Just finished newest levels and don't see the star tournament

How I think the event works

1. It is dynamic but totally fake.
2. The "other players" collect candy for about 45 minutes or so.
3. The "other players" only collect candy relative to how much you are collecting/passing levels.
4. There does seem to be a hard cap of around 450-500.

So I had two today. The first one the second place player was at about 450ish.

The second one actually occurred in the late 400 so there were some very nasty levels to deal with and my collection was fairly slow. The "other players" never jumped very far ahead of me and stopped at around the 45 minute mark. I was actually behind but the "other players" after 45 min never went past the 170 they were at. I was able to end up around 210ish and they never collected another candy.

Basically this is just a free hour of play time and some boosters wrapped in a pseudo event.

The first few were just normal candies, the new one is striped.

Also not just 15 min you get a UFO as well. Way better rewards.

Yes, that all hits the mark with your analysis and makes sense. It's a bit like the episode race and Candy Royale then in the way it's set up, just 400-500 stripes being the goal instead of playing an episode in 24 hours or passing a certain number of levels on your first try. I do like the event, it's a good way to collect some boosters just playing an episode.