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4-8 July 2004, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel

The ICGA is delighted to announce that this year's Computer Olympiad
takes place from July 4 to 8 and will be played at Bar-Ilan
University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. In close cooperation with Prof. Nathan
Netanyahu and Omid Tabibi, the Board of ICGA has agreed to bring the
Computer Olympiad to the city of Ramat-Gan, a lovely place in Israel,
near Tel Aviv.

The 9th 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. The organising
committee consists of: H.H.L.M. Donkers, J.W. Hellemons (chair), H.J.
van den Herik, N. Netanyahu, O.D. Tabibi, J.W.H.M. Uiterwijk, E.C.D.
van der Werf and M.H.M. Winands. We are planning tournaments for at
least 24 different games:

Abalone
Amazons
Arimaa
Backgammon
Bao
Bridge
Chess*
Chinese Chess
8x8 Checkers
Diplomacy
Dots and Boxes
10x10 DraughtsGipf
Go
9x9 Go
Hex
Lines of Action
6x7 OCTI
9x9 OCTI
Othello
Poker
Renju
Scrabble
Shogi

*) the 12th World Computer Chess Championship (4-12 July)

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 Ataxx, Clobber, Dvonn,
Mediocrity, Onyx, Tamsk, TwixT and Zèrtz but we do not know
of the existence of adequately playing programs. 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 1 June 2004. Notification of entry acceptation will
be given before 23 June, 2004. Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will be
awarded to the leading programs in each tournament. Except for the
OCTI tournaments, there will be no cash prizes.

The chess competition of the Computer Olympiad will be a special
event, since it is adopted by the ICGA as the 12th World Computer-
Chess Championship (WCCC 2004).

During the Olympiad, the World Championship Computer-RoShamBo will be
organised.

The 9th Computer Olympiad will be held in conjunction with the
Computers and Games 2004 conference (CG'04).

The Tournament Director of the Computer Olympiad will be Professor
Jaap van den Herik from the Computer Science Department of the
Universiteit Maastricht.

The rules of the 9th Computer Olympiad will be published on the
website.

The entry fee for the chess tournament is as follows:
Amateur:euro 25
Semi-professional: euro 250
Professional: euro 500

The entry fees for the other tournaments are as follows:
Amateur: euro 25
Semi-professional: euro 100
Professional: euro 250

A participant is expected to be ICGA member (euro 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 1 June 2004 will be subject to a penalty fee,
doubling the above fees.

For more information: http://www.cs.unimaas.nl/olympiad2004/