The PitWars manual

The season in one page

PitWars is a competition barbecue season, on one of two circuits: the IBCA circuit across Texas or the KCBS circuit across the country. Every turn is one Saturday from March to November, about 39 of them. Each weekend you either enter a cookoff or stay home. Enter, and the weekend runs through six steps: plan, shop, drive, cook Friday night, hit the turn-in windows on Saturday, then read the awards receipt.

• Plan. Pick one of this Saturday's cookoffs (one to three on offer, in different parts of the circuit), or a home weekend. Answer sponsors and the crew. Shop for the rig on weekdays.
• Shop. Buy meat by grade, wood, charcoal, ice, rub, wrap, sauce, an extinguisher, jackpot entries. You can scratch here for half the entry fee back.
• Drive. Diesel by the mile, a site fee, and whatever the road does to you.
• Pit. Wood, fire plan, wrap, injection, and whether you tend the fire or sleep. This is where most of the points are decided.
• Windows. For IBCA: chicken at 12:00, spare ribs at 1:30, brisket at 3:00, ten minutes either side. For KCBS: chicken at 12:00, ribs at 12:30, pork at 1:00, brisket at 1:30, five minutes either side. Choose how much fuss goes into each box and the style of any jackpot entry.
• Awards. Six blind judges score every box. For IBCA: appearance, texture and taste from 5 to 10, taste weighted heaviest, 200 a perfect meat. For KCBS: certified judges score appearance, tenderness and taste from 2 to 9, 180 a perfect meat. The receipt shows every card, your place, the money, the standings points, and what the judges said.

The season standing is Cook of the Year on IBCA (your best 12 weekends count) and Team of the Year on KCBS (your best 10). A missed Saturday costs nothing but the points you did not earn. Each circuit has an October championship for qualifiers and an Invitational for the top 15 after the last Saturday.

Two circuits

Pick the circuit when you start a single player season, join its public league, or start a private league. Each is its own game: its own calendar, standings and leaderboard. Your rig, your crew and your badges are the same team either way.

Season of the week

Everybody who starts in the same real-world week cooks the same calendar, the same weather, the same field and the same prices. Your own cook noise is seeded from the season, the cookoff and the choices you made, never from who you are, so two teams that make identical choices get identical results. That is what makes the leaderboard and leagues fair.

Modes. A single player season pits you against the 100-team AI circuit. The public league adds a table of every human on this week's calendar. A private league is your own calendar and your own crowd, up to 50 teams, with a six-letter code. The weekly challenge is a single player season with one house rule. You can run one single player season and any number of leagues at once.

The old-timer tips on the game screens point at whatever matters most right now. This page is the whole book. Every ? in the game opens the matching chapter.

Money: what a weekend costs and pays

You start with $9,750 in cash and a credit card with a $6,000 limit. Diesel and fines you cannot cover go on the card by themselves; anything else you have to advance on purpose. The card charges 4% a week on the balance, posted every weekend, and from week 33 a card at 90% of its limit picks up a $100 collections fee on top. Pay it down from the Ledger.

What a cookoff costs

Add diesel at 0.38 a mile round trip (for IBCA, Central Texas shows are 20 to 90 miles one way and the Panhandle 320 to 520; for KCBS, Missouri and Kansas shows are close to home and the coasts are over 1,000), a $40 site fee, meat, wood, ice and supplies, and wages for every hand on the crew. A Prime weekend at a mid-size show runs $700 to $1,200 all in. A mid-pack finish loses money; a top five makes it.

What a cookoff pays

The purse is 90% of entry fees plus added money ($3,500 plus $50 a team). Grand Champion takes 20%, Reserve 8%, and each meat pays 24% split first through tenth (8%, 5%, 3.5%, 2.5%, 2%, then 0.6% each). You can stack: a GC who also wins brisket collects both lines.

Other money

• Hot streak. From your third cookoff in a row the circuit pays appearance money: $50 times the streak, up to $400 a weekend. A home weekend of any kind resets it (a rain-out does not).
• Jackpots. Side categories at some cookoffs; the pot is every entry fee, paid 50 / 30 / 20. See Jackpots.
• Sponsors. Product deals save you money; logo deals pay a stipend every cookoff you enter. See Sponsors.
• Home weekends. Catering and pop-ups pay. See Home weekends.
• Leftovers. With a vacuum sealer every backup unit you cook sells on Monday. See the Rig.
• Side pots in leagues move cash between two teams. See Leagues.

