Practice makes you perfect. Implement a bunch of problems from online judges (Google: UVA Online Judge, SPOJ, Codeforces and Topcoder). If you can't solve a pr

Practice makes you perfect. Implement a bunch of problems from online judges (Google: UVA Online Judge, SPOJ, Codeforces and Topcoder). If you can't solve a problem, there is often explanation of the solutions (at least in Codeforces and Topcoder), so read them, understand how the solution works and then implement them, then try to find related problems. Doing this regularly, i estimate that you will be a good algorithmist in about 6 months.