A player really likes Steem Monsters and decides to pay $3000 for a diamond deck that has a ton of good cards.
They sign up for a tournament. it's a "free tournament"
216 people sign up also sign up. Looks like fun!
However, only 16 of them have the same level deck
200 don't. The other 200 have bronze decks and are hoping by some miracle to get into the top 8 spots that are paid out.
that's approximately 8 rounds of bullshit that has to play out before you're back down to the real tournament of 16 players
that's 8*15 min. That's 2 hours of grinding idiotic games and waiting for people who flee or aren't paying attention. The diamond player is really frustrated because that's 2 hours completely wasted, before they get back down to the real tournament with 16 players in it
So, now they've wasted two hours, and still have the real tournament to play when it could have been over in 40 min or less.

Personally I value the time of someone who has $3000 to spend on a deck more than 60 cents an hour. I expect they will too.

I think you're taking the serious comment in an unintended manner. We're not questioning the seriousness of the diamond player. We're questioning the seriousness of a novice player willing to waste 2 hours of their time and everyone else's time just for the miracle chance of getting a paid spot.

Personally, I think the silver players are going to ask for a 1 steem entry fee before the end of the march because they'll be sick of novice and bronze players wasting their time. Because in that case the silver players value their time over 15 cents an hour, which I'm going to bet they do.

Also, keep in mind we don't keep any of the Steem from entry fees. We're putting 100% back into tournaments or potentially on the main account and using the steem power to continue to upvote players.

Lastly, we're working on an in game currency called Dark Energy Crystals. When it's out the plan is to switch the fee over to an in game currency players can earn through playing, by melting down cards, or by trading on the market. The majority of tournaments we offer won't cost Steem (I'm not going to commit to never charging a steem entry fee as there could be other good reasons to do it).

The DEC can be earned through casual play. The tournaments will continue to have a small cost associated with them, but it isn't in the spirit of nickel and diming mavs and high end players, but it's actually in the spirit of not allowing players with low tier decks and endless amounts of time from trying to win tournaments by attrition. I mean, they can still technically do it. But so far it seems that the silver players realize that it doesn't make sense to put the 1-5 steem into the pot to play in a tournament they can't win. It won't be the case if it's set to free.

You can imply I'm a big, mean, selfish, greedy, asshole, with no marketing skills and a willingness to burn everything to the ground. In the mean time, high level players are going to have short, fun, and financially rewarding tournaments and know that more tournaments are coming.

Best of luck Dave.