Difficulty

Meat: grades, backups and the market

Every meat comes in four grades. A better grade lifts the base quality of the cook and raises the ceiling it can ever reach. The catch is fat: the two top grades of brisket and ribs punish a cook whose skill is under the floor, at 0.5 quality per skill point short. A skill-38 rookie on Import Wagyu brisket loses ten points and scores worse than Prime.

Backups

Buy a second unit of a meat and you cook two, box the better one: +2.1 quality. A third unit does nothing on the table (the shop caps you at 3). This is the cheapest upgrade in the game and the first thing a rookie should buy before reaching for Wagyu. Meat you do not cook rides home in the cooler for next weekend.

The market

Prices drift every week: a slow seasonal wave (brisket peaks in the summer), a little weekly noise, and the region you are shopping in (Panhandle beef is the cheapest, West Texas the priciest, about 6% either way; on KCBS the Plains and the Midwest are cheapest and the Northeast the priciest, about 10% over). Premium grades swing harder. About one week in four a headline moves one meat 15 to 28% either way: a freeze, a recall, a glut. The shop says why, and the trend arrow tells you whether to fill the freezer or wait.

Skill: the number that wins

You start at skill 38. Every point above 50 adds 0.36 quality to every meat; every point below takes it away. Skill also tightens your turn-in timing (see Windows) and cuts the odds of heavy sauce pooling. Nothing on the receipt matters more.

Diminishing returns

On the table, skill above 80 counts at 0.5 of a point, so a 100 cooks like a 91 against a field that also learns 0 skill a week over the season. The top of the circuit is still a fight at 100.

Simple or advanced mechanics is a switch on your Account page (and at the top of the pantry and the Pit screen). Simple, the default, is the classic game: the house rub, the house sauce, one injection kit, one brine kit, no flavor bars or pickers; one switch injects every meat that takes it and one brines every meat that takes it; a second pit runs the big pit's wood and fire plan. Your trays still carry the house profile where a season runs flavor. Advanced opens the whole pantry, the flavor bars and the rub, sauce, injection and brine pickers, injection and brine meat by meat, and each extra fire with its own wood, its own plan and your choice of what goes on it.

Practice cooks also teach: each one reveals a judge's leanings or a table's habits that would otherwise take two sittings to learn.

Beginner's luck

A brand-new team's first 2 cookoffs in a single player season cook with +9.7 quality on every meat, and the field that shows up cooks about 7 skill points softer than usual. It is spent whether you win or not, so use it: enter a show on the first weekends rather than catering. Leagues and challenges never get it; everyone there cooks the same field.

The cook: wood, fire, wrap, sauce, box

Friday night is where the points are. Some choices move the hidden quality of a meat; others move one judge criterion (appearance, texture or taste) directly. A quality point is worth about 1 score point on a meat. A judge point on one criterion is worth about 2.1 on appearance, 5.5 on texture and 6.6 on taste, because the IBCA card weights them.

Wood (quality)

Fire plan (quality)

Wrap, ribs and brisket (judge points)

Injection, rub and sauce (judge points)

• Injection goes in the night before, meat by meat, and needs a kit: +0.5 taste on brisket (beef broth through the flat; a purist judge takes −0.6 instead), +0.3 on ribs and +0.3 on chicken (butter in the thighs).
• Brine (chicken and ribs only, overnight, needs a kit): +0.4 texture and +0.2 taste. Nobody brines a packer brisket; the game will not let you. One injection kit and one brine kit cover every meat you give them that weekend.
• Rub is used every cookoff without asking. Run out and every meat takes −0.8 taste, about four score points each.
• Light sauce: +0.4 taste, never pools. Heavy sauce: +1.2 taste, the bigger reward, but a 4% chance it pools in the tray and the meat is thrown out. A box builder, a runner who checks the box, a prep tent and your own skill past 60 all cut that chance. At a table that likes sauce, a cook with a runner comes out ahead with heavy; without one it is about even and a pooled tray can sink the weekend.
• Sauce is worth double on chicken and ribs at Gulf Coast tables and 1.5× in East Texas. Not every table wants a heavy coat: Central Texas meat-market tables pay half for a glaze and scrape heavy sauce off (−0.6 taste), and Panhandle cattle-country judges dock a heavily sauced brisket (−0.4). A sauce hater docks a glazed tray −0.7 and a heavy one −1.2; a sweet tooth rewards any sauce on chicken and ribs.
• Sauce is a glaze put on in the pit's last stretch, before the meat comes off: the choice you make at the windows is how the meat was finished, not something poured on at the table. The box itself is meat on foil; IBCA bans garnish.
• For KCBS: a pooled tray is not thrown out, every judge marks appearance a 1, so heavy sauce pools more often there (20% before the rig and skill) and pays +0.9 taste. Mid-South tables are dry-rub country and dock a heavy coat (−0.6) like Central Texas does.

