You said it extremely well and I'm glad you are on the issue... It is a huge issue and they need to know. I get completely how you feel and why I'm making a big deal about it. If @yabapmatt and @aggroed don't address this, they will undo all the things we've done for them. It will set them back big time. Aggy did reply above if you want to respond directly, I have my response, but of course I recommend others tell him how they feel about it too.
If I can't (and everyone else) play my cards that I bought under the pretext that I could play in those tourneys, then it amounts to some serious charges against their ethics. If they think I've been tough on them, just wait til everyone figures it out. It won't be so civil, believe me.
Aggroed knows my stance on this via our discussion in the open discord chat. I have a decent amount of experience with running tournaments so I am not only speaking as a player / investor but I am also offering advice from my personal experience of running those tournaments. You simply don't offer something / have people qualify for it and then adjust the rules after the fact. It causes uproars such as this one and if done enough times will eventually cause loss of players. I do believe he is doing what he thinks is best currently but hopefully he takes all the collective feedback and changes his stance. I wish him and SM in general nothing but the best and hopefully one day we can all look back at all these topics and see they were the stepping stones in Mooning Steem-Monsters.
I'm with you on that... all of it... Well said @rentmoney and I hope you vision of the future is exactly like you said!