Stanislav, it was you who checked Expert Advisors submitted for Championship 2006. What problems did you face at that time?

Well, there were no special problems. The most problems were as follows. Some Experts wrongly checked the amount of free assets before opening a position, some wrongly calculated the amount of lots in a trade position, minimum and maximum values, step… Errors occurring after performing trades were sometimes wrongly processed. Well, we wrote articles about this in advance: what may be done, what may not be done, what must be done.

We checked Expert Advisors manually. I mean I, personally, downloaded the Expert Advisors submitted by traders on my PC, launched Strategy Tester and spoke to the trader according the test results. So, I either informed them that all formal requirements had been met: “Your Expert Advisor was accepted for participation in the Championship” or said them that there had been such-and-such problem: “Please correct your Expert Advisor.”

This year we expect much more Expert Advisors to participate in the Championship, so we are going to launch an automated system to accept and test them. This automated system will provide recommendations about what should be changed in the Expert Advisor or check the Expert Advisor as accepted to participate in the Championship.

We would like this Championship to be more dynamic and more Expert Advisors to participate in it, so we prolonged the registration period. We started registration one month earlier this year. We hope there will be good Expert Advisors and in larger amounts than they were last year.

Ok, Stanislav. The Championship Rules clearly declare that multiple registrations are prohibited. However, they took place last year. Please tell us why it is done and what measures are taken in this connection.

Yes, this question is very serious. Imagine: a large family – a husband, a wife, grandparents, children, grandchildren, etc. – that can submit for the Championship a number of Expert Advisors – two, three, or more… Imagine that one in this family is an excellent trader, a good programmer who can code several strategies, one of which will win.

I mean, thus, a family that have registered more than one Expert Advisor, they get much more chances to win than other Participants of the Championship. In the last Championship, we detected multiple registrations made from the same IP or from anonymous proxies. Then we just offered those Participants to disqualify themselves by canceling one of their Expert Advisors. Otherwise, we disqualified the entire group. Well, there were no special problems, people usually made us advances. I hope no multiple registrations will take place this year. We wouldn’t like to take punitive measures.

There were some mix-ups over identification documents. Passport details were required from Participants to identify their persons. However, there are countries where passports are not used for this purpose. How will this problem be solved this year?

Well, there were no special problems last year: traders just asked about this on the forum or wrote an email to our Support Service explaining that they don’t have passports, but can submit their driving licenses – no problem at all. One should just submit a document, which would expressly identify the person of the Championship Participant. This was, of course, our omission – we did not inform traders about this on the website of the Championship. This time, we will rectify this omission informing that Participants may submit any document identifying their persons.

Stanislav, what would you like to wish potential Participants of the Automated Trading Championship 2007?

I would like to wish them write good programs. I would also wish that the Championship becomes even more interesting and exciting. Not to make “childish” mistakes in the code or errors that would result in disqualifying the Expert Advisor. We would like as more as possible Expert Advisors to finish the Championship with positive balance and… of course, good luck to everybody!

Thank you.