Pook's Place

Let’s Make Things Interesting…

By Pook

            6.24.04  Well, the big drive is over.  East coast to West coast in 4 days, and man, am I exhausted.  During my drive, I had a lot of time to think about things, such as life, but mostly about Yu-Gi-Oh.  And it was a long, long, long drive. 

            So the end of day 3 landed me and my friend in Las Vegas, NV, home of America’s pastime, gambling.  I, being of age, decided to try my hand at a few games of chance, and low and behold, I ended up winning just over $100 (no, I’m not using that money to buy cards – it is basically covering my gas for the entire drive west).  Now it really took a lot of strength on my part, but I did have to stop myself from shouting “Go dice roll!” when I was the shooter during craps, but I still managed to come out ahead. 

            Where is this all going, you ask?  Well, I’ll tell you.  I decided that I want to open up a casino, Duelist’s Kingdom (and then, if it is successful, build another, Battle City) right on the Vegas strip.  This would be the essential world headquarters for high-stakes dueling games.  Plus, it’d be a ton of fun to stay in a Yu-Gi-Oh themed hotel – cocktail waitresses dressed like Tea and Mai, dealers with Yugi’s school uniforms, and if you are caught cheating, you end up in the Shadow Realm Hotel/Casino prison.  Unfortunately, I cannot afford to build this place yet - heck, I don’t even have a job yet (but if you want to offer me one, I’m not stopping you!), so I thought of another way to gamble/duel. 

NOTE:  Gambling is illegal in the United States of anyone under the age of 21 years old.  I do not condone underage gambling and Pook, Pook’s Place, and Pojo.com do not take responsibility for the actions taken by readers. 

            With that out of the way, here’s my idea for high-stakes dueling.  Now first of all, this works very well against people who play Fad Decks (i.e. every staple, popular deck style, etc) – basically no originality and the decks are built not only to win but to win big and effortlessly.  For a while, it was Beatdown, then Destruction, and now Chaos.  Sure, these decks do have their strengths, but it takes a good duelist to win with any deck thrown at them.  So here’s what you do:

            Find an opponent who thinks that they are God Cards’ gift to dueling and challenge them.  Each of you buys 5 packs of cards, but no 2 packs can be from the same set – 9x5=45 cards.  That’s going to run you about $20 or so.  Each of you opens your packs and then proceed to remove unplayable cards (i.e. fusion cards, ritual spells w/o the ritual monster, etc – basically anything that if you draw it, there is no way to play it in your current deck).  So let’s say you have 3 unusable cards and your opponent has 2.  Now, you look through their remaining 43 cards and pick 3 that they cannot use.  You opponent then takes your 42 cards and removes 2.  That way, each of you has 40 cards a piece.  If, for some reason you have more that 5 unplayable cards, your opponent must give you enough cards to finish your deck.  So if you have 7 unplayable cards and your opponent has only 2, your opponent selects 3 of his/her cards to give to you to use.  Make sense so far?

            After that, you play the match as usual – best 2 out of 3.  But here’s the catch.  The winner not only gets to keep the cards purchases, but the loser also has to give them all of their new cards!  So you get 90 cards for $20!  Or, you can have it that the loser pays for the winner’s cards, so you’d get 45 free cards.  Or, if you REALLY want to make it interesting, the loser not only gives the winner the cards, but ALSO pays for the packs he/she bought – 90 cards, FREE.  Plus, you’ll have insane bragging rights.  Now I know this whole thing sounds like draft or whatever it is that they always talk about in the Card of the Day section, but I made a few minor alterations to make it a bit more interesting. 

            By the way (side note time), I would just like to remind everyone out there that Yu-Gi-Oh is, in fact, a game, and should be treated as such.  Last weekend, I had the unfortunate pleasure of playing an opponent who essentially represented everything wrong with the game – a kid who played a Fad deck, wouldn’t lighten up, and was beyond rude to me.  If it had been an official tournament, he would have lost right away for declining my pre-duel handshake.  People, winning isn’t everything.  This is a game and games are meant to be fun.  I don’t know what high school sports coach messed this kid up, but when I said to him that it is supposed to be fun, he said “Winning is fun” without missing a beat.  It was really sad.  So I encourage everyone to not become this kid, because if we do, Yu-Gi-Oh players are going to start getting a bad rep, much like Magic players (no offense Magic players who read this, but you know what I mean).  Sorry to be all preachy.  Happy dueling!