As some of you might be aware, I decided to [try pretty hard](https://codeforces.me/blog/entry/153070) for Candidate Master last quarter. The main thing I did was try to take as many virtual contests as possible, particularly at the start of the quarter, kinda following from what [user:lnsuyn,2026-07-08] did [here](https://codeforces.me/blog/entry/149776). What I realized in hindsight was that it's hard to commit to regular virtuals and actually upsolving problems when you're a full-time college student. Anyway, that's beside the point. I did 17 virtual contests, and I found the results quite interesting. ↵
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I took progressively newer contests over time, and I made a fake rating for myself starting at 1600, so I could see how my virtual rating would change. I used carrot to calculate the performance rating.↵
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Obviously, there are some limitations, as I included Div.2s as rated contests even if I had a rating over 2100, but as a current Div. 2 contestant, I think it gets my point across.↵
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It's pretty easy to see that even in contests as late as the 850s, I had maintained candidate master. In the very last contest that I took (which was unrated later), I solved ABDEF, and would've ranked 15th officially (although I took the virtual without problem C, which was impossible to solve correctly, so this shouldn't be taken too seriously). ↵
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It's hard to tell how much of this comes from contestants being better, AI cheating, or from virtual contests being a better environment for performing well.↵
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Another interesting thing is that in the earlier contests, I was consistently getting master to grandmaster performance, so you can see that contest difficulty has increased significantly since then. ↵
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I took progressively newer contests over time, and I made a fake rating for myself starting at 1600, so I could see how my virtual rating would change. I used carrot to calculate the performance rating.↵
↵
Obviously, there are some limitations, as I included Div.2s as rated contests even if I had a rating over 2100, but as a current Div. 2 contestant, I think it gets my point across.↵
↵
↵
↵
It's pretty easy to see that even in contests as late as the 850s, I had maintained candidate master. In the very last contest that I took (which was unrated later), I solved ABDEF, and would've ranked 15th officially (although I took the virtual without problem C, which was impossible to solve correctly, so this shouldn't be taken too seriously). ↵
↵
It's hard to tell how much of this comes from contestants being better, AI cheating, or from virtual contests being a better environment for performing well.↵
↵
↵
Another interesting thing is that in the earlier contests, I was consistently getting master to grandmaster performance, so you can see that contest difficulty has increased significantly since then. ↵
↵
