Eligibility Decision Tree in ACM - ICPC Regional Rules 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 Asia Regional Contest.

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

2. A student can represent only one university.

3. A student may compete in at most two Asia Regional Site Contests, home or not-home administrative sub-region. A student may compete in at most one sub-contest under the same 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 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 both Asia Regional, Sub-contest, and Local Area Contests.

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

Team registration must be entered thru sub-contests. 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. A contestant may register in two sub-contests under two separate Asia Regional sites. The contestant must cancel their registration at least ten (10) days before the contest date to avoid the violation of two sites limitation. Such violation will disqualify the contestant for all other contest sites in the same contest year.

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 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 regional contest provided that the team composition change is entered in the ICPC registration web site before the Regional On-site Contest. Any change to the team after that regional contest is not allowed.

C. Rules on Conduct, Scoring of the Contest, and Team # Assignments.

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.

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

3. Questions or requests written in a language other than English may be made from contestants to designated translators and then to judges. Judges will respond to contestants directly in English.

4. 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 will continue until the end of the contest.

5. It is recommended that 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. Contest Site Directors may contact Asia Director to find out an efficient way of random assignment of team numbers.

D. Rules on Regional Contest Rankings, Award and World Finals Slots

1. In an effort to encourage the participation of female students in Asia Regional Contests, the Asia Director will award each female contestant a cash award of $200 - $300 or more if (i) the team has three female contestants; and (ii) the team is ranked in the top 10 of actual ranking and is the best female team in that contest site.

2. It is mandatory that each Contest Site Director must rank the teams who solve at least one problem for both the first round online sub-contest and the Asia Regional On-site contest. Final standings 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, the sub-contest should not be ranked and all team in the sub-contest should be promoted to Asia on-site regional contest where the ranking will be established.
3. 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. (The stricter policy to host teams from Mainland China is governed by the submitted resolution from China United Council which was approved by Asia Director. See in appendix 3).

4. WF slot 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 Region are determined by ICPC headquarter consisting of basic and bonus slots. Asia Director in turn uses the following guidelines to allocate WF slots to each Asia sub-region and to each Asia contest site.

The following defines the Site Participation Scores:

 (1)  The contest site initial participation scores and the 70-25-5 formula:

Counting for site participation initial scores will only count teams accepted and solving at least one problem in the sub-contests and in Asia Regional On-site contests. The 70-25-5 formula will be applied to the site initial score calculation: Total number of distinct universities 70%; total number of distinct teams beyond the first team 25%; and total number of teams in the provincial and national (non-Asia host) contests 5%. The site initial participation score will be the sum of 70-25-5 formula.

 (2) Site reduction factors and site participation score:

Site reduction factor example due to double registration: If the percentage of students with double registration is 80% in Mainland China, for example, then the site reduction factor will be 0.6 = (0.2 + 0.2+ 0.8) / 2. The site final participation score is the result of initial score multiplied by the reduction factor.

 (c)  Contest Site Basic Slot Shares – historical slot shares (40% of WF slots allocated to Asia):
 (1)  Add the number of WF teams from the last two years within each administrative sub-region to obtain the preliminary slot shares for each administrative sub-region.

 (2) The administrative sub-region preliminary slot shares are distributed to each site proportional to the site participation scores and are then normalized to 40% of the WF slots to obtain the site Basic slot shares.

            (d) Contest Site Bonus Slot Shares (60% of WF Asia slots.) and Final Site Slot Share:

 (1) The bonus score for each site is obtained by adding:

The current year site performance (site participation score) – 40%;

the growth and innovation of the site or area (increase of site participation from last year) - 40%;

and the need of the Asia growth -20%.

(2) Each site bonus score is normalized to 60% of WF slots to obtain contest site bonus slot shares.

 (3) The slot share for each site is the sum of Basic and Bonus slot shares.

  (e) The teams advanced in each site are decided by applying 0.3 – 0.6 - 1.0 formula within each administrative sub-region until Site Slot Shares in the administrative sub-region are exhausted. (Asia Director may elect different formula other than that of 0.3-0.6-1.0 when the situation demands.) 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.

 (f) Discretional slots from Asia Director (0- 3 slots):

Discretional slots by Asia Director are for the growth of ICPC Asia, for the contribution by a host university to Asia contests, and for the special award. (Teams receiving these slots must be ranked 15 or better in a contest site which can be justified by external judges. A host university team can only receive such award at most one time in 5 year. )

 (g)  Slots offered by a contest site steering committee and slot shares used by sub-region:

  A contest site steering committee may offer slot to a team from other administrative sub-region with a criteria approved by Asia Director. For example, all contest sites in Mainland China (Continent East) have offered any team in Asia to use slot shares from Mainland China sites as long as the outside team is within the qualified line in a contest site in China. All contest sites in Mainland China (Continent East) have further offered any team from Taiwan to use slot shares from Mainland China sites as long as the Taiwan team is ranked 15 or better in a contest site in China.

