The OP asked for a highly competative community, not an eSport.

How about Project M, a mod for Brawl?

Smite. It has an active pro-league and also ordinary ranked league for amateurs.

I would also like to say Gears of War 1-3 are good esports titles in the 3rd person shooter genre, scene is still there albeit a little smaller.

Pubs are Pubs.

TF2 Pub play has always been silly.  

On that note very few servers do this anymore, minus some conga's before and after matches.

Doesn't make it any less fun tho.

People are alot less gentle with that poor Uncharted guy than I was. Sony fans naturally have some problems with Big N and MS having such key exclusive titles in the competitive gaming scene when they don't seem to from my (limited) knowledge, so please go easy on him for wanting in.

I am gonna slow down on adding to the list so I can take my time to study the less 'oh right, I'm a dumbass for mot already having that' ones.

I am trying to limit my number of fighters and shooters. While Smash is deeply original counting it series twice would be redundant. - Project M instead of Melee however is an interesting argument.

They shouldn't feel bad, look at Nintendo, their competitive games weren't even meant to be played that way but the community made it what it is. Same thing can happen to a Sony game in the future.

In your OP:

"I wish to create a list of games, spanning as broad a collection of genres and alternative takes as possible."

I'd change your OP then.

Entirely true for Smash, but didn't Pokemon kinda become competitive from a bit of a positive feed-back loop born from motivating kids to want to compete as trainers in the first place. Psychic type animes forced kids to slave away in Pokemon's service till they grew up to be legitimate Pokemon Masters. - Speaking of Nintendo games needing luck to be competitive, I hope Splatoon does well despite its extreme surrealism.

Regardless your basic point is massively correct.