"Practice and study are the answer. Practice implementing algorithms. Study some books on algorithms and past problems. Get a library of common algorithms and data structures together and get to the point where you know them like the back of your hand. Programming competitions are as much an implementation race as they are a "who can spot the algorithm" contest. My opinion (and I know you didn't ask so feel free to skip this section) is that programming competitions are a waste of time. If you have fun doing them then that's great, but I wouldn't devote a whole lot of effort to improving at them. Consider the difference between devoting 1000 hours to getting better at programming competitions vs actually building something or doing something productive. All programming competition problems are, by construction, "easy". They are set up to be solved and to be solved in a very short amount of time. They all basically follow the "read problem", "see trick", "implement" formula. ==To me,solving real world problems is vastly more complicated and rewarding."==

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/1cj4h4/how_do_i_get_better_at_competitive_programming/ https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-best-strategy-to-improve-my-skills-in-competitive-programming-in-2-3-months https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-improve-in-competitive-programming https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-become-good-at-competitive-programming-Are-there-any-courses-that-will-take-me-one-step-forward-before-I-start-doing-SPOJ-or-TopCoder-problems

** i just copied the above.