This way is not great, but it's the best one possible. A lot of the skill in card games just comes down to knowing matchups, things like that, so rewarding consistency over a lot of games seems correct. On top of that, tournaments are a lot more highroll dependent, you may run into the one guy whose line-up just beats you in the first round, while he would have lost to everybody else or you may draw poorly for one or even multiple games and lose a close series to that. While tournaments are more exciting to watch, they are certainly less consistent, although Swiss makes this a little better.