Better Competition should breed better results form everyone. Wanting to win will increase results and make your community better, maybe with a few unhealthy rivalries.
I enter homebrew competitions when I want high-quality, objective feedback on a recipe. How else am I supposed to get it?
What’s the difference between a professional brewer and a home brewer who’s been brewing on the same system twice a week for a decade? Other than that the dedicated home brewer is more familiar with his equipment, I mean.
Obviously the core concept!
I don’t know if it is possible but I would love it if some enterprising homebrewer got his beer into the GABF and won!! With all the nanobreweries popping up I think it is in the realm of possibility… 
Isn’t it like $500 bucks an entry for the GABF?
Judging is $175 for BA members. It’s having beers on the floor that gets spendy. About $300 for the first entry, ramping up to ~$800 if you want to enter several beers.
Home brewers are ineligible, FWIW. Competition Information - Great American Beer Festival
Sucks to be the leader and a probrewer trying to keep both going. Maybe if I had an extra 80 hours.
I’m not too bothered by it because a lot of pro brewers are brewing what the head brewer or owner is telling them to brew so they are not let loose to brew their own ideas and own techniques at work like they can at home. Think about the homebrewers who work at the BMC breweries. They can’t brew craft styles in those breweries so I don’t see a reason why they should be excluded from competing alongside the rest of us.
I don’t know, at some point it becomes like Michael Jordan showing up at the local one-on-one tournament and entering to win the $500 cash prize.
I am hyper-competitive, and in that analogy, I would be super psyched to go one-on-one with Michael Jordan.