I am not against seeding, all big tournaments do it. But they do it based on a ranking, not by "personal perception". There was an attempt to make a kendama player ranking, similar to the one for tennis, maybe one similar to chess would be easier to implement.
In the absence of a formal ranking system, seeding is "arbitrary". Still, arbitrary seeding is better than none. National champions, previous winner of the EKO, winners of other important events beeing seeded sounds like a good initial approach that is not just based on personal judgement.
However, I think the only way to get a "bye" should be on first round, and it is done to adjust the numbers to be a power of 2 and have an even bracket.
In Tennis, for example, once the tournament starts, all the players are seeded. There is however a set of classifier rounds where everyone that wants to join but does not have a ranking can compete and earn some slots. I see that as a necessary evil, but I can't imagine seeding Nadal, Ferrer and Djokovick just on the quarter final arguing that "they are going to be the ones getting there anyway", the pressure and how tired you get after playing is not to be dismissed. We should not dismiss the amount of pressure that playing a round of knock-off takes.
There is other competition that used to seed high profile players later in the game, it was Magic the Gathering GPs (GPs are opens, Pro Tours require you to win an invitation and have no "byes") but the structure of the tournament is radically different, every player gets to play all the rounds and gets points for winning, high profile players enter after round 1, 2 or 3 and enter with the equivalent points as if they had won all the matches. Up to today, I still find it unfair, specillay at the time I was given "byes" myself.
It is an interesting discussion point.
