Ok so suppose one day you're playing around with some math for a few hours and eventually come up with this brilliantly amazing (and possibly somewhat difficult) problem. In fact, you like this problem enough to consider submitting it to a math contest. In this hypothetical universe, suppose you had the option of doing one of two things:

• A college on-site contest, such as HMMT or PUMaC. (For those who don't go to these things, an AoPS mock test is a suitable replacement.)
• The AMC10, AMC12, or AIME - depending on the difficulty, of course.

Now, both of these have their pros and cons. On one hand, the AMC's are very influential contests (more so than HMMT/PUMaC), and your problem would have the chance to be solved by thousands of students in a somewhat-serious testing environment. On the other hand, problems in the AMC system go through roughly two years of revisions and checking; it's possible that some other problem within those two years introduces a technique that eventually makes your problem much less exciting or even trivial. Submission to on-site or mock contests would circumvent this, since the maximum waiting period is less than a year.

Given the option, which one would you choose and why?