Quarter Finals?

I was brained to death on Absolute Write Water Cooler (community of writers) that it was stupid to include in my query that my script made Quarter Finals in a screenwriting competition, that the soft sell makes me look desperate.. I was told by one of your recommended colleague who does evaluations that it's a good idea to include QF in my query.

Personally, I wouldn't be much impressed by a script making it to the Quarter Finals of a competition. There are a lot of Quarter Finalists.

In general, I'm highly suspicious of most screenwriting competitions. I suspect they exist largely as a source of revenue to whoever's running them. I think most of them are essentially scams, whether they're intended so or not.

I also don't believe that screenwriting competitions select the scripts most likely to result in a movie, or even a good movie. I think a producer judges a script differently from a competition judge.

I know that some agents claim they're more likely to look at a query if someone's won a competition. And if you're at an agency, or a production company, please chip in: would some kind of credential from a competition help get you to read a script?

Or is it all about the hook?