Success in crowded SSB contests is mainly dependent on your antenna, obviously the bigger and more directional the better. Compromised HOA restricted antennas at SSB 100W?...read a book instead. Add legal limit, and you have a fighting chance to at least achieve somewhat of a Q rate. With SSB signals 3+ kHz wide, the overlap of signals can be nerve wracking to listen to. On CW, you can filter down to 50-100 Hz if necessary and still pick out a signal from the crowd. Your weak signal is discernible on the other side. On SSB, any filtering below about 1.8 kHz is mostly unintelligible, no matter how great your receiver is. Therein lies the problem of anyone hearing your low power with dipole signal. As K6AER said, a directional antenna will null out areas you don't want to hear, and of course increase your transmit gain to desired areas.
I operated the WPX SSB contest with my HOA ground-mounted screwdriver antenna, but able to put near legal limit behind it. Still rough going from (the RF black hole) Arizona. Trying to punch through the midwest and east coast curtain to multiplier-rich Europe was mostly an exercise in futility. However, I was able to get some limited domestic runs with mostly S&P, and wound up with 100K, and 330 Q's in 12 hours. A paltry Q rate, but at least it kept me somewhat interested

. Without the amp, Netflix would have been a good alternative.
But I agree...CW contesting is by far my favorite. I only do SSB to contribute some points to my local contest club.
73 and stay safe,
Bob K7JQ