The Halite contest officially began on November 10 and will end at 11:59 pm EST on February 12. After that, the rankings will be recomputed for about 2 days, and a winner will be announced.
Submit early and often!
Though collaboration is highly encouraged, teams are not technically allowed.
Each participant may only have one halite account. Participants found to be in control of multiple accounts will be banned forever.
If you find a bug that is exploitable, email us at halite@halite.io, do not post it on the forums, and do not exploit it.
Otherwise, feel free to let us know on the forums.
Rankings are based on the outcome of organized games where bots play against each other. A good analogy is the Elo rating system used for chess.
More precisely, rankings are computed using a Bayesian algorithm variant of the Glicko system, specifically using the TrueSkill Python library available here.
Two Sigma (the company that developed Halite) will waive first round interviews for all users ranked as Gold or Diamond (the top 1/16 of contestants). Just give us a shout at referrals@twosigma.com with the subject line "Halite."
There's also pride! Bragging rights! Internet royalty! The results of the competition will be officially announced with a link to best players Github profiles and/or blogs (we hope for some great postmortems).