honestly i never trusted any of these types of things - it seems they all have constraints like nascar
Well, I think the Robins (Robbins?) contest if lacking in two important respects:
1) Multiple accounts are allowed per entrant, so you never really know how well the winner actually did. This was the issue for Larry Williams back in the 80's. He did indeed run a $10K account to over $1,000,000 that year. But he also traded multiple accounts, and some of those accounts did not fare well at all.
2) You have to use the Robins affiliated broker with what I consider to be very high commissions.
I think that the Norm Zadeh competition is legitimate. First, many known high performers have chosen to participate over the years, some more than once. And two, you have to identify the account(s) you are using for the purpose of measuring your return for this contest.
I haven't ever competed in either, but from what I can see on the USIC website, it is pretty straight forward with no restrictions other than you must trade products allowed by your declared division. You can't enter the stock division, and then YOLO out of a drawdown by buying a bunch of TSLA 0DTE puts, for example. But if you are in the Options/Futures division, I believe you can trade options, futures AND common shares as well as ETF's.
