I'm not into gambling myself but what you propose seems better for everyone.
However, consider this. Those who are new to Steemit that are into the gambling scene and don't have much if any funds to gamble with will be barred from participation without an investment of some type, whether that be through posts, curation or transfers of crypto from external sources. For that reason don't be surprised if you get some pushback for this idea from those in that camp.
I see nothing wrong with that. So what if that complaint is lodged. It only shows those that don't have the community in mind are acting selfishly. There is no free lunch (besides the opportunity to join Steemit) and if you want to gamble then ante up, one way or another!
We need to create incentives for finding and rewarding new authors. This penny for your vote game is not going to do that. One way the developers could help new users would be to create an automated first post tag. So that every user who writes their first post can easily be found on one page.
Other ways would be to increase curation rewards for accounts with less followers. That idea is not fully thought through, just throwing it out there.