OK the rules are changing again (on Oct. 15th):

Eighteen (18) of the 2019 ICPC North America teams will advance to the 2020 ICPC World Finals by meeting at least one of the following criteria: (1) Win the 2020 ICPC North America Championship, (2) Win one of six medals at the 2020 ICPC North America Championship, (3) Win a wildcard slot at the 2020 ICPC North America Championship, or (4) Win one of the eleven 2019 North America Regional Contests.

(Sorry I am also a bit confused here. (1) is definitely included in (2), and I have no idea about what a wildcard slot is. Does anyone have any idea?)

Intro

Disclaimer: I am not an official ICPC staff. I write this post just to summarize the information about the North American Championship next year and earn some contribution (sssshhhhhh...!).

Last evening, the information about the North American Championship (NAC for short) is released by the ICPC official.

Finally, the schools in North America can have an exciting super-regional! Although we have NAIPCs before, this one sounds more official!

Summary of the rules

Those are some key takeaways I summarized from the official document:

• This is an onsite competition at Georgia Institute of Technology on February 19-23, 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia.
• A certain number of teams from each regional (different for each regional, see Below) can advance to NAC, and at most one team from a university can advance to NAC.

• 55 teams will compete in NAC for a gold medal (the champion), two silver medals (2nd and 3rd), and three bronze medals (4th, 5th, and 6th).
• Eighteen (18) of the 2019 ICPC North America teams will advance to the 2020 ICPC World Finals by meeting at least one of the following criteria: (1) Win the 2020 ICPC North America Championship, (2) Win one of six medals at the 2020 ICPC North America Championship,(3) Win a wildcard slot at the 2020 ICPC North America Championship, or (4) Win one of the eleven (11) 2019 North America Regional Contests.
• The top team will be the North America Champion. The top team from each of the 4 subregions (West, MidWest, East, South) will be acknowledged as a subregion champion.
• It looks like they will try to make the contest similar to World Finals (including the coding environment, the rules, 25-page reference material, etc). See the website below for more details.

More info is available on http://nac.icpc.global/

Some opinions

First, NAC will improve the North American ICPC team selection process, which has been heavily discussed in this post. The contest offers a good field to see who deserves to be in the World Finals.

I am pretty sure this will make ICPC a more exciting experience for more contestants. Before we have NAC, the only contest most of the teams can have is regional, which, in my region, is hosted in a room of 12 teams (although there are totally 200+ teams in the regional). In NAC, teams are getting more involved and it will be an unforgettable event for the teams in it.

I do not doubt that the contest side (mainly, problem setting) of it will be of high quality since there have been some many nice problem setters for each region in North American. Also, NAIPC has been in great success of offering teams in NA a high-level contest, and experience that those judges and problem setters have can be a good help for NAC.

What's your opinion toward NAC?