Cannabis Cup winners vs. winners of lesser known cannabis competitions.

I grew Chrystal from Nirvana a few seasons back. Winner of the Dutch High-Life Cup in 2002. I was really pleased with it Easy to grow, good yield, no hermies, strong potentcy and nice balance of high/stone. Not sure how it compares to the super-strains of nowadays though.

When I first started growing, I bought into the hype im sad to say. Most of the plants were not winners, they were decent. Seems that what's submitted to cups isn't necessarily what makes it to ceed.

Now I go by breeders. There are a few out there that have high respect amongst many growers, and may not have any cups under their belt.

I think the cup is more marketing hype than a reflecton of good strainss. Sure some are good, but they are either one off cuts or a selfed plant later on.

High Times is a racket and is more interested in selling hype (ffs that rag has more advertising than content).

I'm not chasing the flavor of the week, I want excellent, consistent plants when I pop ceeds. I don't want to chase a pheno that might appear in a $80 + pack. Plus I stopped using fem ceeds, not knocking them as they have their place, but I'm interested in making my own ceed stock when I have awesome genetic

There are a lot of issues with the High Times Cannabis cup, at least the traditional Dutch one.

First big one is that because the cup is held in Europe, and requires submission of several ounces of buds, it can be a big uphill challenge for breeders/growers outside of Europe to enter. IE, nobody is going to smuggle a few ounces of bud from Colorado into Holland just to enter a contest! Also, contest entry criteria are a bit murky. . .its not the case that just anyone can enter. So traditionally, this contest has been limited to companies with a presence in Europe, mostly the Dutch-based commercial breeders. As a result, in practice, there are a lot of breeders who won't/can't participate and a lot of great stuff never even gets entered.

Of course there have been all sorts of issues with judging, including (IMO credible) past allegations of vote-buying and other abnormalities. For example, multiple cannabis cup winner Arjan Roskam of Greenhouse se-eds had two cup wins revoked ten years ago after being caught red-handed bribing judges. I think this issue has been addressed somewhat, but the locals in Holland still eye this cup suspiciously. Personally, I don't even know how its possible for anyone to really "judge" 20 strains of cannabis in a limited time period. Certainly you can judge their smells and appearance, but potency is problematic, because of issues of tolerance and cross-tolerance that occur with smoking a number of different things in succession. Recently, the HT contests have incorporated lab testing as a way to compare potency, and IMO that's good, though these things still don't tell the entire story.

Most important caveat here is that at best contests judge BUDS, not STRAINS.

In other words, if a strain is nute-sensitive, pest or disease prone, hermie prone, slow growing, low yielding, takes a really long time to flower, has tremendous pheno variation, or other issues, those things simply aren't going to be reflected in a contest evaluation. The judges never see the actual plants nor try to grow them; all they see are the submitted buds.

As a result, even if a contest winning strain does make legitimately outstanding buds, that doesn't necessarily mean its going to be a good (or even feasible) choice for YOUR particular garden. In contrast, the absolute BEST lines for any given grower may not have ever been entered into any contests, let alone won any.

Bottom line is, the contest has always been a promotional tool for the magazine, and that's probably its main purpose. Contests are nice social networking/business occasions for growers, coffeeshops and others in the industry. The HTCC has traditionally been the equivalent of the cannabis industry "trade show" and they're fun events. As ways to decide which strains are "the best"? Don't think so.

TonightYou said:

Most of the plants were not winners, they were decent. Seems that what's submitted to cups isn't necessarily what makes it to ceed.

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This is another serious issue.

In almost every case, the actual buds entered into a contest represent the absolute best pheno of the line, grown by experts with many cycles of experience dialing it in perfectly, harvesting at its peak. In other words, you're getting the absolute max potential of the line entered into the contest. You may not ever see that cup winning pheno in your particular pack of beans, and even if you did, you probably aren't going to max its potential the first time you grow it.

In at least some cases, the genetics entered into the contest isn't identical to the genetics in the packs.

Also, over time, parent plants get lost, stuff gets diluted out by multiple generations of crosses, or the original breeder just reworks the line for other reasons.

If you look at the commercial market now, not only are there 10 different things called "Northern lights" and "White widow", they're all different from each other. Not even getting into which of these are or aren't good, obviously, these all can't be cup winning genetics! With certain cup winning lines (eg AK-47 and Kali Mist, to name two), the breeder has changed the genetics since the cups have been won.

