Have you ever wondered how all the pro players afford to travel to events? Have you ever wanted to travel yourself? As someone who’s managed to travel to all but five events in the US in the last five years while being a broke college student, I’ve picked up some useful tips and tricks you can use to minimize your travel expenses and attend more events. When Flying There are a couple of ways you can fly for cheap. As a general rule of thumb, Spirit Airlines is the go-to cheap airline. They’re not exactly luxurious, but they’ll get you Read more

This game’s long and illustrious competitive history began in Madison Square Garden with the 2003 Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship. Since that time hundreds of redoubtable champions have been crowned in the search for glory. Until now this game’s history has been segmented, fractured, and devoid of a cohesive and comprehensive documentation. Today all that changes.   ChampRank   It is my esteemed pleasure to introduce to you ChampRank! It is the world’s first database that documents every event to date and uses a points algorithm to rank players based off of their tournament performance. Every player who has ever topped a single Read more

Hey everybody, I’m back this week with hopes of correcting an error on my part. In my book Road of the King, I unintentionally advocated an illegal move. While I certainly wouldn’t have advocated for this had I realized it was illegal, the error was my fault and I want to apologize for my misinterpretation and take some time to clear up how it works to avoid confusion for anyone who has read the book. The error will be removed from later editions of the book.   Let’s start out by talking about the error I advocated. It’s a fairly Read more

Hey everyone! As I write this the participants of the 2015 Yu-Gi-Oh World Championship are sleeving up their decks in hopes of being crowned King of Games. As if that weren’t enough excitement, this weekend also plays host to the ARG Circuit Championship in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This tournament will be giving away $25,000, the most prize support given for a single tournament in the history of this game! We are on the dawn of Yu-Gi-Oh’s biggest weekend of the year and I couldn’t be more excited!   In addition to the amazing prize support, three legendary duelists will be inducted Read more

I often wonder if my whole approach to the game is correct. As a competitive player I am always looking for ways to gain an edge. While I have been able to find that edge pretty consistently over the last couple of years, I’m certainly not satisfied. Sitting at a roughly 50% top ratio may better than most, but it leaves me wondering how I can get the other half. In today’s article, I’m going to give an analysis of my tournament strategy in comparison to other top players throughout the game’s history. This inquiry has lead me to the Read more

Hey everybody and welcome back for the conclusion of my “Origins” article mini-series, where I share with you how I got to where I am today and the lessons I’ve learned along the way. I originally talked about my early years in the game, which you can read by clicking here if you missed it. The second part of this mini-series was spent talking about the role that the online community played, which you can read about by clicking here. Today I’m going to talk about what caused my transition from online player to top-ranked duelist.   When we last Read more

Hello everybody! After a little delay, I’m back this week with the second Origins article in my three-part mini-series, where I share with you my story and some of the lessons I’ve learned along the way. In the first part, I talked about how I got started and my early years in the game. If you missed the first part of this article series, you can check it out by clicking here. Today I’m going to pick up where I left off with the discovery of online Yu-Gi-Oh and how it played a key roll in developing me into the Read more

A little over two years ago when Frazier Smith wrote his Origins article series, I was still a relatively unknown player in the community. At that point I had spent over a decade playing this game and only had a handful of premier event tops and no rings to show for it. The transition to becoming a seven-time champion with the most tops ever is a change no one could have seen coming, but you can be certain it didn’t happen overnight. I would like to share with you my personal story and some of the lessons I learned along Read more