Ouch, nothing like that last minute fix.

Agreed. I think they may have over-estimated how quickly ranking will converge. I wonder if they'll consider an extension. In a sense, this final run is almost beta, they haven't done a full reset of rankings on on this scale. They might need to tweak it a bit.

They extended the contest deadline, and they are slowly implementing cut-offs. So, the number of games will increase for the bots still in the competition.

I am surprised about the map choices. There are 50 of each type, cell, maze, and random, yet this post : http://forums.aichallenge.org/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1973&p=12056&hilit=cell#p12056 led me to believe that the finals were going to be mostly cell_maze. Oh well, I guess this resembles the contest before the finals.

well its done and really a lot of fun; i just managed my goal to stay in the top 100 (ended up 92th after spending most of the finals in the 70-80s);

Now back to go, all my freetime went o my ants and i havent plaeyd go in 2 month maybe it will be a profitable break ?
unfortunatly i also found antoher addiction: dwarf fortress http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/ or how to write in the 21st century a game with a Nethack style interface

_________________
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.