Round 5: Top Table Update

August 26th, 2017

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Championship Series is played as a Swiss-format competition. That means players can compete in all the Swiss Rounds regardless of their record. At the end of those Rounds the Top 32 players continue on to compete in single elimination playoffs, and with 568 Duelists registered this weekend, we’re playing 10 Swiss Rounds total before the cut.

In any Swiss-format tournament, players with similar records are always paired together: if you won your first Round, you’ll play Round 2 against another Duelist that won Round 1 like you did. Win Round 1 and Round 2 and you’ll play Round 3 against a Duelist who’s also 2-0. And so on and so on, until the Swiss Rounds are over.

 

As you win more and more Matches the tournament software sorts players with the best records closer and closer to Table 1: the better you’re doing, the lower your Table Number. That means once several Rounds of competition have passed and the most successful players are all clumped together, we can look at the top tables to see which decks are the most played there, and get a quick idea of which strategies are doing the best. Here in Round 5 is a good time to do that – the Top 10 Tables are all still undefeated, while player records start to immediately decline.

 

So here’s what’s being played at the Top 10 Tables, here in Round 5!

 

Table 1:

James Kim with True Draco Zoodiacs

Versus

Shadhursen Puvanendra with True Draco Zoodiacs

 

Table 2:

Alexander Buell with True Draco Zoodiacs

Versus

Ricky Lak-Hang Lee with True Draco Zoodiacs

 

Table 3:

Jordan Zembrowski with Pure Zoodiacs

Versus

Deep Patel with Pure Zoodiacs

 

Table 4:

Thomas Mak with Pure Zoodiacs

Versus

Eric Pacheco with True Draco Zoodiacs

 

Table 5:

Jeffrey Leung with Pure Zoodiacs

Versus

Emmad Fajem with Kaiju Zoodiacs

 

Table 6:

Mason Mattila with True Draco Zoodiacs

Versus

Benjamin Slutsky with Pure Zoodiacs

 

Table 7:

Patrick James with Pure Zoodiacs

Versus

Gabriel Marini with Pure Zoodiacs

 

Table 8:

Michael Albanese with True Draco Zoodiacs

Versus

Tom Braudo with Demise True Dracos

 

Table 9:

John Wilkin with Kaiju Zoodiacs

Versus

Arnold Nadaban Zanabria with Pure Zoodiacs

 

Table 10:

Griffin Meier with True Draco Zoodiacs

Versus

Jeremy Thimbeau with Pure Zoodiacs

 

For those of you keeping track, that’s 9 Pure Zoodiacs; 8 True Draco Zoodiacs; 2 Kaiju Zoodiacs; and 1 Duelist running a dedicated True Draco Deck. The field is certainly not determined yet and there’s still plenty of room to see some shifts in the ranks, but for now Pure Zoo and True Draco Zoo are going head-to-head, collectively dominating the top tables.

 

Will that continue? Will we see some Yang Zing Dinosaurs or rogue strategies in Day 2? We’ll check back in Round 7 with another Top Table Update to get a better idea of how YCS Toronto is shaping up.