Box time (judge points, chosen at the windows)

Backups add +2.1 quality. Pit condition under 40 costs −1.5 on every meat, under 20 costs −3. A second pit (a drum, a pair of drums, a pellet cabinet, or the twin offsets; two extra fires at most) is its own fire: on advanced mechanics it burns its own wood at its own plan, and chicken or ribs on it score a little more for cooking at their own temperature. A brisket can go on it too but gets no bonus there; a packer wants the big pit. Each wood you light needs its own bundle, and any fire run hot and fast needs the charcoal. Tools and hands add appearance and brisket tenderness; see The rig.

The night: tending, sleeping and fatigue

Fatigue is a 0 to 100 number that does not touch quality. It widens your turn-in timing (see Windows), so a tired cook is a cook who sometimes misses a window and scores zero for that meat. You arrive with any road fatigue from the weekends before, then Friday night adds to it.

Where you sleep

Sleeping and the fire

The rig keeps the fire alive while you sleep. Each of these multiplies the sleep penalty, and they stack: an insulated cabinet ×0.5, rotisserie ×0.3, custom offset ×0.25, twin offsets ×0.15; wireless probes ×0.7, a pit controller ×0.55, full automation ×0.35; a fire tender ×0.4 (×0.3 seasoned, down to ×0.1 fully trained); a trained pit hand from ×0.85 to ×0.55; solar ×0.9; the living-quarters trailers ×0.9 and ×0.85. A cabinet plus probes puts brisket at −1 instead of −3. A rotisserie and a fire tender makes sleeping nearly free.

Fatigue relief

Hands and camp gear take a flat amount off your fatigue before judging: a pit hand −15 (more trained and seasoned), a fire tender −10, a prep cook −8, a camp boss −5, camper bunks −12, the deluxe camper −20, the bunkhouse −30, generators, lights, water and A/C a few points each, the big trailers up to −12. Shade and A/C also take the sting out of hot and wet nights specifically. The rig page shows each item's number.

Road fatigue

Every cookoff weekend in a row adds 6 to next weekend's starting fatigue, times the rig's road multiplier, up to 30. Results move it too: a GC takes 4 off, a top ten 2, a bottom-half finish adds 3, and each late or illegal tray adds 2. Any weekend at home clears it to zero. Comfort is the rig's job: bunks ×0.75, the deluxe camper ×0.5, the bunkhouse ×0.3, A/C ×0.85, hot water ×0.9, a camp boss ×0.85 down to ×0.5, the living-quarters haulers ×0.7 and ×0.5. A bunkhouse-and-semi team can run most of the season.

Supper can turn on you: 3% of cookoff weekends the gas-station tacos add +15 fatigue before the fire is lit.

Turn-in windows: late is zero

A tray outside the window scores zero for that meat, whatever is in it. The tray lands where you aimed plus a wobble whose size is your spread: spread = 2 + fatigue ÷ 20, +1.5 under skill 40, -0.8 over skill 70, plus whatever the rig and hands take off (a thermometer −0.5 up to a data logger −1.2, bunks −0.3 to −0.7, a runner −0.6 to −1.6, a trained box builder −0.2 or −0.4).

For IBCA · Texas circuit, home Central Texas: chicken, spare ribs, brisket

Chicken turns in at 12:00, spare ribs at 1:30, brisket at 3:00, each with 10 minutes either side.

The box follows the IBCA 2026 rules: meat on a sheet of foil, no garnish. Half a chicken fully jointed, skin on and meat side up; eight individual spare ribs, bone in, meat side up; eight brisket slices. Heavy sauce that pools throws the whole meat out.

