297 is the number of seats.  The number registered is less than half that at the moment I think.

Of the >2000 accounts that qualify for a seat, many are idle and forgotten.

It's quite likely that the game will kick off with less than 200 people playing.

Note also that there is a 0.5 BTC bounty on both my head and Deb's, making the total prize pool effectively 3 BTC.

Doesn't that make the value of a ticket around 0.015 BTC?