Dude Couldn't have said it better myself. Wish mobile had rep button

from my experience in amsterdam the quality of bud goes down around the time of the cannabis cup. i dont know if its breeders rushing their shit to get it out there but so many times ive tried cannabis cup entries months after the cup itself and the quality has been much better

also the way it works is that the growers send out their product to the participating coffee shops and those who hold judges passes get to vote on what they think is best. it just comes down to whatever strain gets the most votes regardless of whether judges smoked all strains entered

one thing i will say, greenhouse bud is always mediocre (apart from one or two strains) so it amazes me how many cups arjan gets. i was in amsterdam last year around the same time as the cannabis cup and i got to smoke their flowerbomb kush..... it was okay but nothing great, but it won

so yeah, take from that what you will

Cups are a joke, and not worth entering. Besides, weed is so incredibly subjective that one man's treasure is almost certainly another man's trash. Subjectivity aside, they still really have to judge two things: the strain, and how well the strain was grown. The same cut can have an incredibly different taste and effect from grower to grower, especially now with the recent almost exponential development of cannabis cultivation technology. Furthermore, there's no telling how many beans a breeder/grower went through to get their 'cup-winning" cut. I mean, Greenhouse wins a lot of cups, and most people who have grown their beans as well as a lot of gear from other breeders find that kind of fishy, but they could easily have gone through a thousand plants to find the one really, really fucking good (or just decent enough to enter against DNA and Serious and not have it be an obvious giveaway) one. They don't have to tell anyone else that the odds of finding the winner are 1 in 1000, just that the winner came from their seeds. I personally don't think they should allow breeders of feminized seeds and regular seeds to be in the same category, as any jackass can self an elite clone, or just use two elites to pollenate eachother and enter it (and then get all butthurt and enter it again under a different name)

Seriously, my experience has been that all the best growers don't bother to enter the cups. Instead, they let their work, and other people's work with their seeds, speak for itself. That said, a couple of my favorite breeders have had other people enter their work in the concentrate category in the smaller cups and won. The best way to buy good beans is to research your beans before you buy them, just like with any other big purchase. (not that beans are/should be expensive, but buying a pack and not getting good results can be incredibly costly)

i'm from Eu and can say that here nobody trust any of GHS bulls**t cup winings..we all know that arjan is nothing else but a marketing expert and nobody likes him..ghs=money making machine
now..i think..they have new "brand" strain hunters seeds and new line of nutrients..it's just redicilous...
since ( breeder ) nevil left them.or arjan paid him of..there is story that he ( neil ) tok all of his ( good ) genetics with him..
i think that same thing is the problem with hight time cup-it is just marketing and money making show..it's for kids who want's to say that they went to cannabis cup in Adam..
sorry for bad grammar and typos-i'm in a hurry + english is not my best foreign language

Jogro said:

This is another serious issue.

In almost every case, the actual buds entered into a contest represent the absolute best pheno of the line, grown by experts with many cycles of experience dialing it in perfectly, harvesting at its peak. In other words, you're getting the absolute max potential of the line entered into the contest. You may not ever see that cup winning pheno in your particular pack of beans, and even if you did, you probably aren't going to max its potential the first time you grow it.

In at least some cases, the genetics entered into the contest isn't identical to the genetics in the packs.

Also, over time, parent plants get lost, stuff gets diluted out by multiple generations of crosses, or the original breeder just reworks the line for other reasons.

If you look at the commercial market now, not only are there 10 different things called "Northern lights" and "White widow", they're all different from each other. Not even getting into which of these are or aren't good, obviously, these all can't be cup winning genetics! With certain cup winning lines (eg AK-47 and Kali Mist, to name two), the breeder has changed the genetics since the cups have been won.

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Agree with this. Did a little private cup with 10 samples entered by local's in Colorado and one thing we discovered was that after the first 2 samples it is very hard to judge potency because the judge's are completely baked at that point. lol
We judged by smell, taste/flavor and potency as the three categories, however also taken into consideration was how well the strain represented the strain in question. Columbian gold was a good example of a strain that was judged using how close it was to what would be expected from this landrace. Check out the link at the bottom in my signature about the Halloween contest cup. The Columbian gold was fantastic. Hope I can get a clone of this special strain because it really is a pleasure to smoke.