For KCBS · National circuit, home Kansas City: chicken, ribs, pork, brisket

Chicken at 12:00, ribs at 12:30, pork at 1:00, brisket at 1:30, each with only 5 minutes either side: half the IBCA window. National teams run a tighter clock to match, so the wobble is smaller too (spread = 1 + fatigue ÷ 32), but a tired cook still misses more often here than in Texas, and a runner and a thermometer count for more.

The box: chicken, at least six portions of chicken, whole, sliced, pulled or chopped; green garnish optional; spare ribs, at least six bone-in ribs, green garnish optional; pork, at least six portions of pork, whole, sliced, pulled or chopped; green garnish optional; brisket, at least six portions of brisket, whole, sliced, pulled or chopped; green garnish optional. Pooled sauce does not throw the meat out: every judge marks a 1 for appearance, and the meat is still tasted.

Illegal trays

• A box that breaks the circuit's box rules (above).
• Meat pulled at a cooler check (see Weather and inspections).

A late or illegal tray also counts as a bad tray: it adds road fatigue, sinks crew morale, and is a strike with your logo sponsors.

Judging: from a hidden quality to a score

Each meat you turn in gets a hidden quality (0 to 100) from the grade, your skill, the cook, the weather and the pit, plus a cook-to-cook wobble the rig can shrink (a trim station, a slicer, a prep trailer). Six judges then score it on the circuit's card.

For IBCA · Texas circuit, home Central Texas: chicken, spare ribs, brisket

Judging follows the IBCA card (rules revised July 1, 2026): 6 judges at the table, one round, each scoring appearance, texture and taste from 5 to 10. The marks are weighted: appearance ×0.6, texture ×1.54, taste ×1.86, so one judge gives 20 to 40 and taste counts three times what the box looks like. The lowest judge is dropped and the other 5 are summed: a meat scores 100 to 200 (two decimals, like 177.64), a weekend 300 to 600. A disqualified or missing tray is 0.

Under the hood the expected mark is 5 + 5 × quality ÷ 100 on each criterion, moved by the nudges from your choices and each judge's leaning (the judge points on this page, scaled ×0.71 to fit the card), plus a little noise, then rounded to a whole mark.

Overall places are by the three meats added up, tie-break brisket, then ribs, then chicken, as IBCA breaks ties in the top fifteen. Each meat is also ranked on its own for the category money and the hardware on your wall.

Regional tables

For KCBS · National circuit, home Kansas City: chicken, ribs, pork, brisket

The KCBS card: 6 certified judges score appearance, tenderness and taste as 9, 8, 7, 6, 5 or 2. The marks are weighted: appearance ×0.56, tenderness ×1.14, taste ×2.3, so one judge gives at most 36. The lowest judge is dropped and the other 5 are summed: a perfect meat is 180, a perfect contest 720. Certified judges agree with each other more than a volunteer table and bring less of their own taste to the box: named judges' leanings count half as much here.

Under the hood the expected mark is 5 + 4 × quality ÷ 100 on each criterion, moved by the nudges from your choices and each judge's leaning (the judge points on this page, scaled ×0.57 to fit the card), plus a little noise, then rounded to a whole mark.

Overall places are by the four meats added up, tie-break brisket, then pork, then ribs, then chicken. Each meat is also ranked on its own for the category money, the Team of the Year category points and the hardware on your wall.

Regional tables, national

Judges with names

Every cookoff seats one to three known judges from a circuit roster of twelve, the rest anonymous. Cook under a named judge twice (or learn them in a practice cook) and the event card shows their leaning before you plan the cook.

The judges' comments

One line per meat, built from what the cards actually say: which criterion lagged, how high the whole box scored. They never change a score, but they tell you which lever to pull next weekend.

Weather and inspections

Every cookoff card shows the forecast. Weather moves quality a little, fatigue more, and the health inspector most of all.

Ice and the cooler check

You burn 3 bags of ice a weekend, 4 at 85°F, 5 at 95°F, 6 at 100°F. A fridge saves two bags, the commercial fridge four, a camp boss one to six, and any hauler trailer means you never buy ice. 35% of weekends (60% in the heat) the health inspector probes the cooler. Short by one bag: chicken is pulled. Short by two: ribs too. Short by four: brisket too. Pulled meat scores zero and counts as a bad tray.

