I had recommended last year that people focus 90% percent of their available time on back testing strategies and only 10% on interconnectivity to IB's API. The advice should be taken seriously as you will be trying to make over 100% gain in two months, or 50% per month while the SP500 averages 1% a month.
The IB API and Trader Work Station (TWS) is quite good as they use their regular trading platform for the competition with "Olympiad" stamped across the screen. I think most of you do not have a lot of spare time, so keep things simple!!! The easiest way to trade would be to do your instrument selection offline in the evening, and then execute the trades trough the API during market hours. You would start up the IB TWS, and then start your API interface program (excel, VB, ...C++, Java) that already has your trade symbols and order types listed, hit connect, and the orders appear on the trade screen and get executed. It really is that simple, my nephew, a finance major, got the IB API to release orders with a couple of days of programming as the capstone of his undergrad computer course.
The only way to place in competition is to have your trading plan figured our before the competition starts and use huge leverage. The contest fills are realistic, so attaining the huge % gains on a consistent basis with different market conditions is the hard part. If you can be in gold on it's way from $750 to $800 in a one week period, with a 20:1 leverage, it will not matter if you executed to the API with a market order, a limit order, FOK, MOC or had a stop or not.
The only thing not realistic about the contest is that the "equity" is free, so if someone "bets" the whole amount on option premium and the market moves they can win in a manner that would not be practical in live trading.
