I run a small comic and gaming store in Maidstone, UK and every week we run an event for Yugioh which sees us getting an average of 25-30 people aged between 5 and 41 years of age.
The youngest player is my son, Cameron at 5 years and 6 months. He has been playing the game now for about 5 months and taking part in 10 of the last 12 weeks of tournament play.
Until recently he had only been bagging about 1 win per week, then 2 weeks ago I built him a deck running Normal Monsters. Prior to this he had played with Dark World and E-Heroes (theres a shock, hey!).
Things have changed a bit since then. Two weeks ago he came ninth, posting a 3-2 finish with his only losses coming against the players coming second and third. Then last week he managed to bag a fifth place finish albeit in a smaller field, only 17. Once again his defeats came against the guys coming 1st and 4th. Now this is where I have a confession to make. In the last round of matches I was praying that results didn't fall in his favour allowing for him to sneak into 4th place.
You might wonder as to why I wouldn't want my son to do the best he could, but a 4th place finish would have meant his qualifying for the Summer Cup Finals, a higher standard of tourney that I believe could, by its very competitive nature, put him off tournament play. Don't get me wrong, our tournaments are competitive, we have 4 players inside the top 350 in the UK but at five I think it would be asking a bit much.
The Yugioh tournaments are the highlights of Camerons week and I encourage any fathers/mothers out there to support their kids in their CCG play. I see alot of parents take a very begrudging outlook in the shop towards their childs hobby. I wonder if they'd feel the same if there little darling was interested in soccer, rugby or other less cerebral pursuits.
Props to you for letting him play and helping him along the way, this is so awesome
