CCC 2026 was a very interesting experience, even though this year we didn't manage to achieve our best results — finishing 31st in Data/AI with team PretrainedLanguageModel and 14th in the School category.
In the Data/AI track, our progress was heavily impacted by what our team felt was a poorly designed matchmaking system. Because the queue rarely placed us into matches, we were unable to play nearly enough games with our AI — ending up with around 100 matches while other teams had 300–400 matches, and at times waiting 10 minutes without getting into a single match, watching our rank drop from 2nd down to 10th, 20th, and 31st toward the end.
We're not denying that we vibecoded too, but it's honestly sad that there is no real fairness right now: top teams pay for the most expensive AI model subscriptions just to profit from taking the top spots, while others don't stand a chance — even when trying hard to write good prompts, you still can't reach that performance ): A similar dynamic with paid AI subscriptions affected the School category as well, where we finished in 14th place.
