If you want to ignore my meandering message, you can get the straight poop here on the KCBS site:
http://kcbs.us/rankings.php.
If you're at all interested in my ramblings and other analytic tools, read on at your own peril.
Time and money would help for sure. However, if you look at two sites, you will see where you have to score and how well you have to score to get there. Most of the top teams are cooking 25+ contests and more throughout the year.
Check out
http://bbqrace.com/ and
http://www.compbbq.com/. Together these sites will give you a good idea of how hard would be. By looking at the individual comp scores on BBQrace.com, for example, you will see that if you participated in a contest every week of the year with 50 or more teams and never placed in the upper 1/2 of the field, you could win TOY. But realistically, who has the time and money to do that?
On the CompBBQ.com site, you can look at teams like 3Eyz and see that they do a lot of comps, but they also score pretty well, have lots of GCs and RGCs and numerous top 10 finishes. So it's not just about showing up.
Here is how the formula works out according to the KCBS site:
Every team at a contest will receive points, even the last place team. Additionally, every team participating in a contest will be awarded bonus points based on the number of teams at an event, up to a maximum of 50. There are no double and triple points, only the bonus points based on the number teams competing at each event. While teams will still be rewarded for doing well in large contests, this system helps to bridge the gap between the smaller and larger events, rewarding teams for their consistency on the competition circuit regardless of event size.
The following is a breakdown of the points awarded at each event. Take for example the third place overall finisher at a 47-team event. The team will receive 200 points plus 47 bonus points based on the number of teams competing, for a total of 247.
1st---250
2nd---225
3rd---200
4th---175
5th---150
6th---140
7th---130
8th---120
9th---110
10th--100
11th--95
12th--90
13th--85
14th--80
15th--75
16th--70
17th--65
18th--60
19th--55
20th--50
21st--45
22nd--40
23rd--35
24th--30
25th and down---25