The fire marshal and the hand-wash station

25% of weekends the fire marshal walks the row. No extinguisher at the pit is a $150 fine. An extinguisher is $45 and lasts forever. 20% of weekends the health inspector also looks for running water at the trailer: no hand-wash station is a $75 write-up; the water tank on the Rig page settles it for good.

Rain-outs

A cookoff with a soaking forecast (rain 70% or more) has a 15% chance of being called off Friday night after you have driven there. Entry fee back, diesel gone, the meat rides home for next weekend, and your streak stands.

The road: diesel, wear and breakdowns

Diesel is 0.38 a mile round trip before the truck's discount (a dually −15%, a new one-ton −20%, medium-duty −25%, a transfer tank another 8%, a fuel contract 22%; a fuel sponsor 25% on top). The trailer wears 0.015 condition per mile; heavy axles halve that and the bigger trailers cut it further.

For IBCA · Texas circuit, home Central Texas: chicken, spare ribs, brisket

Home is Central Texas. The farthest shows, in the Panhandle, are a long day's drive.

For KCBS · National circuit, home Kansas City: chicken, ribs, pork, brisket

Home is Kansas City, and the circuit is a lot more road than Texas: Columbia, MO is 125 miles, Memphis 450, Savannah 1,060, Danbury, CT 1,250. Each town has its own real road miles; the calendar card shows them. Past 600 miles one way the drive costs sleep too: +1 fatigue every 60 miles, up to +11 at the coasts. The championship is in Kansas City; the Invitational is in Tullahoma, Tennessee, about 520 miles.

What can go wrong

• Breakdown. With the trailer under 40 condition there is a 20% chance a trip breaks something (divided by the rig's breakdown factor: heavy axles ÷3, a hauler ÷4, up to the semi ÷6, and the trucks ÷2 to ÷4 on top). Six times in ten it is a seized bearing: $350, +15 fatigue. Four in ten it is a cracked axle you can limp 2 more trips; then it strands you for $500 and +25 fatigue, unless a buddy hauls you (once a season). A trailer repair fixes the axle.
• Flat tire. 6% of trips, $90. A brake controller and good tires halve it, premium tires cut it to a fifth.
• The sheriff. 8% of trips a small-town sheriff writes you up for $120. He remembers the trailer: the second time through his town he waves you on. Tow mirrors halve the odds.
• A tire sponsor covers every roadside bill. A breakdown is what makes them call.
• In the heat, without a fridge, a bag of ice sometimes melts through on the drive.

Wear and repairs

The pit loses 4 condition per cook (an insulated pit halves it or better) and 2 per home gig. Under 40 every meat loses 1.5 quality; under 20, 3. A weekday repair is $150 for +30 on one rig with no weekend spent; a weekend of repairs is $200 for +25 on both. Fix the pit before the brisket pays for it.

The rig: every item and what it really does

Everything on the Rig page sits on a chain: buy the first step, then trade up. You get 40% of the step you own back on the next one. The main pit and the trailer are chains too, with the free stick burner and stock trailer as step zero. Bigger trailers include camp gear. Rig purchases happen on weekdays and cost no weekend. Trucks and trailers carry into a claimed team's next season.

The Effect column is computed from the game itself. "×0.5" means half the penalty still applies; "−15 fatigue" comes off before judging; appearance and tenderness are judge points (about five score points each); "timing spread" is minutes off your turn-in wobble; "score swing" is the cook-to-cook noise.

Pits: Trade up one step at a time. 40% of what you own comes back on the next step. The pit starts over each season.

Trailer: Trade up. Bigger trailers include camp gear; the living-quarters hauler carries a fifth hand and the semi a sixth. A claimed team keeps its trailer for good; it follows you into every season after this one.

Camp: Each line upgrades in steps. Some come with the bigger trailers.

Tools: Small money, real points, each with a better version.

Truck: A claimed team keeps its truck for good; it follows you into every season after this one.

Team: Hire, then train. Wages every weekend; a trained hand earns more. Miss a wage and they walk. A hand with eight or more weekends re-signs with a claimed team next season, training and all.

