Official document · Season 0 · Western New York
Frozen when entries open. Published in full because a competition nobody can audit is just an opinion with a trophy attached.
Season 0 is a single-elimination, head-to-head competition of 8 entries in one category: Indoor Flower. Four entries come from Monroe County and four from Erie County. The two brackets meet in a cross-bracket final.
Entries are scored on an absolute basis against the published rubric. The higher composite score in a matchup advances. Because scoring is absolute rather than comparative, a defeated entry may still finish the season ranked above a winner from the opposite bracket.
Season 0 is a private, non-commercial pilot. There is no entry fee, no prize purse, and no cannabis is sold, traded, or bartered at any point in the process. No consideration of any kind flows to an entrant in exchange for a sample.
Season 1 will be conducted under a New York Cannabis Showcase Event permit in partnership with licensed operators. Rules governing paid entry, community judging, and prizes will be published in full before that season opens.
Results are determined solely by the judged merit of the entry against criteria published in advance. No element of the outcome is determined by chance, drawing, or lot.
Entrants must be 21 or older. Licensed entrants must hold an active New York adult-use Cultivator or Microbusiness license with indoor cultivation authority, and must be located in Monroe or Erie County.
Home growers cultivating lawfully under New York's adult-use home cultivation rules may enter through a separate non-commercial track. Home-cultivated cannabis may not be sold, traded, or bartered, and no fee of any kind will be accepted from a home-grow entrant.
One entry per grower per season. The entry is a single cultivar of indoor-grown flower, harvested and cured by the entrant.
Sample size is fixed at seven grams, delivered in a plain sealed glass container with no branding, printing, label, or distinguishing mark. Containers bearing any identifying feature will be rejected at intake and the entrant given one opportunity to re-submit.
Total product held on behalf of the competition at any one time remains well inside New York possession limits.
Samples are delivered in person to the intake hub in the entrant's own county. There is no mail-in path and no courier path. Samples are never transported across a state line under any circumstances.
This part is the reason the competition exists. Any failure of it voids the affected matchup.
At intake each sample is assigned a code in the form HJ-26MM-X, where X is a letter A through H. Codes are assigned by an intake steward who takes no part in judging and holds no relationship with any entrant.
The mapping of code to entrant is recorded once, sealed, and held by the steward alone. It is not disclosed to any judge, producer, or crew member until every score in the season is submitted and locked.
Judges are not shown, and may not ask for: the entrant's name or business, the cultivar name, packaging, lab certificates bearing identifying information, or any photograph of the entry prior to scoring.
Samples are re-jarred into identical competition vessels at intake. All judging is conducted from those vessels.
Every transfer of a sample is logged with date, time, receiving party, and quantity. Remaining product is destroyed at the close of the season and the destruction is logged and witnessed.
Every entry is submitted to a New York permitted laboratory for potency, terpene, pesticide, and microbial analysis before it reaches a judge.
A failure on any pesticide or microbial contaminant is an immediate disqualification. The entrant is notified privately with the full result. A disqualification on safety grounds is not published with the entrant's name attached.
Potency and terpene figures are published alongside final results, and are worth zero points. Nothing in the rubric rewards a higher cannabinoid number.
Each season is judged by 5 judges: two from the trade, two experienced consumers, and one from outside the industry. All are named publicly before judging begins.
Judges disclose in writing any commercial, familial, or personal relationship with any entrant, and any financial interest in a competing operation. Disclosures are published.
A judge with a disclosed conflict recuses from the affected matchup and is replaced by the alternate. A judge who fails to disclose a known conflict is removed and their scores for the season are voided.
Judges receive no payment tied to any individual entry or outcome. Judges do not purchase their seat, and no cannabis is provided to a judge in exchange for a fee of any kind.
Sessions are conducted under fixed neutral lighting at a consistent temperature. Judges use clean identical glass for every sample and rinse between entries. No scented products are permitted in the judging room.
One matchup per session, and no more than two sessions per day. Effect is scored no earlier than 45 minutes after the sample, with a mandatory hold before the next matchup begins. Any session that violates the pacing rule is re-run.
Judges score in silence and do not discuss an entry until every sheet in the matchup is submitted. Sheets are final once submitted and cannot be amended.
Entries are scored out of 100 points across Aroma (20), Appearance (15), Flavor (25), Effect (30), and Finish (10). The full criteria are published on the scorecard and are frozen for the duration of the season.
For each entry the highest and lowest composite scores are discarded and the remaining three are averaged. The result is the entry's score for that matchup.
A tie is broken first by the Effect subtotal, then by Flavor, then by Aroma. A tie surviving all three is resolved by a single re-score of both entries by the full panel.
Every individual scorecard is published after the season with the judge's name attached to their own numbers. Scores are not published mid-season.
An entrant is disqualified for: attempting to identify their sample to a judge, submitting flower they did not grow, failing the safety panel, or offering anything of value to a judge or steward.
An entrant may contest a procedural failure — a broken blind, a pacing violation, a custody gap — within 14 days of publication. Scores themselves are not appealable. The rubric was published in advance precisely so that disagreement happens before entry rather than after results.
This rulebook is frozen when entries open and does not change during a season. Amendments take effect at the start of the next season and are published with a changelog.
Good — that is what a pilot season is for. The rulebook is open for argument right up until entries open, and closed the moment they do.
Get on the list