The regional “YU-GI-OH! Trading Card Game” tournaments in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania tend to have the largest turnout in the northeast part of the United States. On Sunday, September 13, 2015, the first New Jersey regional tournament for the 2015-2016 tournament season took place at the Renaissance Hotel Newark Airport in Elizabeth, New Jersey. This was the second time that I judged a regional tournament at the Renaissance Hotel Newark Airport.

The first regional tournament at the Renaissance Hotel Newark Airport was on Sunday, April 19, 2015. That regional tournament had 450 players, with 9 rounds of non-elimination best 2-out-of-3 matches, with invitations to the 2015 North American World Championship Qualifier awarded the top 48 finishers. The decks in the previous regional tournament in Elizabeth, New Jersey included (but are not limited to) Nekroz, Burning Abyss, Shaddoll, Qliphort, Tellarknight, and Ritual Beast.

A few hours before the regional tournament began, I helped put the table numbers on the table. After the table numbers were placed on the tables, we had a judge meeting. Joe Frankino, who was the head judge for the 2015 North American World Championship Qualifier tournament in Nashville, Tennessee, was the head judge for the Elizabeth, New Jersey regional and initiated the meeting. After the meeting, players registered for the regional tournament.

After registration closed around 10:00am, Joe gave the judges their assignments for the regional. He assigned me to be the deck check lead. As the deck check lead, I checked the deck lists to make sure there were no errors on the deck lists. In addition to checking the deck lists, I would perform start-of-round and mid-round deck checks. During the start-of-round and mid-round deck checks, I would be assigned a table randomly to deck check. Along with another judge, we would compare the players’ decks with their deck lists. After we would check the deck lists, we would give the players back their decks and notify them if they had anything wrong with their deck lists. Afterward, the players would get a time extension for the round.

At the start of round 1, Joe announced there were 375 players in the regional tournament, enough for 9 rounds of non-elimination best 2-out-of-3 matches, with invitations to the 2016 North American World Championship Qualifier awarded to the top 48 finishers.

After he made the announcement, the players’ deck lists were collected. I checked the deck lists along with 3 judges that were assigned to help me check the deck lists that were collected during round 1. We finished checking the deck lists in the middle of round 3. After we finished checking the deck lists, we alphabetized the deck lists and placed them in an accordion folio. I began start-of-round and mid-round deck checks during round 5. After the deck checks were completed for each round, I acted as a floor judge and answered any ruling questions that a player had in their match.

A few minutes after the pairings for round 9 were posted, it was noticed that there was an error with the pairings. The scorekeeper tried to correct this by manually re-pairing a few tables. After it was noticed that a player would have to play the same opponent from a previous round, the entire pairings were re-paired. After the re-pair, the round continued as normal.

There were a variety of decks in the regional tournament in Elizabeth, New Jersey on Sunday, September 13, 2015. These decks included (but are not limited to) Nekroz, Shaddoll, Kozmo, Infernoid, Ritual Beast, Burning Abyss, Qliphort, Igknight, and Tellarknight.