Overview

Marathon Competition offers a longer timeline, and an opportunity for competitors to iterate and improve their solutions against open-ended problems that have no single right answer. The Marathon Tournament Competition is on now and the top 12 performers on the leaderboard at the end of the Marathon Competition will qualify for the Final Round!

The Marathon Competition will take place in one stage and will include all the Marathon Matches (unless explicitly specified that a Marathon Match is not eligible) and may include some customer Marathon Matches that have the same complexity (to be determined). Each Marathon Match will bring points to the members who participate in it. Those points will accumulate for the entire duration of the tournament.

Competition prizes may be changed at any time at Topcoder’s sole discretion. The Marathon Competition is part of the Tournament, and by participating in the Marathon Competition, you agree to these rules. Topcoder reserves the right to remove any contestant and their submissions if they are found to be cheating.

Registration

You must be a Topcoder member to compete in the Marathon Matches and register for each Marathon Competition.

Structure of Competition Matches

Each Round of the Marathon Competition consists of two phases: the Provisional or Training Phase and the System/Final Testing Phase. (Note: The format for rounds of the Marathon Competition is similar to the format of Topcoder Marathon Matches. The rules in place for Marathon Matches as of January 1, 2025, as may be amended by these Rules, will apply to all the Marathon Competitions.)

The Coding Phase is a timed event where all Competitors are presented with the same problem statement. The criteria for scoring a Competitor’s submission will be provided with the problem statement and may change from round to round. During each round of the Marathon Competition, each Competitor may receive two types of scores in their Submission Artifacts: Test Case Scores of example test cases and Full Submission Score. Each Full Submission is run against a more complete set of test cases which are not disclosed to the Competitor and the Competitor only receives a provisional score.

The System/Final Testing Phase is applied to the most recent Full Submission for each Competitor. During system testing, each Full Submission is run against a large number of sample cases which are not disclosed to Competitors and is scored according to the criteria specified in the problem statement. Once the system tests are completed, Competitors are ranked according to their score on the system test cases. The score a Competitor’s Full Submission receives is determined solely by the system testing.

How to Qualify

Contestants who participate in Tournament-eligible Marathon Match Competitions on the Topcoder website will receive points as outlined in these Rules.

Only Tournament-eligible Marathon Competitions in which submission has opened and closed during the time time interval January 1st - October 31, 2025 will be carrying points for the tournament.

All-Tournament – eligible Marathon Match Competitions will be clearly marked on the active challenge listing page.

Marathon Match Online Competition Date: January 1, 2025 - October 31, 2025.

Competition Scoring

After each Marathon Match, all scoring competitors [among those eligible, who have not already otherwise advanced] will be awarded points based on the following table. To get points for the round, a Competitor must achieve a score greater than zero. If several competitors are tied for a place, they share points for the tied places (i.e. if two competitors are tied for 6th place they’ll each get (40+36)/2 = 38 points).

All the other members below 30th place will get 1 point that score higher than 0.

Advancing During Competitions

The Competitor who accumulates the most points during the year long competitions (12 total competitors) will advance to the Championship Round.

NOTE: In the event of a tie for any advancing position during the year long competition, the tie will be resolved in the following manner:

In the event that a Competitor who has advanced to the Championship Round is unable to attend it, Topcoder may choose to replace this Competitor with another Competitor or to take no action in this regard (thus reducing the total number of final Competitors). The choice is made at Topcoder’s sole discretion. In case of replacement choice, the right to attend is passed to the next Competitor who has accumulated the most points.

Championship Round

The Championship Round will consist of a single round of competition lasting 24 hours that will be run online. The winner of the Championship Round will be the Marathon Competitor with the highest point total during the Championship Round. In the event that Marathon Competitors are tied at the conclusion of the Championship Round, then the prize money will be distributed equally among the tied Marathon Competitors.

Please note the online competition round includes a 30-minute setup time.

Prizes

The Marathon Competition will award cash prizes to the Marathon Competitors in accordance with the following table:

You must comply with Topcoder's Terms and Conditions to be eligible for prizes.

T-Shirt

The Marathon Competition will also award prizes in the form of T-shirts (one per Contestant). T-shirts will be awarded to the following Contestants:

To get the prize, the Competitor must have positive points on the leaderboard. These rules may change at any time with or without prior notice.