Chili cookoff champion(finally)!!!!!!

We just hosted a chili cookoff to raise money for a local, volunteer run, dog rescue. This is the 3rd year we've hosted, and we squeezed 35 ppl into our not huge house.
The great news is that we raised $800 for this rescue, and the good news is that after 3 attempts, I finally won
Smoked ribeye, smoked course ground beef, and smoked chili, with beer as the liquid.
Thanks for all the great ideas I got from the group, and the advice with my WSM

My recipe is a combination of a couple, worked on for years. The competition started 3-4 years ago with me saying that I'm known for my chili, and my friend saying she was too. One thing lead to another, and we've now raised about $1800 for dog rescues in 3 years.
This years recipe was
1 can diced tomatoes, with liquid removed
1 can tomato paste
1/2 lb cremini mushrooms
1 large red pepper, diced
1 large white onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, chopped finely
chili powder
Cattleboys Garlic Plus powder
McCormick Roasted Garlic and Onion powder
beer
1lb ribeye, cut into 1" strips and smoked with whiskey stays and hickory, then diced into small, pea sized pieces
1lb course ground meat, make into 2" patties, smoked, then diced into pea sized pieces
Maple Syrup

Cooked the chili on the stove while the meat was being smoked, then smoked the chili for 3 hours on the WSM, adding some of the tomato juice from the canned tomatoes and beer as required, then back into the house on low for another 3 hours to help the veggies reduce more, and release their juices.
I did that yesterday, put it in the fridge overnight(chili always tastes better the next day) and reheated it today in the crock pot, tried it again today, and added a secret ingredient, a bit of maple syrup, it helps to cut some of the acidity from the tomatoes. For the competition, I made sure it was on the "keep warm" setting about 30 mins before the competition. Nothing worse than chili that's too hot to eat.

1st and 2nd place last year were 7th and 8th this year. I gamble with doing smoke every year, and every year it almost bites me. It's a very dividing taste. One of my good friends judged me at 7 out of 20 due to the smoke flavor, but lots of other people liked it, so I eaked out the win(14.719 out of 20 vs 14.641 out 20 for 1st and second place )

Here's a couple of pix of the event, no pix of the actual chili, and it's all gone now. I was lucky to get a small bowl to eat after the judging
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And here's our pups(children ). This is their first night together last October, we had just rescued the Tan one. The dark one was 11 years old last September, the tan one is about 18 months in this shot.
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