Tuesday, March 26

These have been the tests of the last world championship of Excel (yes, as it sounds)


Let’s think about an Esport, quick. Names like ‘League of Legends’, ‘Valorant’ and ‘CS:GO’ may soon come to mind, well-established, well-known titles that move masses throughout the world. But do you know what other program millions of people use, it is installed on countless computers and only a few dominate like masters? Microsoft Excel.

Indeed, the Microsoft office application is the star of Excel Esports: All-Star Battle, a world open championship organized by the Financial Modeling World Cup (FMWC) that took place a few days ago and was broadcast on the ESPN8 channel. Three tests, eight participants and $10,000 in prizes. What did they face? To the next.

The three case studies of Excel Esports: All-Star Battle

In the tournament they met personalities from the world of Excelsuch as Diarmund Early (winner of the 2021 season and who has invested more than 10,000 hours in Excel), Anup Agarwal (with 17,270 hours invested), Andrew Ngai (third in the world ranking and winner of the FWMC Open with 10,000 hours invested in the program) and Gabriela Strój (number 16 in the world with 15,000 hours invested).

As a good Esports tournament, the championship (which lasts about two hours and you can see in full above) featured commentators and analystsnamely Oz du Soleill (of the Excel on Fire YouTube channel) and Bill Jelen (MrExcel.com and author of 67 Excel-related books).

And what was the tournament about? in resolve three case studies in 30 minutes. Although we will comment on them later, if someone is interested in testing their worth with Excel by doing the tests, they can get them for free (at least for now) from the tournament website.

The first test, “A Story about the Reels” consists of creating an online game similar to a slot machine, only instead of spending money you earn points. It is described as follows:

“The game will use a total of five reel strips with 19 sectors each. There are a total of eight different symbols – one symbol in each sector. For level one and level two, you will need to use only the first reel, the furthest the left. The game starts with the five reels located in the initial sector, as shown on the right (the sector with the cherry). On each turn you will be given the number of sectors that each reel rolls. Remember that the reels of reel when placed on the reels form closed circles, so if you have to roll 19 sectors, you will arrive exactly at the starting point.Your goal in the game is to calculate the number of points achieved by the player in each round.

The scoring rules are specific to this case and don’t have much in common with real slots. Each element gives the player base points (from 10 to 100). If a player lands five different symbols on each of the five reels (ie no duplicates), the total score for the turn is just the sum of these points.

However, if there are “duplicates”, then your points will be multiplied with each other. For example, if you roll three “Bells” (base 30 pts) and two “Cherries” (base 10 pts), the total point result will be 30x30x30 + 10×10 = 27,100 If you end up with all 5 reels showing diamonds, you will get a total of 100^5 = 10 billion points.

At level two and level five you will have to make multiple spins (spins or the reels). The total score is just the sum of the points scored on each spin.”

The second test is called “regatta” and it consists of a kind of boat race, except that the objective is to get as many points as possible. Here the mechanics and the scoring system are defined:

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“The ships have to follow a certain path consisting of a total of 100 squares on the game board. The game board is provided in the Board tab. Before the game the strength and direction of the wind is determined for each square of the game. Depending on this, a ship will sail more or less squares. Some ships, in case of a strong headwind, will even sail backwards. Each ship has its own unique characteristics. See the Wind Impact section for more details.

A ship cannot remain in the same space as a result of a move. You can sometimes move backwards, but never stay in the same cell. If, according to your calculations, a ship does not move, then it should move one space forward.

Each ship starts the game with 10,000 points and the goal is to finish with the most points (not finish the game before the other ships!). On each move, a ship loses as many points as the number of the space in which it ends its move. For example, if the ship ends her first move on square seven, she loses seven points and the remaining number of points is now 9,993. The game ends when a ship reaches or passes the end cell. If you have to move more cells than are left on the board until Finish is not a problem and the game ends anyway. For example, if your ship is on cell 98 and you have to move eight cells forward, the game is over when the Finish cell is reached.”

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And in third place is “Modelario, a platform game“. The test is not so much to create the game, that is given, but to discover the number of points that the player will have according to the actions he does during the game. The description is as follows:

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“In our game, the key character is Modelario, an Excel guru and financial modeller. Modelario has to overcome different obstacles on his way to save the company’s model from bankruptcy.

There are a total of seven different levels in the game. Every second Modelario automatically moves exactly one cell to the right, toward the goal. Every second the player controlling Modelaire presses exactly one button on a joystick. On his way to the finish, Modelaire will have to kill some monsters and collect bonuses. Successfully killing a monster, collecting a bonus, or reaching the finish flag will give the player points. Your objective is to calculate the number of points achieved in the game given the sequence of joystick buttons that the player has pressed during the game.

You can deal damage to monsters by (1) shooting them (also works from a distance), (2) kicking them (only works from the closest cell), or (3) jumping on them (again, only works from the closest cell) . Example. If a monster is in cell #5, then kick and jump have an effect only when Shaper is in cell #4.

Modelario starts the game with only 1 life. However, Modelaire can get extra lives by collecting the gifts. Modelaire loses a life in the following cases: (1) he makes a jump when the ceiling is directly above him, (2) he moves towards the cell that is occupied by a monster and does not press the “H” or “D” button while in that cell, (3) moves towards a wall and doesn’t do a jump while in the previous cell, (4) is killed by the Dragon’s shot (levels 6 and 7 only). If any of these events occur but Shapeshifter has more than 1 life, then he loses 1 life and continues. If this was the last life, then the game is over.”

excel sheet

Level 6 of “Regatta”. There are many more columns to the right.

level 7 of

Level 7 of “Model, a platform game.”

The winner of this tournament was Andrew Ngai, with 411 points. If anyone is encouraged to try the exercises, it should be noted that these include the answers, but not the solutions. That’s because there are problems that can be solved in various ways.

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