Bad luck in the contest buddy!
As for the talk of the trade off with bud size versus number. It really is so! My old style of vertical LST, has shown this. The first time and my first POTM was given 6 working nodes before being topped. This led to probably the perfect ratio of budsites and came in at over 15oz. Then I got cocky and pushed the style giving my next girl 2 extra nodes before topping. This made her really busy and a silly amount of smaller buds! She came in at just over 10oz. (She did win POTY though lol)
Anyway thats part of the reason I was led to develop the fluxing design. A style that lets you pic the number of budsites and give them all even space light and air circulation.
My current grow shows this again as I have 4 fluxes going and 2 of my older style. The older style girls are going to be crazy busy but smallish buds versus the fluxes that will all put out big numbers!