You can carry 4 hands, one more with a living-quarters hauler or the semi, one more with the bunkhouse. Each is a hire fee, then a wage every weekend, home or away (paid whether you win or not). A hand is seasoned after 4 weekends together and gets a little better. Miss a wage with no cash and no credit and they walk. Training is a weekday class that raises what they do and what they cost.

Crew morale: the road, raises and walk-outs

Hired hands have a shared morale from 0 to 100, starting at 70. It shows on the Rig page next to the crew.

Under 30 the crew asks for a raise (25% on every wage, for the rest of the season, compounding if they ask again) or a weekend at home. Cook another weekend without answering and they grumble; under 15 one of them walks with the last load of wood, training and all. A GC does more for morale than any raise, so a winning team can run longer than a losing one.

The standings, the championships and the Invitational

For IBCA · Texas circuit, home Central Texas: chicken, spare ribs, brisket

Cook of the Year. At every cookoff, overall places 1 to 15 earn points, and every team with at least one legal tray earns a field bonus of 2 points per team in the field (capped at 100 teams). The season total is the sum of your best 12 weekends. Ties go to more Grand Championships, then more cookoffs entered.

The State Championship

The Lone Star State Championship: one October Saturday, 100 teams, $500 to enter, 1.5× purse, Central Texas. Qualifiers only: you need a top-ten overall finish at any earlier cookoff this season.

The Invitational

The Circuit Invitational, in Lockhart, the weekend after the last regular Saturday. The top 15 in the standings are invited, 40 teams cook, $500 to enter, 2× purse. The plan screen shows the cut line all season. Logo sponsors pay their finale bonus if you win it. You can skip it and post your season instead.

Honors

• The 200 Club: a perfect 200 in one meat (all five kept judges at 10-10-10).
• All Tens: all six judges 10-10-10, the dropped one too.
• The 580 Club: 580 or better of 600 at one cookoff.

For KCBS · National circuit, home Kansas City: chicken, ribs, pork, brisket

Team of the Year. Overall places 1 to 10 earn points, and a top 10 in each meat earns category points on top, so a strong pork or brisket pays even when the overall slips. Every team with a legal tray earns 1 point per team in the field (capped at 100). Your best 10 contests count.

The championship

The Heartland Royal Championship: one October Saturday in Kansas City, 100 teams, $500 to enter, 1.5× purse. Qualifiers only: a top-ten overall finish at any earlier contest this season.

The Invitational

Tennessee Hollow Invitational, in Tullahoma, Tennessee, about 520 miles from home, the weekend after the last regular Saturday. The top 15 in the standings are invited, 40 teams cook, $500 to enter, 2× purse. The plan screen shows the cut line all season. Logo sponsors pay their finale bonus if you win it. You can skip it and post your season instead.

Honors

• The 180 Club: a perfect 180 in one meat (all five kept judges at 9-9-9).
• Perfect Perfect: all six judges 9-9-9, the dropped one too.
• The 700 Club: 700 or better of 720 at one contest.

Both circuits: the whole field cooks

The whole circuit cooks every weekend, not just the cookoff you are at: the other shows on the card are judged too, each team at one a weekend, and their points count in the same standings. A weekend at home is a weekend the others kept scoring. The AI circuit is scored the same way you are, so the standings are honest.

Charity points

A charity cook at home costs $1,500 and pays 150 standings points straight into your total (about what a 15th place at a small show earns), and every logo sponsor forgives one strike.

The leaderboard and the Hall of Fame

The public leaderboard ranks finished seasons by points, tagged by mode, challenge and difficulty, one board for each circuit. The Hall of Fame is for a claimed team that wins the championship or the Invitational at skill 100; the name goes on the wall for good and shows up as the legend other cooks chase.

Sponsors: product deals and logo money

Some sponsors are real companies that pay PitWars to put their name on a deal; those carry a Partner tag. A partner deal works exactly like any other sponsor's: it calls for the same reasons, delivers the same thing, asks the same of you and pays the same. Only the name on it is real. When you sign one there is a box, never ticked for you, to send that company your email for real-life deals on their products; leave it and they get nothing, and you can stop sharing any time from your Account page.

Product deals

A company calls the Monday after you do something they noticed. One product deal at a time; an offer only comes when none is running and none is on the table. Pass and that company will not call again this season.

