How to improve my scores

Practice is important. But to really cut the learning curve take a class hosted by a team that does well in your area. Some say judging is slightly regionalized so best to learn from a team who cooks in your area

I say slightly regionalized because the good teams usually do well regardless where they cook

Are you getting comment cards? Cooking to the right tenderness and texture is important, flavors can vary but an overall balanced flavor will do well.

Practice,take good notes take a class or two. Repeat the process.

c'mon Christopher ... a musician doesn't blame his instrument

What did the comment cards say? This might help determining what you need to focus on. Your boxes all look fine, but the scores indicate taste/tenderness concerns.

I sent you a PM - I cooked Vista yesterday too and would be happy to chat with you.

Take a couple classes from top pitmasters. may seem expensive, but much cheaper than trying to figure it out on the fly.

Considerably less expensive, and in my opinion a better choice is take the judges class and judge 5 or 10 contests. All your answers are right in front of you.
What it should look like, what taste and tenderness is a winner.
Yes it will take a while but nothing ever will just fall in lap.
Ed

Yes, take a judge class, get certified, judge a few competitions and you will see what taste, tenderness is being turned in.
Other than that, sign up for a class taught by a bbq team in your area, and practice!!

Best of luck!!!

A class by a winning team is the way to go. If you're worried about the cost, take one contest you're planning to do, cancel your plans, and go take a class instead. The class might even be cheaper and you're probably going to learn more. At that point you have the flavors and techniques that work, you just have to learn to apply them correctly. Both classes I've taken have paid for themselves.

One thing I did when I started was to wear out the search function on this forum. I searched for hours on what sauces/rubs were commonly used, how to hit the right tenderness, etc. This really helped until I could take my first class.

Also, how have your tenderness scores been? That's where I usually look first.

We are in no way an "elite" team with our first couple calls this year, but the biggest thing that changed our scores for the better was that we stopped overthinking it. We practiced cooking the same cuts, trimmed the same way, using the same rubs/injections, at the same temps all the time.

It's so easy to look at all the other teams while you are there and see their sauce, their rubs, their pits, their temps, their times, their presentation, etc. It made us constantly question what we were doing. Cook YOUR food and try to keep the taste as neutral as possible. As I'm sure you know, don't make it too spicy, don't make it too sweet, etc. Experiment with different sauces/rubs. I researched a ton on here and found some good "go-tos" that have helped us place a lot higher.

Don't be afraid to talk to the winning teams and try to get some insights if you haven't already. Follow them on social media. We follow a bunch on instagram and always love seeing their pics of their boxes. The winners usually have been doing this awhile and know how to cook their brand of BBQ very well and try to do the same thing every single time. But, you may get a hint in to what are the go-to sauces/rubs in the area. What works here in the northeast could be totally different than what your judges want in CA. Once you have that, it's cook practice time.

Harry Soo's class is in Diamond Bar. Looks like there are a couple happening before Sept. 15th if you're trying to get ready for America's Finest @ Crown Point.

http://www.slapyodaddybbq.com/classes-2/

For us, improving our scores really came down to 3 things:

A) Show up to compete - not to party. We still will have a good time on Friday nights, but no longer are we up until 2 or 3, and just getting crazy.

B) Take a class. I've taken a class each of the last 2 years, from at total of 3 teams who finished top 10 in KCBS last year, and are currently in the NBBQL. The first was fantastic at showing us what we were really looking for. The second cook on the same cookers we do, and showed us how to really maximize the cookers we use.

C) Cook more. One of those same teams we took a class from have become really good BBQ Friends of ours. At a comp last fall we were hanging out on Friday night, and we were talking about how our scores had improved, but we were still trying to get over the hump. He broke it down for us, and just told us: If you want to continue to be OK, then do what you're doing. Your food is good. You'll get some calls. However, if you want to do better, you have to be cooking all the time. We're still not over that hump. We have a consistency problem that we're trying to iron out (We literally have 2 calls at every comp this year, and the meats are spread out pretty evenly (2 Chicken, 4 Rib, 4 pork 4 brisket). Once we put a comp together, we're going to be fighting it out for GC. Not saying we'll win, but we'll be up there.

This winter we practiced more, we started our year earlier, and we're going to cook more comps than we ever have. And we're having our best year to date.

Truthfully, to do more (and we'd love to do around 20-25) we're going to need to partner with some companies that can help us cover some costs. I have started reaching out to some, and making it known, we're willing to put in the effort and work to make it worthwhile to everyone. Just got to find some takers.

https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=508150#{"issue_id":508150,"page":14}
Look at page 15, current KCBS listed cooking classes

What are your scores? Are there certain areas that are strong? Try changing one thing at a time. Practice chicken all of the time until you get it down to where you want, then move onto one of the other entries. It's hard to try and change everything at once and can get overwhelming. I'm just starting out myself but this is some advice I have already gotten.

ModelMaker said:

... take the judges class and judge 5 or 10 contests. All your answers are right in front of you.
What it should look like, what taste and tenderness is a winner.
...

Click to expand...

From the perspective of a relatively new judge and only cooking on my deck at home, I agree with Ed. At every comp I get to see a half-dozen samples of each meat and, after judging, get to talk to the more experienced folks about what we've seen. This is very educational and I'm absolutely certain that if you tell the judges (after score cards turned in) that you'd like suggestions for your own cooking they will bury you.

The other thing is that your scores are on-line and for each meat you also get the table average, so you can see whether you are rewarding the things that the other judges are. This has been a big help to me as a newbie, but I think it would help you as a cook as well. The report looks like this: