Contest Rules (edition 12.11.2010, new amendments become effective starting from December)

Registration Rules:
1. The JForex Strategy Contest ("Contest") is held by Dukascopy Bank SA ("Dukascopy") on DEMO accounts for JForex strategies on a regular monthly basis.
2. For each respective month registration opens on the 1st and remains available until the 15th day included of that month. Participants may register for the next month's Contest at any time.
3. Only persons aged 18 or over are eligible to apply for a registration in the Contest.
4. Registration is a mandatory requirement for participation. Before trading on the contest account, Participant needs to compile a strategy in the trading platform in order to generate a strategy ID. The strategy ID is a unique identification number which is assigned to every trade on the Contest account. The strategy ID will be automatically assigned to Participant when the first trade is made on the contest account. Any further modification of the script will result in change of strategy ID. Participants are not allowed to modify the code and trade with different strategy IDs on the same contest.
5. Participant agrees to provide true information at registration. If Participant will become eligible for any prize, information provided upon registration will be used to initiate procedure for opening of a live account with Dukascopy in the name of Participant. In case of information being false, inaccurate or incomplete, Dukascopy may declare participation in Contest void at any time at its sole discretion.
6. Among other, multiple registrations under the same or different IP addresses and names, and/or use of proxy servers may result in Participant’s disqualification.

Trading Rules:
1. Contest accounts are registered with an initial deposit of USD 100 000..
2. Terms and conditions commonly applicable to trading via Dukascopy at the time of the Contest shall also apply to trading within the framework of the Contest (for information purposes only, as of March 1st 2010 these include: 32 currency pairs available for trading, account leverage 1:100, minimal size of one trade USD 1000, margin cut level of exposure 200%).
3. Trades must be mainly conducted by the Strategy script. In general, manual intervening is not allowed. In exceptional cases, the contestant may use manual trades to close positions, but the ratio of manually closed trades must be less than 10% of the total turnover. Dukascopy reserves the right to require Participant's explanation of any manual intervention with Strategy's operation, and accept or reject such an explanation at its sole discretion.
4. To run the Strategy, Participant must use his/her own computer or the remote server provided in the JForex platform. The strategy must be running at least 10 full trading days (240 trading hours) during the month.
5. Trading requirements to the positions are as follows:
* The total amount of positions opened during the Contest must be at least 10 (i.e. 10 opening and 10 closing trades, 20 trades totally).
* The maximum amount of simultaneously opened positions is 1. Any further requests to open a new position will be rejected by the platform.
* The maximum profit on a single position must be below 50% of the total profit of all positive trades. If not, Dukascopy reserves the right to decrease the total balance of the account for an amount equal to the profit of the position and apply the rule recursively.
* Any profitable trades executed with a similar time and price but with different directions within two or more contest accounts will be cancelled. These trades will be removed even if the contest accounts are registered with different names and IP addresses. If the percentage of suspicious trades is considered high, it may result in a disqualification of the contestant.
* Dukascopy Bank SA reserves the right to cancel any trade which is made with a purpose to cheat on the contest or to evade a particular rules with an intention to get an unfair advantage over other participants.
6. Multiple order resubmissions are strongly prohibited and will result in automatic disqualification. The trading script of the strategy must include the validation on free margin and amount of simultaneously opened positions.
7. Margin Call trades incurred due to overexposure (use of leverage becomes more 200%) result in automatic disqualification of the contest account at the end of the month.
8. At the end of the contest all open positions will be automatically liquidated.

Programming Rules:
1. Strategy must be compiled and used in the JForex platform only. Running the Strategy in any custom platforms or IDE is prohibited.
2. No "black boxes" (as commonly known in the industry) are allowed. The strategy's trading algorithms must be fully scripted inside the JForex platform. Participants are not allowed to use external files (DLL, JAR, etc), and/or MT4 strategies with MT4-JForex Clients Bridge.
3. The strategy's parameters must be hardcoded inside the script. Annotation @Configurable is prohibited for use. In exceptional cases, the contestant may change the parameters upon receiving a preliminary consent by Dukascopy Bank.
4. The method onStop must be empty. The method can be used for logging operations only.
5. Dukascopy Bank SA expects participants to adhere to the following list of recommendations:
* The strategy is not based on a random trading.
* The strategy must not make trades right after its start.
* The strategy algorithm has to be symmetrical for opening long and short positions.
* It is strongly discouraged to include built-in forecasts, hardcoded prices targets.
* It is strongly prohibited to set any equity targets and switch the strategy into "sleep mode".
* The strategy must run non-stop as long as possible with the minimum number of restarts.
* The back-testing result has to be adequate and similar to the live trading
* The strategy must be written in an easy-to-read way. The participant has to place a comment on every custom method above the method’s signature. All comments have to be provided in English.