 The WF slot shares of Pacific-Peninsula sub-region can not be used by teams from another sub-region without advance approval by the contest site steering committee and Asia Director. Similarly, the WF slot shares of Continent West sub-region can not be used by teams from another sub-region without advance approval by the contest site committee and Asia Director.

 (h) Teams from political territories who made little contribution to Asia Site Participation scores:

  Political territory who made little contribution to Asia Site Participation scores in the last three years is restricted to at most one team per territory advancing to the WF from its home administrative sub-region. Teams from these territories are encouraged to participate the contest sites in Mainland China to obtain more than one WF team.

  These territories are Singapore, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, North Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, and etc.

5. 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 or 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.

E. Rules on Organization of Judges/Problem Setters Committee

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 programs, 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 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 effective from May 1, 2009.

5. Contest Site Director must report the names and their affiliated universities of all problem setters and all judges within one week after each Asia On-Site Regional Contest to Asia Director. Asia Director may publish the information on the Asia blog. Contest site committees are urged to submit the list to Asia Director in time to display in the blog if Asia Director chooses to do so.

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, 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 given to Asia Director to decide. Asia Director will use it to move up that host team by 1 or more ranks in other sites when deciding the WF slots; Further restriction: A team cannot be advanced to WF, if the problem setter/judge is from the same university of that team.

Adoption of (a): Amritapuri , Dhaka, Daejeon, Kaohsiung, Hatyai, Hanoi, Jakarta, and Kharagpur

Adoption of (b): Tianjin, Chengdu, Changchun, Jinhua, Hangzhou

No Adoption with approved reasons: Kanpur, Tehran, Tokyo.

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 PC Square (e.g., PC^2) (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 two items to ICPC web site: (1) Contest Ranking: University names, problems solved, and time consumed. (2) Contest Problems. (3) Each Regional Site Director is to submit the following items to Asia Director if requested: At least ten photos containing contestant activities, and five photos containing officer's activities

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 Directors or Asia Director. The travel stipends support checks may be given at the contest site or after the contests are over and written in US Bank checks only. The checks 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 and Acknowledgement.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

V. Appendices
A. Appendix 1: Each regional contest site director must sign the acknowledgement in item 3 each year for confirming IBM Sponsorship:

1. Letter To Site Directors from Asia Director:

Beginning of Letter

Dear Asia Site Directors: Every year we have new hosts, new directors, and new coordinators for the Asia Regional contests. Most of the new volunteers attended the recent RCD symposium at the World Finals. Yet, the knowledgeable volunteers may not be the persons in charge of contest operations. These scenarios had caused some violations of ACM-ICPC sponsorship guidelines. Some of these violations are listed as follows:

(a) IBM sponsorship was not clearly displayed. The IBM logo was not
clearly printed on T-shirts, on bags, or on the contest materials including the regional contest web site.

(b) IBM was not being acknowledged as the primary sponsor. As you all know, ACM-ICPC has contract with IBM as the sole sponsor of the World Finals, and primary sponsor of the worldwide regional contests. You may have additional sponsors for Asia Regional contest. Even if you have not obtained support from the local IBM office, IBM must be acknowledged as the primary sponsor for your Asia Regional Contests.

In order to prevent such violation from happening, I am asking you to
sign on the attached “Acknowledgement” form of this file before I authorize release of the IBM funding to you. Many of you have followed the guidelines very well for all these years. Please bear with me to sign the “Acknowledgement” for fairness. Those of you have followed guidelines well and you are the one in charge of contest operation, one signature (yours) is enough. Those of you are new contest sites or have not followed guidelines, I need two signatures from you. One can be coordinator in charge of operation, and the other one must be either Dean, Vice President, or Director who is supervising the contest expenses. After you sign the “Acknowledgement”, please e-mail me the pdf  file. I do not need the original. Or you can fax to my electronic fax number in the US.
Thanks,
ACM-ICPC Asia Director

2. Guidelines of Sponsorship Interpretation:

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

3. *******Beginning of Acknowledgement

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.

Contest Site: ______________________
Signature 1 (Coordinator in charge of operation, T-shirts and banner logo decoration): _____________
Date: _________________

Signature 2 (Dean, Vice President, or Director who is supervising the contest expenses.): ____________
Date: __________________
******* End of Acknowledgement

B. Appendix 2: Formula recommended in selecting teams from First Round Online Contest to On-site Contest for ACM-ICPC China sites:

http://hi.baidu.com/cjhwang/item/17753ad9258d1ae7785daaf0

C. Appendix 3: Additional Stricter Special Rules for China sites: http://hi.baidu.com/cjhwang/item/17753ad9258d1ae7785daaf0