Yu-Gi-Oh! player caught cheating during tournament livestream

Cheating is a major problem in all card games, but perhaps nowhere is it worse than in Yu-Gi-Oh!. Many tournaments that do not have the benefit of being streamed online have blatant cheating, but the Ludus Championship Series, which was streamed on Twitch, revealed a cheating player.

This player cheated openly during Round 1 of the tournament, and has since been punished by the judges.

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Cheating is a serious problem in Yu-Gi-Oh!

During the WCQ Regional 2022 Round 1, a pair of players were dueling, and Cadianni (4/1/0) was playing Cassano (4/0/1). While playing the Dragon link deck, the player decided to try and stealthily pull a card out of his deck, via card dropping.

The Yu-Gi-Oh! player was sorting through his deck to find a card and quickly dropped the card out of his hand onto the mat. Cadianni then quickly pulled a card from his hand back into the deck. Anyone who wasn’t paying close attention might not have even noticed this. He then resumed gameplay as usual.

This occurred during their very first match, and it didn’t appear that Cassano even noticed it happening in the first place. However, the judges were eventually alerted and they identified the moment of cheating a bit too late. It was thanks to the clips made on Twitch.

As per the above post, the Yu-Gi-Oh! player in question was “declared unwelcome” to all future events, and further action will reportedly be taken.

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Social media doesn’t believe in this player’s “Heart of the Cards”

Cheating is never okay in competitive gaming. This particular instance of cheating wasn’t immediately clear to some Redditors, as evident by one user asking for clarification about what exactly transpired. A response came through to explain the situation.

The cheating player in Yu-Gi-Oh! was shown at the seven-second mark to clearly drop a card and replace it.

“Heart of the Cards” comes from the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, when a player gets the exact card they need at the right time. This player, however, wasn’t using the “Heart of the Cards” so much as blatantly cheating.

Several people immediately noticed the problem and made it clear to other viewers.

Was there a callout about this? Redditors were curious if any punishment or announcement to that effect was made. Thankfully, there was, but one commenter said that Konami takes cheating very seriously in their games when it’s pointed out.

Perhaps the worst part is that it was allegedly not even the only clip of this player cheating during the tournament, according to Reddit.

According to the tournament runners, the player’s Facebook group has since been punished, and players all over Reddit are disappointed to see this kind of behavior, especially live on Twitch. The player won't likely be seen at his local game shop competing with any of his decks for the foreseeable future.