World Championship 2012

The 2012 World Championship is a Yu-Gi-Oh! Official and Trading Card Game tournament, which will determine 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.

The main event was won by Saito Akikazu from Japan and Dragon Duel was won by Yu Hau Liou from Taiwan.

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

Competitors
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.


 * Central America
 * 🇲🇽 Mexico Alvaro Manuel Gonzalez Orea (Six Samurai)
 * Europe
 * 🇮🇹 Italy Stefano Memoli (Wind-Up)
 * 🇬🇷 Greece Michail Paraschos (Chaos Dragon)
 * 🇩🇪 Germany Joshua Schmidt (Wind-Up)
 * 🇪🇸 Spain Angel Matas (Inzektor)
 * 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Hong Kong
 * Leung Chi Wai (Inzektor)
 * 🇯🇵 Japan Japan
 * Waragai Yuki “ライブラリアン” (Sendai) (Evilswarm Laggia)
 * Norihama Takeru “ちゃみ” (Tokyo) (Arrive HERO)
 * Yumoto Kota “チャリオット” (Tokyo) (Offering Machina Gadget)
 * Saito Akikazu “ショウイチ” (Osaka) (Inzektor)
 * Arimura Yohei “ヨウ” (Osaka) (Dimensional Skill Drain Beat)
 * 🇲🇾 Malaysia Malaysia
 * Tan Sung Lee (Chaos Dragon)
 * the Philippines Philippines
 * Irwin Arogo (Inzektor)
 * 🇸🇬 Singapore Singapore
 * Wesley Seek (Inzektor)
 * North America
 * 🇺🇸 United States Tyler Tabman (Wind-Up)
 * 🇺🇸 United States Robert Lewis Jr. (Wind-Up)
 * 🇺🇸 United States Jarel Winston (Chaos Dragons)
 * 🇺🇸 United States Kevin Rubio (Dino Rabbit)
 * 🇺🇸 United States Adrian Shakir (Wind-Up)
 * 🇺🇸 United States Michael Steinman (Dino Rabbit)
 * Oceania
 * 🇳🇿 New Zealand Oliver Parle (Chaos Dragon)
 * 🇦🇺 Australia Jonno Ritzau (Dino Rabbit)
 * South America
 * 🇪🇨 Ecuador Marco Jonatan Oviedo Castro (Wind-Up)
 * South Korea
 * 🇰🇷 South Korea Heo Seung Hwee (Gravekeeper)
 * Taiwan
 * Republic of China Chang Shu Jen “張樹仁” (Inzektor)
 * Thailand
 * 🇹🇭 Thailand Santi Phromduangsiri (Chaos Dragon)

Timetable


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

Swiss rounds
The pairings for round three were:

The pairings for round four were:

The pairings for round five were:

The following feature Matches were streamed live with Japanese only commentary:
 * In the first round, Stefano Memoli defeated Michail Paraschos 2-0.
 * In the second round, Leung Chi Wai defeated Waragai Yuki 2-1.
 * In the fourth round, Yohei Arimuro defeated Jarel Winston 2-0.
 * In the fifth round, Tan Sung Lee defeated Santi Phromduangsiri 2-0.

Top cut
After five rounds of Swiss, the top eight players got to qualify for the next day. The top eight were as follows:
 * 🇺🇸 United States Jarel Winston
 * 🇩🇪 Germany Joshua Schmidt
 * 🇮🇹 Italy Stefano Memoli
 * 🇯🇵 Japan Norihama Takeru “ちゃみ”
 * 🇯🇵 Japan Yumoto Kota “チャリオット”
 * 🇯🇵 Japan Saito Akikazu “ショウイチ”
 * 🇯🇵 Japan Arimura Yohei “ヨウ”
 * 🇸🇬 Singapore Wesley Seek

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

Prizes
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".

Decks


With the exclusion of TCG and OCG exclusive cards the overall event seems to be 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 couldn't 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 players, with the exception of Yohei Arimura, who used a "Skill Drain" Deck, which is an effective Deck against "Inzektor". Yohei Arimura's "Skill Drain" Deck utilized "Skill Drain" "Necrovalley" and "Dimension Wall", 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 very 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.

Coverage


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)