Basically competition chili is meat, spices and gravy.
1. meat - depending on the cookoff - hand cut or ground.
2. spices - should not be Wick Fowler or any other type of commercial packaged product. We take chili blends, pure chili powders, garlic, onion powders, cumin, hot powders, fresh pepper and come up with a combination there with that supposedly will taste like chili
3. gravy - combinations of beef broth, chicken broth, water, tomatoe sauce, crystals or cubes, chili paste. There is nothing that floats in the gravy except maybe a pepper, pork chop or sausage ball but these are removed part way thru the cooking process.
Competition chili is has become somewhat of an art - the chili is very rich - lately we have been cooking something more closely to James Coney Island - texture - but still a little more spicey.
Kidney bean are good but they are a little starchy. Try with pintos but cook the beans separate from the chili and then combine the two.
Basically everything that deters from the gravy other than the meat is a filler - nothing floating.
I like beans in my chili but only at home I would be put to Box K and probably hung from the closes limb if there were beans or anything out of the ordinary in my chili.
Hope that this answers some of your questions.
Wahene.