How are players matched in tournaments for the first round, is it automatic or manually controlled?
If you are referring to live tournaments, such as arenas or Swiss, in the first one, they certainly try to match up you at your level, but eventually there will be several unbalanced duels, and in the second case they can occur from the beginning.
In correspondence tournaments, they are basically predetermined based on your rating at the start of each round, resembling several layers of mini-matchups of strongest against weakest until each participant is placed in a group. I think this is where your question came from, so it is practically an automatic matchmaking process.
I actually don't know how I could set up a tournament with manual matchmaking here. That doesn't include doing some casual matches, in that sense.
How are players matched in tournaments for the first round, is it automatic or manually controlled?