That's what I thought. And the second highest rated would be top seed in group 2 etc.... right?
How do you determine tournament seedings?
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mashanator correctly described a Swiss System (SS) tournament. There are also round robin (RR) tournaments and knockout (elimination) events. In almost all cases the tournament director's (TD) first step is to rank all participants by estimated playing strength (rating). In a knockout event or swiss system (SS) the 1st round pairings would be same as as mashanator described above. For a RR, TDs use formal pairing tables based on the number of participants to determine who is paired against who in each round. RR events are fairest in that everyone has the exact same opponents during the event but RRs usually require a lot more rounds so they are usually impractical for a large field of players.
I think the title of the post is adequate.