For KCBS Judges
You hand six numbers to a table captain and go home, and nobody ever tells you what they did. This part of the app is built to answer that — what a single point on your card is actually worth to the cook, where the tables are this season, and every certified judge class coming up.
Scores on record
Contests upcoming
Judge classes coming
Typical field
Perfect 180s
What your card did
Punch in a six-judge card and see it land in real results: the score it makes, where that finishes at a typical contest, and — the part nobody can tell you at the table — how many places each single point moved the cook.
What one point is worth
A judge marking one criterion a point higher moves the finished score by exactly that criterion’s weight. Below is what that weight buys, in places, starting from a middle-of-the-room score in each meat and measured against every board on file since 2023. The three numbers are not close to each other, and that is the whole point.
| Meat | Typical score (place) | Appearance ×0.5600 | Taste ×2.2972 | Tenderness ×1.1428 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken | 169.70 about 18.1 of 34 |
0.6 places | 5 places | 2.4 places |
| Pork Ribs | 168.56 about 17.6 of 33 |
0.6 places | 4.7 places | 2.2 places |
| Pork | 169.67 about 17.5 of 33 |
1.2 places | 4.9 places | 2 places |
| Brisket | 167.99 about 17.4 of 33 |
1.2 places | 4.1 places | 2 places |
Read it as: one judge moving chicken taste from an 8 to a 9 is worth roughly 5 places to that cook. Appearance, the lowest-weighted mark, is worth about 0.6. The honest caveat: the app holds finished category scores, never the six cards behind them, so this models a point added by one of the five counted judges. If yours is the card that gets dropped, it is worth nothing at all — which is its own kind of useful to know.
Upcoming certified judge classes
KCBS lists judging classes in the same feed as the contests. Every other page in this app filters them out; this is the one they are the point of. 8 coming up — book through kcbs.us.
| Date | Class | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 9, 2026 | Certified Barbeque Judging Class - Lynchburg, TN | Lynchburg, TN |
| Oct 15, 2026 | Certified Barbeque Judging Class - Sunland Park, NM | Sunland Park, NM |
| Oct 18, 2026 | Certified Barbeque Judging Class - Osaka, Japan | Toyonaka Osaka, Japan |
| Nov 7, 2026 | Certified Barbeque Judging Class & Table Captain Class - Guatemala | San Lucas Sacatepequez, Guatemala |
| Nov 13, 2026 | Certified Barbeque Judging Class & Table Captain Class - Argentina | Lomas de Zamora, Argentina |
| Jan 21, 2027 | Certified Barbeque Judging & Table Captain Class - Lakeland, FL | Lakeland, FL |
| Jan 23, 2027 | Certified Barbeque Judging Class & Table Captain Class - Richmond, VA | Richmond, VA |
| Mar 20, 2027 | Certified Barbeque Judging Class & Table Captain Class - Johnston, IA | Johnston, IA |
Where the tables are
Every upcoming sanctioned contest, with the rep running it and how big the room is likely to be. A table seats six judges and takes six entries per turn-in, so the table count is the field divided by six — that is how many of us they need to find.
| Date | Contest | Where | Rep | Likely field | Tables |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 9, 2026 | Smoke on the Water State championship | Topeka, KS | CLARA WILLIAMS, JONATHAN B WILLIAMS | 31 est. | 5 |
| Jun 4, 2027 | Big Blue BBQ Championship State championship | Marysville, KS | EUGENE WICKHAM, SARAH WICKHAM | 30 est. | 5 |
| Aug 13, 2027 | Smoke on the Bricks State championship | Baldwin City, KS | FORREST BRUCE, DAVE ROGERS, PEG ROGERS | 48 est. | 8 |
Before you sit down
Nothing here is official KCBS guidance and none of it is a rule — it is what the public results say, and it is offered to help you calibrate rather than to tell you how to mark a box. Every contest links back to its page at kcbs.us.