Wrom: 
[JovenShadowcaster@msn.com]

Subject: The best tip you'll ever learn...

    I remember the best match I ever played with my old Exodia deck; it was 
amazing. Mind you, I was running an Exodia deck with a Painful 
Choice-Backup Soldier combo, complete with Gravity Bind, Light of 
Intervention, Swords of Revealing Light... you get the idea. Being a 
23-year-old former Magic: The Gathering junkie and a common staple amongst 
the local Detroit tournament brackets, I'm not some pushover. I have all 
the cards, all the combos; basically I'm just good.
  This is amazing, as I was up against my eight-year-old nephew with the 
straight-from-the-box Kaiba starter deck I bought him for Christmas (he 
wanted to get into the game, so I bought him the deck and gave him a load 
of my extra Commons). I taught him the rules to the best I could, and we 
duelled.
    Now through the course of the game, I never ceased to lay waste to 
everything he would put out. Trap Hole. Typhoons. You name it. I was 
shattering his hopes at victory. But he never ceased to bear his 
game-winning smile.
    At this point, I'm set for victory. All the arms and legs in my hand; 
two Labyrinth Walls on the field, a Sangan doing my dirty work. All I 
needed was to pull Exodia himself, which my face-down Sangan was meant to 
do. So now it's basically over. Still, something I didn't expect happened.
    He drew. He had been hanging on to quite a few cards, hardly knowing 
what they meant to play them, until something snapped as his smile got 
bigger. He popped his face-down Hane-Hane just to use it before Dark Holing 
the field, putting Sangan back in my hand -- lucky choice. Now he Dark 
Holes everything and Remove Traps my Gravity Bind. If that wasn't enough, 
he drops the Lord of D., the Flute of Dragon Summoning, and a free BEWD. To 
top it off, using his Ultimate Offering, he Monster Reborns my Summon 
Skull, fires a face-down Reinforcements through his BEWD, and after 
attacking my as-yet untouched Life, he pops his last card, Ookazi, which 
robs me of the last 800 points of life I had left. Beginner's luck? Maybe, 
but it didn't matter, as both my nephew and I had fun getting there. I was 
so proud.
    My entire point to this story is that I can understand correcting a tip 
that might be in error, but I must agree with certain previous posts that 
this site is not a place to post some pathetic garbage about things you 
hate (in particular, beatdowns). Yugioh is not a game about insulting other 
people's intelligence, it's not a game about 
ultimate-awe-inspiring-combos-of-doom, and it's not about having the best 
cards money can buy. It's about having a good time. Yu-Gi-Oh, above all 
else, is a game, and is all about having fun. If you can't duel without 
getting personal, can't lose without getting hot under the collar, can't 
stomach the all-too-fun Beatdown deck, or want nothing more than to outbid 
the jerk on E-Bay that keeps raising you on that Thousand-Eyes Restrict 
you've been drooling at until you're $3000 in debt, then consider a 
different hobby. This is about nothing more than having fun. My last 
tournament? I lost BIGTIME because I played a deck theory based on all 
Common cards. Not a mark of foil in the whole thing. I beat maybe one 
person, but I laughed my rear off as I played my almighty invincible 
Bubonic Vermin cards -- BEWARE THE HAMSTERS OF DEATH!! And THAT is what 
Yu-Gi-Oh! is really all about. Or in the words of my best friend, Tom 
Goerke, as I taught him how to play Yu-Gi-Oh! and immediately after I told 
him NEVER EVER include a non-effect monster with an ATK of under 1600 in 
ANY deck:
    "You wanna win games? Do it in your own deck. I'll put any friggin' 
card I want to in my deck, because I feel like it, it'll be fun, and that's 
what I'm in this game for."