Willie Theron, the founder of CyberDevs, and a web developer by profession was announced as the winner of this year’s Entelect Challenge. The finals were played out at Comic Con Africa on the 21st of September with hundreds of fans supporting.

Theron’s bot, ‘Metamorp’, built in JavaScript, competed in all four rounds of this year’s Challenge and stormed to first place, winning him R70,000. Willie has been entering the Entelect Challenge for years and was thrilled to finally come out on top!

Based on the hugely popular classic ‘Worms’ game, the 2019 Entelect Challenge brought together novice coders and experienced professionals as they competed against each other by coding an artificial intelligence (AI) player, or bot, to challenge other bots.

Coding and AI hobbyists and enthusiasts have spent the last six months building their bots, with the goal of winning their share of the R200,000 prize bounty.

The winning strategy

Theron’s bot went into the finals with strong stats:

• 121 wins out of 125 matches played; and
• 284,915 points won up to the final match;

“He had one of the strongest player strategies in the competition this year,” says Renette Ros and Edwin Fullard, Project Leads for the Entelect Challenge.

“Competing successfully in the Challenge is not just about the best code,” says Entelect’s Marketing Manager, Bianca McFadyen. “It’s about the players’ strategies. Your bot may be really simple in its design but its strategy could be highly effective. That’s what makes the Entelect Challenge so appealing to coders of all levels.”

The final rankings in the 2019 Worms competition were as follows:

Not everyone has to be a coding wizard

This year, the competition ran the same to allow relatively low-level coders the opportunity to enter. There were three tournament battles, each one increasing the level of complexity.

“The staggered strategy component that we introduced to the Challenge continues to be well received by the players, as it gives them a chance to refine and test their bots before entering the playoffs,” said McFadyen.

About Entelect

We are a tribe of technology professionals who appreciate the skills we bring to the table, help grow each other, deliver awesome solutions using best practices and have a good time doing it.

About the Entelect Challenge University Cup

The Entelect Challenge University Cup is a one-day hackathon where teams of students from various universities around the country are challenged to solve a coding problem.

We have created this unique initiative specifically for students as we noticed that there is a lot of interest in the main challenge but time commitments can be problematic given academic schedules.

We hope to give our future technology leaders a chance to flex their brain muscles and participate in something fun and rewarding!