There is this SEO contest for beginners and it is dubbed as My Blogpost SEO contest. Beginners and experts can join although it is encouraged for beginners only. The contest started this August and it will commence two months after. So it is not like the other SEO contests that lasts up to 3 months.
There are a lot of beginners like me who joined the contest. My blogpost by the way is the keyword that we will be optimizing. As of now, familiar names are topping the SERP but there are also new names that emerged. My entry is not yet ranked as of this writing and hopefully it will be appearing in the SERP's soon.
My entry is at http://evoire.com/members/eimroda/.