Recently I tried many ways to get an OpenCup's login, but all failed. There seems to be only one way for me(even it's illegal), I'll pay 50$ for an opencup div1 login and another 50$ for a div2 login. I'll use it carefully(won't share it to others or participate in live contest by it), just for solving some problems.
If you know exactly what I mean and want to help me, please contact me with this email: skullskin#163.com.
This post might be illegal in codeforces too, I'm sorry for the bother.
Auto comment: topic has been updated by SkullSkin (previous revision, new revision, compare).
I don't consider this post as illegal on Codeforces. Moreover, such post is a very important signal for snarknews that something is wrong with current registration policy (or, better to say, it's absence?)
I would also pay $50 USD each. Would also pay for a http://neerc.ifmo.ru/trains/information/index.html personal account, if that is allowed. My email is code.miles.code[at]gmail.com
Uhm, ITMO's trainings are open for general public. Have you tried clicking on the "Register Person" link on the left?
I have, perhaps 3 times over the last few months. Every time I do, I wait a while for my name to show up under the "Logins" link but no luck. I wonder what I could be doing wrong. Because of this, I am willing to pay.
Try asking andrewzta about what's going on.
I saw another answer at a post on ICPC-CAMP by coincidence. And I am wondering whether it is you?
I would also like an OpenCup account. However, I understand that OpenCup is for very strong teams, and I probably don't meet that criteria. But perhaps there should be a way to get an OpenCup login after you reach some rating threshold on Codeforces. I would be more motivated to do Codeforces if this was the case.
OpenCup is not for strong teams, OpenCup is just not online contest. OpenCup contest are conducted using system of what is called "sectors". Basically you need someone (usually university stuff) to apply to create sector, then conduct stages in single place (usually in university). That representative then would receive OpenCup logins from Snark and would be responsible for maintaining integrity of competition (i. e. no cheating) and entering team names and line ups
Which university/school are you from?
Snark, just open registration for everybody. It's easier
As i said before, its not online contest. Its multi-site contest, and registration of a site is not so complicated. Any exceptions can be considered (basically, some sectors contain 1-2 teams), but its not a competition where every anonymous person can register.
Can you present some good sides of making it multi-site not online? One downside is completely obvious — hard access and a lot less users. In my post below I already countered hypothetical good side of preventing cheating and I can't think of any other reason.
OpenCup is mostly for teams, and not for individual users, and for the team contest multi-site form is better.
Team contests need more preparation (atleast previously printed tasks will be good), so online team competition will depend on things like printing the statements. Which is better to do in sector, where responsible person receives the statements and prints them.
Another point is that multi-site is closer to classical ACM-ICPC, especially in the way that it encourages people to form ACM-ICPC communities, and may be involve the coach in the organization. In fact, after coach is registered for OpenCup, he have access to nice set of trainings at ejudge server.
Note that teams, which had good results in ACM-ICPC (WF or equivalent), but became not eligible, are granted with personal external access to OpenCup (so-called "ext" sector), i.e. each of those teams form a sector itself. May be it can be possible to extend those privileges for the red contestants at TopCoder and at Codeforces (especially now, with more fair color distribution), regardless of their WF results.
So OpenCup is a contest, where current (and future) ACM ICPC teams compete with each other and with strongest teams from past, which decided to continue participation in team contest.
What do you think about creating a separate "out of contest" scoreboard with open registration? Like in Div2 rounds on Codeforces. That may unpredictably increase load on testing systems, thoughs.
Well, then it will decrease value of OpenCup contests as trainings (too easy for contestant to enter and try to solve, then later this contest cant be used as training); and several sectors prefer to use them at training events instead of the regular participation due to not so acceptable timeline (its one of ways to use it, not better and not worse).
Another backdraw is that this feature can be easily used for cheating (two entries as official team and as ooc player).
So it's a question of trust. What if the trainings coordinator says "don't work on even-numbered OpenCup contests, because we'll use some of them as training". 99% of contestants would cooperate, because there is no point cheating in real contests, let alone trainings; they would only be undermining their own skills. The remaining 1% (like some recent alleged North Korean cheating on CodeChef) can be ignored. Note that such types can cheat anyway, by asking a friend who participated in the original contest, or by reading Petr's blog :)
Are there any obstacles against making OPENCup easily open for everybody? I understand that requirement of making it "at least half official" and that whole sector thingy prevents cheating in some way, but is it really worth that? Codeforces and TopCoder are also vulnerable to some kind of cheating, but since there are no valuable rewards it is not that kind of a big deal and the same goes for OpenCup. Hypothetical cheaters should not affect results in any significant way, because they are a really small percentage of all competitors which is disjoint with top teams!
Moreover as far as I know, no rules of participation are written in English so it is even more confusing for nonRussian speakers.
Okay, it's 2021 now, but opentrains is still hard to login. We still want to buy an account, just to upsolve the problems.