A few observations from an old fart.
It's all good! Any time you shoot any type of competition you learn something. If you don't, you werent' paying attention. For example; It may be artificial to require that you shoot one handed, weak hand from behind a barricade without moving your feet outside the "box". What you might learn is that when shooting weak handed in an awkward position you have a tendency to slightly limp wrist the pistol, and that with the combination of your load and the strength of recoil springs installed in your pistol this results in a stove pipe jam 30% of the time. This teaches you that you need to: improve your grip, lighten up the springs, and/or increase the power of your loads.
The point of the above is that you learn something about your shooter/equipment system in a non-life threatening situation, that could really cost you to find out in a situation where you have to defend yourself.
Sure, someone can design a game that is better or worse at teaching survival skills than some other game/design. This is just a matter of opinion/debate. Does IPSC teach bad habits that might get you killed in a real gunfight, yes I think so. But, the important thing is that doing something is better than doing nothing. All other things being equal, the person who competes, confirms the functioning of his equipment, and learns that he can shoot fast and furious at contact distance yet has to slow down some to consistantly put a round on a 10 inch disk at 20 yards, is in a far better position to survive a gunfight with a person that doesn't know these things.
As a "Gamer" once told me, "Don't worry about the guy who puts $1,000 into his gun, worry about the guy who puts $1,000 into primers.". This is wisdom.
Lonegunman complains that he couldn't collect a prize without joining up. Hey quitcherbitchin! It's their game and their rules. You shot more than one match you knew the rules. My guess is that since you came in 10th in the last one you shot, you probably learned something in the previous matches that helped you beat 50 out of 60 shooters in the last one. Good job! doing that by the way. Did you score so well in your first match? If not, then you got your money's worth from shooting with them. Take the lessons for what they're worth and move on if you don't like the people.