Two months ago, I posted this blog on training for IOI Gold. Despite not feeling particularly good about my chances at a gold medal going into the contest, luck was on my side and I did end up winning a gold in the end! Therefore, I'm writing this blog as a follow-up to my previous blog, as well as to share about some of my experiences and opinions about IOI and training for it.

Final months leading up to IOI

In the two months between posting the previous blog and participating in IOI, I almost entirely stopped doing problems from CF and AtCoder, and instead fully focused on OI-style problems. I had previously done virtual participations in IOI 2016-2023 (and participated live in IOI 2024 and 2025), but deliberately didn't read most of the solutions so I could use them to gauge my progress as I periodically come back to them and upsolved. I worked through most of the problems that had room for improvement, and managed to pass the gold cutoff on all 10 sets. This mainly reassured me that my raw ability could comfortably place me in gold given an infinite amount of time, and it boils down more to coming up with the solutions within contest time. Outside of upsolving past IOIs, I also sporadically did some JOISC, BOI and CEOI sets.

A month leading up to IOI, I started to feel quite burnt out from solving problems, and lowered my practice volume quite a bit, and took some rest days too (which I did way less frequently before). I feel this also helped me gaslight myself into thinking that I don't care about IOI results that much so I wouldn't be too stressed during the actual contest. A week before the IOI, I participated in the yearly Malaysian IOI training camp consisting of 4 IOI-style virtuals, which got me back into an IOI-ready state. I did quite poorly in the virtuals, but felt my form slowly returning after the break period.

Log of contest days

Before each contest day, I slept before 9pm (pretty much as soon as I got back to the hotel and washed up), so I was well rested even though I woke up at around 5am on both mornings due to the adrenaline. The fact that Uzbekistan was 3 hours behind Malaysia definitely helped, since it was already 12am back home by the time I went to sleep. The strategy I used for the contest was pretty similar to that of E869120. I also did a caffeine detox starting a week before the IOI, and drank coffee on the mornings of contest days to maximise my performance.

Some Reflections

I think I was really lucky that the problemset had a large amount of non-batch/constructive/ad-hoc problems, which is one of my strongest areas (for the Malaysian team in general too). Had the problemset been more DP/data structures heavy, I think my chances for a gold medal would have been much slimmer. The mindset of not caring too much about my results definitely helped a lot too, as I was much calmer during the contests compared to previous years. I believe that doing lots of practice on OI-style contests leading up to the IOI also helped me consolidate my contest strategy.

For anyone who may be in a similar position as I was before the IOI, I'd say it's really important to not stress yourself out before the IOI. I think taking a break was far more beneficial than any last-minute practice I could've possibly squeezed into that period. Besides that, just come up with a conservative contest strategy that works for you, and hope for the problems to be in your favour.

Now that IOI is over, I have finally been freed from the burden of having to grind CP for the past few years, and I can finally solve problems purely for the fun of it. Was the impact of OI on almost every other part of my life for the past few years worth it? I'm not entirely sure yet, but this was certainly the best outcome I could've hoped for given that the damage has already been done.

Finally, I would like to give a shoutout to CSQ31 and gry3125 for constantly supporting me throughout my CP journey, as well as cadmiumky and PeruvianCartel for taking the time to respond to my previous blog, your responses certainly gave me significant insights on practising.

Thank you, IOI 2026!

Edit: Thanks a lot for the congrats in the comments!

As this year's IOI is around the corner, I have been considering where I stand and what to aim for this year. I am writing this blog to share some of my thoughts related to this, as well as collect some opinions and experiences from other IOI participants.

Two metrics to quantify skill

First of all, I would like to talk about how I think of skill when it comes to OI, as I will be mentioning it later. Each competitor's skill is defined by two metrics: untimed skill and timed skill. I think of these similar to how CF problems are rated: someone's untimed skill level is the difficulty level at which they'd be able to solve 50% of problems given a very long time (say 5 to 10 hours, essentially unlimited). Timed skill is defined similarly, but under the time constraint of 100 minutes per problem (the average time that can be allocated per problem at IOI). I believe that practice targeting each of these aspects is important to improve IOI performance.

The dynamics of gold medalists

Inspired by E869120's blog on winning a gold medal at IOI, I have put much thought into what it takes to achieve each kind of medal. When it comes to gold medalists, it seems like there are two main classes: those who were able to be fairly confident (>70% chance) about winning a gold medal going into IOI, and those who were confident about winning a silver, and had some chance (15~70%) at a gold medal. Just for a very rough estimate, I would say that those who rank 16th to 60th in expected performance fall under the second category, which I believe includes myself for this year.

For this group of competitors, playing the safe strategy of spending a roughly equal amount of time on each problem and grabbing as many subtasks as possible would be able to secure a silver medal. However, when it comes to the race for a gold, it is much more dependent on the problemset for that year, which naturally introduces quite a large element of chance. With this line of thought, for these last two months of practice, I aim to maximise my chances (even if it ends up just being 20 or 30%) of winning a gold medal at IOI 2026.

The dilemma of how to practice

Setting this goal has put me into a dilemma: part of me thinks that focusing on my untimed skill is more important to be able to widen the scope of subtasks I could potentially solve. On the other hand, I am able to pass the gold cutoff on most IOI sets given unlimited time, which makes me wonder if I should instead improve my speed.

If you are a former IOI gold medalist, I would like to know more about your experience practising. Specifically, I would like to know your answers to the following questions:

1. What was your practice volume like the year leading up to IOI (e.g. roughly how many hours a day, feel free to mention special instances such as national training camps)? What is your opinion on practice quantity vs quality?

2. What was your strategy to training for a gold medal? (What problems did you practise on, do you read editorials/give up and come back later etc.)

3. During an IOI-style contest, what is your contest strategy?

4. How much did practising OI affect your personal life? What sacrifices did you have to make, and do you think they were worth it?

5. Where are you now and how are you doing?

I'd love to hear opinions on practising from other IOI participants too. If you're participating this year, I'd like to meet up!

Thanks for reading!