Remember that all judging is very subjective. The individual likes and dislikes of judges do play a part in the scoring. What is fantastically amazing to one judge can be not fit for human consumption to another. Then there is what I consider a big catch-22; the fact that judges are not supposed to consider the infamous smoke ring, but are supposed to judge on appearance... hello, a nice smoke ring simply does wonders for appearance, and thus affects the overall score.
That all being said, I do believe that most judges are true to the task they are given, and do the very best job they can to be fair in their judging. As competition cooks, we just need to remember this and compete to have fun and hopefully win a few bucks.