Home Spun comic strip #616

When my son first discovered Yu-Gi-Oh, it was as a cartoon. Once he discovered it was a card game, he desperately wanted to play...as Yu-Gi. Which left his father to play the villains. Of course, his dad thought they were playing a game. A very complicated game at that, where every card had its own rules. Needless to say, those early games didn't go well. My son would get upset when he lost. He was also known to "shuffle" the deck so that the right cards would end up in his hand. This was a real problem. A sore loser is one thing, a cheater is quite another. It took a while to realize that what was happening was Chase's own method of pretending. The cartoon was all about the main character playing in competitions, and Chase was mimicking these matches.

The Yu-Gi-Oh decks don't come out as much as they used to, and in spite of my fears, my son did not become a card shark with the self control of John McEnroe. I am not saying it was easy to guide him through an extremely competitive stage, but having the insight that part of the joy he had for the game was role-playing rather than card playing certainly helped us over a major hurdle.