Ranking and Awarding Rules:
1. The winners will be determined at the end of each respective Contest period. 10 Participants with the largest positive balances in the overall rating table will be defined as award candidates.
2. The winners must disclose the code of the strategy to Dukascopy Bank SA for verification purposes no longer than 10 days after the end of the Contest. If the verification for strategy ID fails, the respective Participant may be disqualified from the Contest.
3. The total prize pool of USD 15 000 is distributed among 10 winners of the contest in the following manner:
* 1st place - "grand prize" of USD 5000
* 2nd-3rd places - "golden prize" of USD 2500
* 4th-6th places - "silver prize" of USD 1000
* 7th-10th places - "bronze prize" of USD 500
4. The winners may withdraw cash prize amounts from their respective live accounts after meeting the following minimum turnover requirements on these live accounts:
* 1st place - 10 million USD
* 2nd-3rd places - 5 million USD
* 4th-6th places - 2 million USD
* 7th-10th places - 1 million USD
5. Cash prizes are credited to a live account in the name of Participant with Dukascopy Bank. A Participant who is awarded with a prize is not allowed to demand crediting of the prize to any other account, including, among other, an account that is not in the name of this Participant.
6. Each prize winner has a commitment to give consent to publication of his/her Strategy's source code by Dukascopy. In case such consent is not given, respective Participants will have their prize value reduced by 50%. In case of 1st - 6th place winners the resulting prize amount will be credited to respective Participants' live account with Dukascopy in a manner described above. In case of 7st - 10th place winners the resulting prize value will be counted towards the respective Participants' bonus. If the total value of bonuses accumulated by the respective Participant exceeds 500 USD during one year the resulting amount may be credited to such Participant's live account with Dukascopy in a manner, described above.
7. In case of Participant's refusal to participate in promotional events, interviews, public announcements in connection with Contest, Dukascopy has the right to disqualify such Participant and give the respective prize to another Participant.
Dukascopy Bank SA reserves the right to change the contest rules, requirements and awards without prior notice and at any time at its sole discretion. Dukascopy prevents the use of its JForex contest webpages for promotion of money management activities.
Please note that any modification of the Strategy's code during the contest will result in a change of the strategy ID - the unique identification number which is used by the JForex platform to label every trade on the contest account. Participants with multiple strategy IDs within one contest account will be disqualified, unless Dukascopy decides otherwise in its sole discretion.
For feedback, questions and comments please send an email to [email protected].

Sorry, I'm not referring to that particular rule. I'm saying that all the new rules are vague. I am concerned that rules that are open to interpretation could be a recipe for unfairness or arguments.

Taking that starting trade rule as an example, perhaps something like this?

The strategy must not be programmed to deliberately make trades after an arbitrary start in an effort to emulate manual trading or to provide the contestant with excessive manual control of the trading logic.

Wow, I like all the new amendments. The judging process may get tougher the first few months before we all learn to stay out of the gray areas, but the spririt of the rules and the contest is now communicated loud and clear. Good work!

Two questions:

1.
To run the Strategy, Participant must use his/her own computer during the Contest period. It's temporarily prohibited to use a new "Remote Run" mode of the platform. The strategy must be running in "Locale Run" mode at least 10 trading days of the month.

Is the text here going to be updated to state that running in Remote Run is allowed (and maybe even encouraged)?

2.
What are the details of the weekend margin cut? What time does it take effect and how big is it? Will violation of weekend margin result in disqualification?

Contest Rules (edition 12.11.2010, new amendments become effective starting from December)

5. Dukascopy Bank SA expects participants to adhere to the following list of recommendations:
* The strategy is not based on a random trading.
* The strategy must not make trades right after its start.

Ray the Random Robot shouldn't be really much worried if...

1) He does not open different trades in the same market conditions. An example, when he runs the back-testing on a particular period, it must always produce the same performance! Very easy to understand and avoid!

2) He likes to be always in the market .. This can be accepted as an exception for the rule!

:? ... Ray is becoming a bit human-like with all his capricious requests. No? I think he is too smart! But after all, our new rules does not really require a full change of his engine. Perhaps, only oil change and a few small details.