Logo money

Four places to put a logo: the trailer wrap, the canopy (once you own one), the pit banner, the team shirts. Each holds one sponsor. Companies come in four tiers and call when your standing earns it; a bigger name can replace a smaller one in a slot. Statewide and National want the wrap and nothing else, and the wrap needs the trailer they name.

Keeping them. Sit out 3 weekends in a row and they pull the logo. 3 strikes does the same: a late tray, an illegal box, or a bottom-half finish twice running is a strike each. Skipping an appearance request is a strike. A charity cook forgives one strike with every sponsor.

Appearance requests. Regional and bigger sponsors sometimes name a cookoff in the next few weeks, usually the biggest one in the window, and pay the appearance bonus if you cook it. The Invitational is where every sponsor wants to be seen: no coin flip, and the bonus doubles.

Hosting. When you put on your own cookoff, every logo sponsor pays 1.5× their stipend toward the gate. Rivals. Your nemesis sometimes signs a sponsor before you (12% per offer); another company usually still calls.

Home weekends

Any weekend you do not enter is a home weekend. It clears road fatigue, lifts crew morale by 15, ends a hot streak, and counts as a skipped weekend with your logo sponsors (3 in a row and they drop you). Weekday jobs on the plan screen (rig purchases, weekday repairs, training) never cost a weekend.

Jackpots: beans, steak, margaritas, dessert, chili

Some cookoffs run one or two side categories (40% none, 40% one, 20% two). You buy the entry and the fixings together in the shop. The pot is every entry fee, paid 50 / 30 / 20 to the top three. About half the field enters, and some of them twice.

A jackpot is judged like a meat: quality 55 + 0.3 × (skill − 50) plus noise, six cards, drop the low one. Your best entry counts, and every entry adds its fee to the pot. Styles shift the average and the swing, and some tables lean one way by region: big-swing styles are for teams behind in the standings.

Rivals

Every season picks three teams from the circuit to follow on the plan screen, with a head-to-head record against each.

The receipt notes when a rival was in the field and how they did. The circuit also climbs a little on its own all season. A handful of ringers in the 74 to 96 range chase the purses: they cook the fields of 40 teams and up and skip the small shows five times in six, so a small show is where a mid-skill cook can win and a big one is where the legend and the top three (about 92, 88 and 86) are waiting.

For KCBS: the national circuit is a deeper field than a Texas regional. Its hundred teams average a few points stronger, about one in eight is a ringer (74 to 96), and a hundred-team show averages skill 65 against 61 in Texas.

Signature style

Cook the same wood, fire plan and wrap weekend after weekend and your scores swing less: 4% per repeat, up to 15% off the cook-to-cook noise. Change any of the three and the count starts over. It is a consistency reward, not points: at the cap the swing is a sixth smaller, which is worth more to a team fighting for top tens than to one already winning. The pit page shows the running count and what the next repeat is worth.

Leagues, challenges and side pots

Everyone in a league cooks the same calendar, the same weather and the same prices, each at their own pace, so weeks differ between teams. The league table ranks members by Cook of the Year points (best 12), with cookoffs, GCs and net worth alongside. A league season is its own bankroll and rig.

Leaving a league posts what you have cooked so far and takes you off the table going forward. Quitting a single player season with results finishes it early and posts it; with no results it is thrown away.

Side pots

Any two league members can put $100, $250 or $500 on finishing ahead of each other this Saturday. Challenge before you enter the weekend, against a team that has not cooked past this week yet. It settles from the results once both have cooked (or not): a team at home loses to one that cooked, two at home push, an exact tie pushes. One pot per opponent per week.

Goals, badges and hardware

Season goals

Pick a finish line when you start a season. The plan screen tracks it, the recap says whether you hit it, and hitting it is a badge.

Badges

Badges are computed from what you have already done, across every season on the team, and show on the wall and the public team page.

Hardware

A top three in any meat, a jackpot placing, a Reserve or a Grand Championship goes on the trophy wall with the field, the score and the money. The State title and the Invitational are marked.

Season end and what carries over

A season ends after the Invitational (or the last regular Saturday if you skip it), when you quit with results on the board, or when a league owner removes you. The recap receipt shows the whole year. Finished seasons post to the leaderboard.

