LNU Penguins on ACM ICPC Finals

5 min readMay 19, 2015

Hi, all!

This is Ivan. I have recently read Egor’s review about the team “LNU Penguins”, which takes part in ACM ICPC World Finals these days. I want to say that I mostly share his point of view, but I am in more tight relationships with these guys, and I think that it’s not fair that he wrote just a few sentences about such an excellent team!

So, below, you will find everything you always wanted to know— scandals, machinations, investigations of ACM ICPC community! As bonus — a few photos from my private collection. Keep reading ;)

First of all, let me introduce all team members. I will do it in alphabetical order only because I cannot order these outstanding guys in any other way ;)

#0. Biletskyy Vasyl, coach

The gold medal at ACM ICPC 2008.

Legend in the Ukrainian programming community.

Entrepreneur.

Director of the first school in Ukraine, aimed to teach people solve algorithmic problems and prepare them for different level of competitions. As you may see — he does his job very well— LNU_Penguins is his second team at World Finals during the last few years. His hobby is finding bugs in the tests or problem statements during the SEERCs.

#1. Bilyi Roman, team member

Roman is an extremely smart guy. I know him for almost 10 years since our study at the Lviv physics and mathematics lyceum. He was a regular winner of maths olympiads on the country and worldwide level. Also, he has unbelievable persistence. I remember the first time I told him about Project Euler — he was full of passion and was solving the problems there like a boss. Moreover, I remember how we were celebrating our first place at some local algorithmic competition (organized by our beloved Vasyl), and the next morning Roman woke up and decided to participate in Maths olympiad in our university. Well, I cannot say he was absolutely drunk, but he wasn’t sober either. But, know what? He participated in that olympiad that day and, of course, won it. That’s my boy ;) Just imagine what he can do with his competitors while sober. If he will, of course…

Just to summarize, I have been participating in SEERC 2012 with Roman in my team (LNU_7in4es), and that was the best team I have ever had.

By the way, as statistic says when a team from L’viv has a player with a surname starting with Bil —they are going for gold. Cheers!

#2. Gerasymiv Vitaliy, team member

I met Vitaliy for the first time when he won our regional school olympiad of informatics with an absolute score 40/40 points. That is really impressive, especially taking into account that I was one of the problem setters. When he joined our university, he was all in algorithms. Vasyl took care of him and trained a real combat machine. Vitaliy is a master of dynamical programming in our community, and there are legends that Vitaliy can solve any problem with DP. Even max-flow. Well… Good luck dealing with him ;)

Roman(on the left) and Vitaliy(with a cup) is celebrating the winning of SEERC 2014

#3. Pryschenko Bogdan, team member

Well, he is very interesting and persistent person too. A lot of his friends believe that Bogdan solved all problems on every online judge. I also think so. Moreover, I almost sure that Bogdan solves at least 20 problems per day. And, if he wouldn’t solve any bully problems in the morning of the contest —he wouldn’t have another option except solving all problems from World Final.

Guys resting before finals in Marocco. From left to right: Anton(what is he doing here??), Vitaliy, Roman, Bogdan

Of course, it’s easy to predict that all these awesome guys are red on TopCoder. Also, they all help Vasyl with that algorithmic school I have mentioned earlier. They are spreading their knowledge there, and, in my honest opinion, this is the veritable characteristic of successful people.

Talking about the team in general, they are very organized and always stay together — no matter what — whether this is a regular training or a next in turn party.

During their training, they were solving problems from previous World Finals, and their scores were always in the range from 3rd place to 17th. Average is 6.5th place. Sounds good, isn’t it!?

Their solving process is planned very carefully, everyone knows what his job is, and, moreover, everybody knows when to help each other. Well, remember, I mentioned something about scandals at the beginning? So, here it goes. There are no scandals in their awesome team. Bite it!

I am pretty sure you want to take a look at our future champions. That’s why I have prepared a few photos for you. Take a look, they are awesome (both: guys and photos).