On Yu-Gi-Oh!

At one point, in college, I was waiting outside a classroom for a class to let out (having come early), and an acquaintance of mine (who was also waiting) had brought a curious silver attaché case.

The case in question, he was more than happy to show me, contained his collection of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. He had just gotten a couple of new uncommons or rares, I seem to recall, and was assembling a new deck; and, since we had quite some time to kill, offered to explain the rules of the game, and play a quick one.

So he finished assembling his deck, choosing his cards by various arcane criteria presumably derived from his own experience with the game; and, as he did so, explained to me their various properties (all of which now elude me these long years later). Once he had done this, I assembled (with some small assistance) a deck from his collection of leftovers. I did not employ, in so doing, my meager understanding of their statistics, abilities, and properties (though I did ensure, via further questions, that I understood those well enough to play): given, firstly, that he had presumably already selected from his collection the most puissant cards and combinations, and secondly, that I had historically been at best a mediocre player of Magic: The Gathering, I understood that it was unlikely that I would win, and there was no real pretense otherwise on either of our parts. Instead, my sole criterion for selection of the cards in my deck was my untrained and uncritical opinion of the artwork thereupon.

I basically trounced him.

And this is why I have no respect for, quite specifically, the Yu-Gi-Oh! CCG — because ultimately it is a child's game, as is Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders: despite bearing many of the trappings of a game of skill and strategy, it is ultimately a game of chance.