I did not decide on the prizes given to the winners and since there were no participation fishes I was happy to give out some money to the players who did not win. 10K was just a nice round number. It's not about the money or who gets what place, it's about having fun as a community and doing things together. It's not fair for the winners to double their prize money essentially because they participated. If you had gotten both you would have gotten 25K, which defeats the purpose of setting a prize amount.
Perhaps I should clarify, it wasn't exactly a participation prize, it was just a prize for celebrating mama OH's birthday and being interested on such short notice. It was a prize from myself to those who don't get a chance to win usually.
-gg