They totally stuffed up a great idea here. But you still get paid out 50 gold balls for winning your first game(EDIT: apparently not, apparently it's qualifying for second tournament and then winning first game).
The full payout structure is:
50 for top 32
100 for top 16
200 for top 8
300 for top 4
500 for second
1000 for winner
If you get through the first tournament, that's well worth pulling out of your current tournament for. If it works. I was meant to be playing a level 6 bot in my first game today, but it looks like it kicked everyone out of the tournament.
Really nice idea. Really terrible execution. I think I just described the whole game!
Cut the prize money to 10%, make it a level wide tournament with one round and this would have been awesome.