World Championship 2012
Tournament details
Type	World Championship
Structure	Swiss-system (Rounds 1–5) Single-elimination (Top 8)
Format	Advanced
Location	Tokyo, Japan[1]
Date	August 11–12, 2012[1]
Final positions
Winner	Saito Akikazu[2]
Runner-up	Stefano Memoli[2]
Third place	Joshua Schmidt[3]
Fourth place	Wesley Seek[3]
Statistics
Participation	26[4]
Rounds	5 (Swiss) 4 (top cut)
Chronology
← 2011

The 2012 World Championship is a Yu-Gi-Oh! Official and Trading Card Game tournament, which determined the world champion for the year 2012. Marking the 10th anniversary of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, players from all over the world gathered to the Tokyo Midtown Hall, Tokyo, Japan to attend the event.^[1]

The main event was won by Saito Akikazu from Japan^[2] and the Dragon Duel was won by Yu Hau Liou from Taiwan.^[5]

Konami streamed live videos online for some of the Matches from this tournament.

CompetitorsEdit

The 26 competitors and the respective Deck types they qualified with are as follows. Players did not necessarily use the same Decks in this tournament.

EventsEdit

TimetableEdit

The scheduled timetable of events was as follows. Times are in JST.

Swiss roundsEdit

The pairings for round three were:^[11]

The pairings for round four were:^[12]

The pairings for round five were:^[13]

The following feature Matches were streamed live with Japanese only commentary:

• In the first round, Stefano Memoli defeated Michail Paraschos 2-0.^[14][15]
• In the second round, Leung Chi Wai defeated Waragai Yuki 2-1.^[16][17][18]
• In the third round, Takeru Norihama defeated Jonathan Ritzau 2-0.^[19]
• In the fourth round, Yohei Arimuro defeated Jarel Winston 2-0.^[20][21]
• In the fifth round, Tan Sung Lee defeated Santi Phromduangsri 2-0.^[22][23]

Top cutEdit

After five rounds of Swiss, the top eight players got to qualify for the next day. The top eight were as follows:

• Jarel Winston
• Joshua Schmidt
• Stefano Memoli
• Norihama Takeru “ちゃみ”
• Yumoto Kota “チャリオット”
• Saito Akikazu “ショウイチ”
• Arimura Yohei “ヨウ”
• Wesley Seek

All the Matches of the knockout rounds, including the final, were streamed live with both English and Japanese commentary.

PrizesEdit

All players who participated received a game mat featuring "Legendary Magician of Dark" and "Legendary Dragon of White".

The prize cards for this event are 2012-EN001 "Legendary Dragon of White", 2012-EN002 "Legendary Magician of Dark" and 2012-AE003 "King Landia the Goldfang".

DecksEdit

With the exclusion of TCG and OCG exclusive cards the overall event was favored by the OCG metagame, hence the dominance and win of "Inzektor" Decks, a widely played and a very effective Deck in the OCG. Initially Chaos Dragons Decks were played amongst many players during the event but without the TCG exclusive cards such as "Tour Guide From the Underworld" the Deck could not retain its fast paced capability as it does in the TCG.

During the top cut "Inzektor" Deck were played by every European player and every Japanese player, with the exception of Yohei Arimura, who used a "Skill Drain" Deck, which is effective against "Inzektor". Yohei Arimura's Deck utilized "Skill Drain", "Necrovalley" and "Dimensional Fissure", which can effectively damage the key engines of "Inzektor" Decks, by disabling "Inzektor Dragonfly" and "Inzektor Hornet" plays, as well as Summoning high ATK monsters, such as "Malefic Stardust Dragon" at ease.

A variation of an "Exodia" Deck was used by Jarel Winston. The Deck's main focus is to gain a lot of draw power by having the opponent have much more Life Points and draw "Exodia". The Deck utilized cards such as "Gift Card" to increase the opponent's Life Points, chainable cards, such as "Reckless Greed" and "Waboku", to use the Deck's key card "Hope for Escape". Winston also ran cards such as "Upstart Goblin" and "Twister" to increase the Life Point difference, as well as gain draw power and remove "Royal Decree". This strategy allowed Winston to draw 5 additional cards with "Hope for Escape" twice.

CoverageEdit

Konami was broadcasting live coverage of the tournament via Ustream. The event can be viewed on either of the following locations:

• Japanese Channel
• English Channel

All of the live streamed matches were made available to watch again after the tournament had concluded. These can be viewed at the following locations:

• Video Archive Swiss+ Finals (Japanese)
• Video Archive (Finals/English)

Round 2 Feature Match

The Finals

Round 5 Feature match

3rd/4th Place playoff

America's Jarel Winston perfoming an Exodia otk against Japans Akikazo Saito during the Quater Finals

finals of the Junior class (Dragon Duels)

Add an image to this galleryAdd an image to this gallery

ReferencesEdit