Let's look at the numbers Matt gave us a little closer. First of all, entries are given a point score, they're not ranked. So someone doesn't score 20th place - they score 164.000, for example. Let's look at how Table 10 scored the best entries they had.
According to Matt, the highest scoring entries at Laughlin Table 10 were:
Meat Overall Meat Score
Chicken 47th 164.0000
Ribs 48th 162.8228
Pork 41st 164.5600
Brisket 53rd 157.6800
Those *scores* don't look really insane; with the exception of brisket, they average above all 8s and the brisket score is mostly 8s. The best meats at table 10 were scored 8s or higher.
Let's take it another step: without mentioning team names, let's see how those teams did in other meats:
Team Score/Place (chicken/ribs/pork/brisket)
"47th Chicken" 47,164.000 45,163.4172 69,155.9428 79,142.24
"48th Ribs" 68,159.4284 48,162.8228 59,158.8344 22,167.4172
"41st Pork" 35,167.9656 43,163.9772 41,164.5600 27,165.7028
"53rd Brisk" 21,170.8800 33,165.6800 3,177.1772, 53,157.6800
This is a lot of concentrated data and maybe a little hard to read, but it says a lot. That 47th chicken team had lower _scores_ in every other meat and chicken was their second-best placement.
The 48th ribs team had lower scores in two other meats and ribs was their 2nd-best placement.
The 41st pork team had very consistent scores in the mid-160s and place lower in chicken.
The 53rd brisket team scored better in every other meat; brisket was their lowest score. Maybe Table 10 hates brisket. Maybe the team had a bad cook.
In other words, while it's easy to say that Table 10 was a Table Of Death and want to talk to those judges, it looks like all the other tables, for the most part, were scoring the other entries from these teams pretty similarly.
When you have 85 entries, placing near the middle of a category is gonna put you in 45th place or so.
Maybe that's why the KCBS isn't doing much with the per-judge scoring data - maybe they'll find out that most judges are doing their honest best and there are very few "bad" judges.