Claimed teams

A guest team expires if it is never claimed. Claim it (an email and a password) and the team keeps its name, its wall, its public page, and the following carries into the next season:

Your saved standard load in the shop is remembered across seasons too. The difficulty you pick for the new season changes none of this: Home Cook, Circuit and Pro all carry the same. The first plan screen of a new season lists exactly what came along.

Flavor profiles: what the table wants to taste

Every rub, sauce, wood and injection has a profile on five axes, 0 to 10: sweet, salt, heat, smoke, tang. Your tray's profile is the rub at full weight (+1), the wood at +0.5, the sauce at +0.5 when you put it on, and the injection at +0.3 on any meat you inject (brine counts on chicken and ribs), each axis capped at 10. Every judges' table has a preferred profile per meat, drawn from the season seed with the region's tilt; the closer your tray, the bigger the taste bonus: 0 to 8 points on the 100 to 200 meat score, spread over the kept cards. Flavor runs in single player, challenge and public-league seasons, private leagues whose owner ticked the house rule, the Backyard; a season decides at its start and never changes mid-way.

The pantry

What the tables lean toward

The roster teams each cook one fixed profile all season, drawn near their home region's tilt, so the field stays honest. In the Backyard the flavor section shows your tray against the table's exact preference, the distance and the bonus. Recipe cards keep their rub, sauce and injection; in a season without flavor those fields are ignored.

The Backyard: practice with the hood open

A pit you can fire up any time, from the door on the home page: no season, no cash, no calendar, open to guests. The pantry is always stocked. You cook at your running season's skill (or your last finished season's, or 38 for a new team), one meat at a time, and the neighbor with the notepad shows you the math.

What it gives back, and what it never does

Knowledge and recipe cards. No skill, no cash, no points: nothing cooked in the yard touches a season, so nobody can farm it before a league and the shared calendar stays fair. A small fatigue meter per calendar day (a cook costs 12 of 100, an experiment 20, resets once a day at the same moment for everybody; the Backyard shows when in your time) keeps it from being a grind, and that fatigue widens your turn-in wobble exactly as it does on the circuit.

The receipt with the math showing

Every term that built the hidden quality, in order: the grade base, your skill, the wood on that meat, the fire plan, a night asleep, the weather, the pit, and the luck of the draw as its own line. Then the card nudges (wrap, injection, rub, sauce, tray time, the seated judges' leanings) in judge points per card, the turn-in offset against the window, the six cards with the dropped one, and the same Next time line the circuit gives you.

Recipe cards

When you like a cook, save it as a card: one meat's recipe (the wood and fire plan it cooked on, the wrap, its injection and brine, the overnight and its tray), a name and your own notes. Cards live on your team and show up as one-tap presets on the real Pit screen. A tap sets that meat only: on a second pit it sets the fire that meat is on, and the other meats keep what you gave them. A card for a meat you did not buy stays grayed out. Cook a card the way it says and that meat swings a little less every circuit cookoff the card has behind it (2% a cookoff, up to 20%), saved on the card across seasons; it replaces the signature bonus on that meat when it is larger, never stacks with it, and only circuit cookoffs count, not yard cooks. A card also counts how many circuit cookoffs it has landed top ten, so over the seasons you build a book of proven cooks. The book holds 24.

Backyard of the day

A fixed seed and a twist, the same for everybody: the meat, the weather, the table and a constraint (Choice only, out of paper, sleep in, no rub, mesquite only, hot and fast, a rushed box, one unit). One shot, scored 100 to 200, a board for the day, a new one each day at the same moment for everybody (the Backyard shows when, in your time).

Experiments

Pick one variable and the yard cooks every option five times with everything else held constant, then draws the averages. The spread inside a row is the luck of the draw; the gap between rows is the variable.

Neighbor's challenge

Make a code, send the link, both cook the same seed with the same weather and judges, and the board under the code shows every cook. Identical choices give identical trays; the difference is what you did.

Why did that happen?

Every meat on the awards receipt carries the judges' line (what they tasted; the place is in the heading) and a Next time line naming the one or two things from your own cook that cost the most: the wood, the fire plan, a night asleep on a stick burner, no wrap in the rain, heavy sauce at a dry-rub table, a rushed box, a pit falling apart, a Wagyu grade under its skill floor, no backup, no injection. When nothing you did cost points, it says so; the rest was the draw.