FINAL STANDINGS

[Smokehouse Seasonings]

I know that at all the big cookoffs that you can't score all the way from first to last. But how far down do you score so that teams can see where they finished ?  Is it the top 20? Thanks

[Lynn]

We always call off at the least the top 10 in each category - and some events will even pay thru 15 places.  When the final table is called out there are some of the Head Judges that will call them in the order that you finished.

To keep it totally blind judging - it would be a nightmare to keep up with all of the tickets - all of the organizations in Texas use the double theater tickets - one is taped to the container and the other is kept by the Head Cook to be matched if called at the awards.

May I suggest that if you aren't cooking at an event that you go into the judging area and volunteer to help and you will see exactly how the process works.

Good Luck on the Smokin' Trail

[gmholler]

Andy and I were talking about this topic, and he came up with an idea I wanted some feedback on. How about keeping the tickets from the boxes that don't go on to the next round in their own special bucket, or marking them with the color marker used for that round? That way, if there are, for instance, 4 rounds of judging, you can tell which tickets didn't make it past the first round, as compared to those that didn't make it to the semi-final round, whereas previously, you knew only if they made it to the final table or not. You could always write down which tickets went to which round, or you could just hold on to the tickets, if the cookers wanted to come up after the awards to see. (There aren't that many that want to know, but it seems that lately, someone always does!) 

It doesn't tell you EXACTLY what place you finished, no - but to me, as a cooker myself, I don't really care if I came in 21st vs. 22nd, but it helps my ego to know I made it to, say, the semi-final round of judging, instead of just not getting a call and figuring that my product was just plain bad.

Now, I don't think this would help us here in LA much, as we seldom have enough teams for more than two rounds of judging, but I think it might be helpful in some large TX contests. Comments?

Lynn H.

[Lynn]

Lynn - if I run 4 levels of judging - I always hold the semi-final tickets and allow the teams to check out to see if they had made it that far but just didn't make the final table. 

As you said there are some that could care less but then there are others that want to know

It will only make additional work on the HJ to do this but I don't have any objections to anyone that wants to do so -- it is just like when we started calling the final table in the order that they placed we got a lot of positive feedback from the cooks.

[Homebrewed Q]

I was wondering about this, it would be nice to know where you placed out of the whole field.   I'm just starting out so knowing where in the field I've placed would be usefull.  I understand it would be a lot of extra work, even if the entire results came out a few weeks later that would be fine.  Had a great time at my first event, The Tomball Shrine Club Cookoff, even got a 2nd place call for beans.  I wasn't in the top ten for meats and couldn't hear the final table tickets that they called so posted results for even that would be great.