ends of the playing surface and have 120 seconds to move around objects and score points. At the end of a game, the robots must stop themselves, at which time a judge scores the game to determine which team's robots won. Scoring For the 2008 season, the initial score of a team is 0 and then points are calculated at the end of the game using the point values found in the following table: The Botball season/Competition The Botball regional season runs from late January to about early May. During this time, students attend a two-day workshop and are trained in learning the basics of computer programming. Students have six to eight weeks to program, build, and test their robots. As the robots progress, students have to document how their robot is coming along as well as the tweaks and changes they made from the original design. During the regional competition, there are three rounds: Seeding, Double Eliminations, and Alliance. Seeding: Seeding is where one team goes against themselves(it is more like a practice round) but students still earn points and there is an award for the team that scores the highest on the seeding round. Double Eliminations is where the actual competition begins and where teams compete against each other until they are eliminated twice. Alliance Matches are matches for teams who have been eliminated twice early in the competition. Two teams are paired up together and they compete for points(it works like the seeding rounds but there is 1 individual team on each side and they try and score points as an alliance.) Regions and international competitions As of 2012, the regions in the United States are as follows: Arizona Colorado Florida Chicago area Greater Los Angeles Georgia Greater DC/Virginia Greater San Diego Greater St. Louis Hawaii Maryland New England New Mexico New York/New Jersey Northern California Oklahoma Poland Southern California Texas Botball also had 4 tournaments in the Middle East: Egypt Qatar Kuwait United Arab Emirates As of 2011, Botball also had tournaments in Austria Starting in 2001, KIPR began holding a national competition and in 2003 the first international team participated. The international competition is held during the summer after all of the regional competitions have completed. Every team that participates in a regional competition is eligible to participate in the international competition. The game rules at the international competition are generally identical to that year's