Second Call For Participation

23-27 November 2003, Graz, Austria
Graz is the Cultural Capital City of the European Union in 2003. Therefore
it organizes many festivals, galas and jubilees. The ICGA is happy to
contribute to the glory of the city of Graz. In close cooperation with
Professor Jungwirth, the Board of ICGA has agreed to bring the Computer
Olympiad  to the city of Graz to broaden the festivities and to support the
entertainment for public, visitors, and the youth of Austria.

The 8th Computer Olympiad is a multi-games event in which all of the
participants are computer programs. The purpose is to find the strongest
programs at each of the games, partly as an academic exercise and partly
because the competitions are fun. This year's Computer Olympiad takes place
from November 23 to 27 and will be played at the Casineum in the Casino of
Graz, Austria. The organising committee consists of: H.H.L.M. Donkers, J.W.
Hellemons (chair), H.J. van den Herik, H.M.J. den Hoed, W. Kastner (local
organisation committee), P.A.M. van der Krogt, J.W.H.M. Uiterwijk, and
M.H.M. Winands. We are planning tournaments for at least 18 different games:

        Amazons
        Backgammon
        Bao
        Bridge
        Chinese Chess
        8x8 Checkers
        Dots and Boxes
        10x10 Draughts
        Gipf Go
        9x9 Go
        Hex
        Lines of Action
        Othello
        Poker
        Renju
        Scrabble
        Shogi

The game of Awari has been eliminated from this list, since the game has
been solved by Romein and Bal, as reported in the ICGA Journal, Vol. 25, No.
3. In this capacity it follows the games: Connect-Four, Qubic, Go-Moku, and
Nine Men's Morris. The game of Renju, claimed to be solved too, is still
welcome since we have not seen a fully-operational program on internet that
plays perfectly. Moreover, we are willing to host more games, such as
Abalone, Accordion, Clobber, Dvonn, Mediocrity, Octi, Onyx, Tamsk, TwixT and
Zèrtz but we do not know of the existence of adequately playing programs. We
know that there exist some adequately playing programs, but we are awaiting
suggestions and proposals of programmers before we include them in the
official list given above.

For each game a tournament will take place provided that at least two
programs enter the tournament for that particular game. The detailed
tournament schedule will not be announced until the closing date for entries
which is October 15, 2003. Notification of entry acceptation will be given
before November 7, 2003. Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will be awarded to
the leading programs in each tournament. There will be no cash prizes.

During the Olympiad, the Open Championship Computer RoShamBo will be
organised. For information on this event see here.

The 8th Computer Olympiad will be held in conjunction with the ICGA 11th
World Computer Chess Championship 2003 and the 10th Advances in Computer
Games Conference.

The rules of the 8th Computer Olympiad will be published on this website.

The entry fees for the Olympiad are as follows:

        Amateur:  ? 25
        Semi-professional:  ? 100
        Professional:  ? 250

A participant is expected to be ICGA member ( ? 40).

"Amateur": programmers who have no commercial interest in their program, and
are not professional game programmers. Applications for amateur
classification must supply information to justify their claim.

"Semi-professional": Any program submitted by an employee or associate from
a games-programming company. The program's name must not be derived from or
similar to a commercial product.

"Professional": A program whose name is the same as or derived from a
commercial product.

Any entry received after October 15 will be subject to a penalty fee,
doubling the above fees.

More info can be found http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/olympiad2003