User blog comment:JERealize/Does Anyone Care?/@comment-32154022-20130227111636/@comment-1874924-20130227151018

The episodes are typically 6-9K words, but each episode is divided into three parts, so each chapter isn't especially long--indeed, some are on the short side. (For the record, I regard any competition story chapter of less than 3000 word as short.) That said, Manatee's complaint is the reason why I uses chapter subheading in LTDI, to break up the long (7-12K words) chapters into bite-sized chunks of 3-4K words and have recommended that other long-chapter writers do the same.

As for not being interested in competition stories unless they have interesting plots beyond strategy, that's really something that any competition story needs to be successful.