Showboat Millionaire Maker Qualifier

The format struck me as another bad idea from Harrah's, another case of what are these guys thinking. In the first round, you play against the field,
15 hands starting with 1000 in chips, min bet 100, no max bet. The top 24
advance to the finals. When I played, they said that they had about 250 people registered, with some open spots remaining. It only took 30000 to advance to the finals.

The finals consisted of the same format with four tables of six players in
the same room, playing at the same time. I could clearly see about half of the player's stacks at the next table over, and almost nothing relative to the two tables on the other side of the pit, other than being able to keep track of players who tapped out. The prize fund was 20k, 4k, 2k, 1k, with 5th to 10th each getting $500, and those ten players all qualifying for the millionaire maker finals in Vegas. If you add whatever you think the entry to the millionaire maker finals is worth to the cash prize, you should get a prize distribution that is very flat other than the first place prize. Anyone care to chime in with their thoughts about what it might be worth to make it to the finals in Vegas? I was using $5k as my ev estimate.

I decided to start my round by betting minimum, and tried to keep my eye on developments at other tables. When we got to the point where there were maybe four hands left, I noticed that there was a guy at the next table with a huge stack of chips, easily over 100k. So much for thinking about first place. We also seemed to be down to 13 players who hadn't tapped out. I could also see that 2 players had stacks much smaller than mine. I thus continued to be minimum for the rest of the round. I did have 3 bjs during my 15 hands, and finished with 10,950, good for 8th place.
There was a tie for 10th place at 10,000, necessitating a 3 hand playoff.
To have won more than what I received for 8th place would have required more than double my final chip total.

I'm convinced that I played this final in a rational way, but it bothers me because I made no attempt to actually win the tournament. To me that seems like a flaw in the tournament structure. Oh well, on to Vegas in August.