with all my respect to you ! just in order to give the full true information to our friends, so I wanna correct some wrong information you gave my friend! First of all as an Kyokushin karate black belt(shodan 1dan) i advice you to choose the Kyokushin for it full contact, so it give you an advantage against other martial arts, for it's based on direct kick and punches to the body, in addition, it teaches you how to raise and moderate your endurance. Secondly, I just wanna talk about the competition parts! In both karate styles competition, we use the scoring system which is divided into 3 types of grades(yuko 1p, I'll Waza-ari 2p, and ippon 3p) I'll explain in detail the difference, and how to score. starting by Kyokushin it's prohibited to the player to punch the face so it will be considered as a foul, and we'll score point for every effective punch or kick, but kick in the head get scored as Ippon 3 points, and every throw to the ground is scored as a waza ari 2 points, and every effective punch is scored as yuko 1 point. in the other hand in Shotokan competition, it's permitted to punch or kick the face but it's prohibited to kick any kind of low kicks.also ippon is awarded when u kick the opponent head or u throw him to the ground. waza-ari is awarded when u kick a chudan kick(middle kick). and finally, yuko is awarded when u punch the opponent body or face! and i'll be posting a detailed article about Shotokan and another one about Kyokushin rules and competitions