Jogro said:

IE, nobody is going to smuggle a few ounces of bud from Colorado into Holland just to enter a contest!

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I am sorry sir, but you don't know what your talking about . There are a lot of people from California that enter the cups across the seas. I for one know three contenders who have won at these cups as well. There is a big reason to get your ass across the pond it gets you two things 1. street cred (Not many people do it) 2. Winning a cup brings the hype which gets you into markets all over the world. You start selling your beans and blam your sold out if you WIN the cup. 1st , 2nd, 3rd place all get pretty damn good exposure.

GHS does some shady things, but their SLH is legitimately awesome. It's also a good one to grow from seed in terms of consistency in selection.

Thecouchlock said:

I am sorry sir, but you don't know what your talking about . There are a lot of people from California that enter the cups across the seas. I for one know three contenders who have won at these cups as well. There is a big reason to get your ass across the pond it gets you two things 1. street cred (Not many people do it) 2. Winning a cup brings the hype which gets you into markets all over the world. You start selling your beans and blam your sold out if you WIN the cup. 1st , 2nd, 3rd place all get pretty damn good exposure.

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I didn't say NOBODY from the USA enters, I just said having a cup in Europe represents a big barrier to entry to potential entrants outside of Europe. You're saying it doesn't?

Obviously plenty of American breeders have won (eg DNA genetics). . .just that most of the ones who do also have a presence in Europe. For example, DNA genetics and TH Seeds are each headed by expatriate Americans who own shops in Holland.

On reasons to enter, of course it sells beans. That's pretty much the whole point of entering, if you're a bean seller. Nobody disputes THAT. The only issue (to the extent there is one) is how good these contests are at picking the "best" strains, that's all.

HGs has bad reputation .reasons are low quality (90% ) of their strains, shady moves ( bribing the judges ) and arjan super/mega/giga Ego.
so they made "documentary" show with interesting name "strain hunters "...but that "documentary" is just self promotional material for ghs strains and arjan himself..+they used that show to promote even a car ( toyota or something like that ) and new product by GH seeds-nutrients line specially made for GHS strains ( bull**it )...it is disguisting all togehter--but kids like it..name is interesting " the strain hunters"..
so..because GHS has bad rep. las few years. they opened "new seedbank " - The Strain Hunters Seedbank..
Arjan and people like him are the reason why cannabis is comercialized to much..so much that quality does'nt mater any more,,,just money/business
and as a result we have 50 new seedbanks every year,200 "new strains" + everything that follows - t-shirts and hoodies , bongs ,rollingpapers,vapes,grinders etc..etc... just for making money.
it is just redicilous..
and less and less people are in "cannabis buisiness" for right reasons. less and less passion for The Plant,.less and less care for patients well-being...
just money and fame..because of so much money breeders ( or seedbanks owners ) are stars now. they become celebrities...and that is another WRONG reason for new kids to enter "cannabis business".
as result of all that every year quality is lower and lower..and i'm afraid that is future of/for cannabis..so of course I don't like GHs/Arjan and people like him..
it is wrong and redicilous..and it is just so sad..

( i just wanted to explain why i said what i said before about GHS and arjan )

I've actually noticed better results on strains that never won anything. I think one reason is cause you know there using clone only's they obviously aint just popping 5 fem seeds and passing it out they find the best they can whether its in the line or not its about winning. Also the seed companies market their shit at the cup and really only the big dogs with a pound or more of prime buds that can pass it off to the most judges. medical cups are a little better but its not really breeders entering not too many anyway. But theres a few where they have no idea who's strain there voting on there just numbered but still it just goes to who ever has the best cut not the best seed line.

I like to just search for grows on strains that are interesting its really the best way imo breeder photo's joke as well as there descriptions and flower times are hardly ever right but you find a few random grows you'll have a better idea on flower time and how it will smell, taste, grow etc. But also you gotta take some of the bad grows with a grain of salt cause I saw nice grows of a few strains so I bought them and I mentioned it at ICmag suddenly oh 9 females hermied and dudes been growing for years and then a few more claiming hermies but I already bought it I was watching like a bastard but not one nanner it also finished a lot quicker dude said it went over 70 days so thats about right cause you let a female go too long she more then likely will throw nanners thats how some fems are made. But I still got a mamma from that strain. It always takes selection to find a keeper though you can grow 10 not find anything great and grow 10-20 more and find some of the best weed.