Can someone explain how tournaments here work?

I am only familiar with bracket tournaments like March Madness for basketball. I am in my first tournament and each player is playing 4 players at a time in the first round. I have no idea how this is supposed to work. After the first 4 games, do I play another 4 who have the same record? How is a winner of the tournament determined? Does everyone play everone? I am clueless.

Also, do these tournaments have a way to block people from entering if their rating is too high and beyond the rating parameters of the tournament? Thanks.

Most of those questions can be answered on the following page: http://www.chess.com/tournaments/help#how

Thanks. I could not find info on whether or not players with higher ratings could be blocked from entering a lower rated tournament.

I'm not fully familiar but from seeing other posts, I think they can sign up initially if their rating is lower but if it goes up before the tourney starts, they stay in. I think with official chess.com tourneys, they usually move people to the appropriate rating section but I don't think regular member-ran tourneys have a way to enforce it.

I have never ran a tourney here but I would think the TD would have the option to remove people if it was done before the tourney was set to start. Not sure on that one though.

Well, after blundering my games away repeatedly, I am now out of the tournament. However, I would LOVE to understand how some players with a completely winless tournament record are still active playing the exact same number of games that I have (8) when I did win and draw several games? How in the world is the remotely possible?

Players are only eliminated once all games in a group have completed. So, right now only two players are eliminated since only your group has completed.