Jaco Cronje banks R100k courtesy of the Entelect R100K Challenge!

The atmosphere at rAge was electric with a packed to capacity audience and an excited group of finalists. The event started with attendees and finalists taking their seats against the backdrop of Daft Punk’s Tron soundtrack. The excitement was palpable as members of the audience compared notes and bets on who would be the victor. Minutes later Tim Kroon (Entelect Software) took the stage to talk about the R100K challenge and its place in the software development industry. Highlighting a need for a larger community in South Africa and a bit of fun, he mentioned to a very pleased audience that Entelect would be bringing back the Entelect R100K Challenge in 2013 with a different twist.

Shortly thereafter the battles begun. The games were shown on the big screen with a 3D spinning globe as the players rode their light cycles around in a number of different and intriguing strategies. The tournament finals were particularly nail-biting as each match was a face-off between two highly intelligent light cycle programs. The results were surprising and at the end of the double-elimination tournament, we saw the victor of the losing pool, Jaco Cronje (JC), being crowned as tournament champion. Second place went to Gustav Mauer (Gustav) and third place went to Marcus Tomlinson (Mr T).

The finalists were invited on stage and each presented with medals while the champion received a large R100 000 cheque! Second prize was an uber cool limited edition, Star Wars X-Box 360 game bundle.

“This was a first for us and judging from the spirited response we plan to up the stakes each year, so keep an eye out for our 2013 Challenge announcement! Contestants worked hard on their entries and engaged with us from the start, which tells us something about the calibre of individuals that we have in the South African software engineering industry. We’d like to extend a big thank you to NAG Magazine for partnering with us and assisting us to reach out with this initiative. ” – Charles Pritchard, Entelect CEO.

For those of you interested in staying tuned for the 2013 Entelect Challenge, subscribe to the mailing list at http://challenge.entelect.co.za!