Dear Participants,

There are the following changes in the Contest Rules that will become effective as of January 2012.

Change Nr. 1

6. Trading requirements to the positions are as follows:
a) The total amount of positions opened during the Contest must be at least 20 (i.e. at least 20 opening orders).

Please note that you are not able to receive Dukascopy evaluation points until the amount of trades reaches 20 trades.

Change Nr. 2
Ranking Calculation Rules:
3. Popularity is based on several ratings. Maximum popularity is limited to 25 points.

Change Nr. 3
4. Bonus Popularity points

a) Participants who are copyright holders of their strategies are rewarded with additional bonus points for the strategy publication at the beginning or during the Contest month.

d) Participants who produced copies or reproductions of a strategy are not eligible for bonus popularity points. The strategy is considered copied if a substantial part of the algorithm (at least 90% of the script) resembles another strategy. The author of the strategy and other participants may complete copyright claims by providing information about code snippets that have been copied and a reference to the original strategy. After reviewing copyright claims which are submitted during a month, Dukascopy may remove the bonus points from the participant if the copyright claim revealed that the strategy has been copied.

Very good news! Thanks, Dukascopy! I have seriously thought of leaving this contest. Now it is possible to run a better strategy.

Regards,
Egidijus

News are probably great. But I will have to rewrite my strategy to get more trades. Anyway it means that all copycats of my strategy will fail as next month strategy will be different.

There's one more suggestion: Dukascopy points should be added as soon as FIRST trade is closed. And then removed after month end if it doesn't reach 20 trades.. This is because strategies making lots of orders has an advantage to get more popularity points sooner. As people always check strategies that are on top.

Hi adask! Thanks for the idea. However, this might be a bit more confusing. We consider that for strategies that make more trades, it's more difficult to win in the long-run. So it's more or less compensated. Even though they will get a higher popularity, there is a higher risk that they will loose.

Hello,

I think these are good news for all contestants and essential for a healthy contest.

Only one question:

The bónus points for strategy publication will be removed too?

Support, why you don't adapt the contest old molds, during the month contest all strategies are private, then at the end you publish the ten winners, like you have done in past...

LinnuxFX

Because we would like to make the contest more transparent.

Hello ,
I'm a total rookie in programming but I want to learn .At this stage , I can only copy and paste other's strategy and modify parameters .I plan to adapt an existing strategy for the next month , with my indicators , my logic ect .How can I know that I'm under the required 90% ?
thank you

Excellent news!
Finally it seems that Dukascopy decided to listen its contestants and decide its Rules according to programmers feedback.
Although few programmers have strong opinions about forbidding plagiarism, i agree with many others that just taking away from copycats the authors bonus points for sharing the source code is enough for keeping them away from the top 2 spots.

And the 90% similarity is also good to encourage newbies to learn more java and jforex so that they can get those extra points but only if they are able to write a minimum of own code. So far copycats put the excuse that they are learning, but stay months without writing any code, just uploading winning strategies.

I already had decided to use the strategy flyswing is using (seems to be the most pirated) and use 1.01*Lots. New rules will keep me trying to improve my strategy.

Dear Support,
Thanks for that first step.It is good news for the fair participants.
But On the other hand,It is perhaps bad news for the real beginners.

So,I thought about new Ranking System for newcomers.
How about this Handicap system?

Newcomer's Chair System.
Explains briefly that.
Set the prize to 11th-15th Ranks.
And gives Newcomers the preference(to get that rank).

e.g.
Newcomer = Participant who didn't get any prize in past.
If final standing is like this,

That is changed to this by Newcomer's Chair System.

I think This will be Carrot for both of newcomer and regulars.
But also will be stick for Bad activity...???

Thanks,
and Sorry for my frozen English.

The copyright claims are accepted from contest participants only. It means that to consider the strategy copied, we will need to have more claims from several participants. However, this is not a rule. We might also take an action if there is only one copyright claim.