2 thoughts:
1 - I support the decision to not combine alpha and beta cards. You'd have to track differing levels of XP gain or alter one type to match the other. Also it keeps the alpha cards more exclusive, which I like :).
2 - On the tournament pot money, yes you could distribute liquid rewards at 10k/week and run down the escrow. Or you could power it up and do it this way:
540,000 USD = ~760,000 STEEM at today's price.
760,000 STEEM = $32 USD upvote per https://www.steemnow.com/upvotecalc.html
So you could self-vote up to $320 rewards per day (10 announcement posts per day maybe?), $160 of which would be liquid, which would mean $1120 per week, but growing and perennial as long as STEEM exists.
Of course, market variations could make positive or negative impacts over time.
Or even make a bid bot out of it and have the earning pay for tournament prizes.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Packs Sales are likely to breeze past tournament prize pools. So we can power up steem in the meantime