anyone competing online? I found topcoders.com and the rewards per contest look pretty decent although the site is full of russian and chinese grigori perelman loookalikes.
Topcoder is fun enough, but entering for the rewards would be a bit...
You know all those losers out there who suck at programming? The ones you are better than and which enable your sense of elitism?
You won't find any of those in the Topcoder top rankings. Their code is mostly horrible, granted, but it's smart horrible.
I guess if you're normal-smart and want a chance of winning you could try competing in the humanities (i.e. not algorithms). I think there's a lot less competition there.