Seeding (sports)

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In sport, seeding is the practice of separating the most skilled competitors from each other in the early rounds of a tournament. Players or teams are "planted" into the bracket in such a manner that the best do not meet until later in the competition, usually based on ranking from the regular season. The term was first used in tennis, and is based on the notion of scattering the top players' names across the bracket in the way that a farmer scatters seeds. Sometimes the remaining competitors in a single-elimination tournament will be "re-seeded" so that the highest surviving seed is made to play the lowest surviving seed in the next round, the second-highest plays the second-lowest, etc. This may be done after each round, or only at selected intervals.

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