legitimate cases have been made both for an against seeding in tournaments. The lack of any real of statistics, and an established tour, are the biggest and best arguments against seeding in my opinion. Also, as much as folks like to compare pool and golf, I see a similarity here as well in that any number of players can rise up at a given tournament to win, to me, meaning that pro pool tournaments should go with a blind draw and not reward or penalize any players by seeding based on such loose arguments.
Relying on the American pros to vote on which events qualify as points events is a stop gap measure, not a long term solution to moving professional billiards forward, but I see its necessity as it relates to qualifying for international events.
Also, it should be stressed that a promoter has the right to try and put on the best event they can (as they are trying to make money) and if they feel the need to make sure the top drawing players (in terms of viewers) are guaranteed to make it through to the later rounds, then that is their prerogative as long as their is no real "governing body" of pro billiards to set sanctioning and tournament guidelines.
That being said, I recently discovered that a new format would be used in the upcoming Seminole Pro Tour event at Capone's in Florida that did not use a traditional method of seeding.
I am quite excited to see how their "modified" round robin event comes off. On the surface, it looks very exciting, giving all players a chance to compete and "make the cut" into the money rounds. It also promises some stellar match-ups through out the tournament, rather than hoping to have one in the late rounds and watching (or not watching as is the case in most tournaments) a bunch of players get smoked in the first few rounds.
It guarantees all the players who entered do not go "2 and out" as happens in so many pro events.
I don't know how it will turn out, but for all those interested in pro pool, I would suggest paying attention to how it goes as it might turn into a preferred format for future tournaments.
Here is a link to the format for the upcloming event -
http://www.seminoleprotour.com/rules