Before qualifying teams, I first fixed all the programs so that they did not incur errors. I threw out a few programs that had too many problems and almost certainly never worked.
To qualify teams, I played each of the 49 entries against Spot 100 times. A team received a point when they beat Spot and half a point when they tied. There was a gap in scores at 33 points, and those below it did very simple strategies. Any team scoring above 33 points, therefore, qualifies for the finals.
In my experience, some players who do very poorly with this test still do very well against other (non-random) players. Thus I draw the line fairly low. This has the disadvantage of qualifying a couple of teams that really have a strategy solidly in Level 1, but I don't make that judgement for the tournament.
Results from the qualifiers:
| W/T/L | score | team | members |
|---|---|---|---|
| 71/13/16 | 77.5 | bsu | Brian Underwood |
| 66/10/24 | 71 | pisco_bandito | Scott Dai |
| 61/16/23 | 69 | whozyodaddy? | Matt Sherwin, Jeff Bullian, Jacob Smith |
| 56/15/29 | 63.5 | Hermie | Elizabeth Greenwood |
| 56/13/31 | 62.5 | yumdeer | Lizz Thrall, DJ Kleinbaum, Katie McKeegan |
| 54/13/33 | 60.5 | ghettodawg | Khanh Thieu, David Yu, Katie Lu |
| 50/15/35 | 57.5 | dynamitecrackheads | Weston Schreiber, Rick Kerr, Robert Nickl |
| 49/15/36 | 56.5 | styx | Ben Hollis, Justin Samuels |
| 51/10/39 | 56 | mklock | Matti Klock |
| 48/16/36 | 56 | precious | V Zhulin |
| 46/20/34 | 56 | Tuberfish | Terry Tai, Gabe Doyle, Zhe Lu |
| 49/10/41 | 54 | sparky | Jenny Wiley, Danielle Rosenberger |
| 43/10/47 | 48 | Arielle | Kirsten Williams, Jenny Zhang |
| 38/17/45 | 46.5 | KJDAMP | Adam Packer, Kelly Davis |
| 38/16/46 | 46 | Panda_Squad | Stephen Lee |
| 33/16/51 | 41 | Nicole | Nicole Love |
| 31/14/55 | 38 | cyerger | Carl Yerger |
| 34/ 6/60 | 37 | MHONTZ | Matt Hontz |
| 32/ 8/16 | 36 | Grand_Moff_Tarkin | Brandon Aldinger |
| 27/14/59 | 34 | Starfish | Brian Stewart, Jeff Yang |
| 30/ 6/64 | 33 | jim/andy | Jim Solomon, Andy Ng |