* Here are some free tips:
1) If you want to be become better at dueling you must do what a duelist is supposed to do, DUEL!
Practice makes perfect! Do not get discouraged when you lose. The more missplays you manage to realise, the better usage you will make of your cards and therefore your deck. Playing with a close friend of yours many times will help you a lot at that. You will both benefit! In case you can't find a friend to play with, try searching a games strore near you which is organising yu-gi-oh! events,
this page helps a lot.
2) Positive thinking (which by the way is also a great way of thinking when it comes to real-life problems) helps a lot, so try to learn from your mistakes.
3) When you duel try to think as calmly as possible and do not rush your moves. Try to solve the problem you are facing whether that be an annoying monster, trap or/and spell your opponent controls.
4) Don't be naive or arrogant. Try not to blow all your moves in one turn. If your opponent manages to counter your moves, you will end up with no cards in your hand and playing with the "power of the top of your deck" or, as Yugi likes to call it, "faith in the heart of the cards"! Unless you are 101% sure that your opponent won't be able to counter you, do not make all moves possible. Keeping track of your opponent's hand size and field domination, will help a lot at deciding when it's the right time to strike!
* Off course a good duelist needs a good deck with a solid strategy. Here are my general deck-building rules:
1) Try to be near the 40 card limit. If you exceed that, no matter how many strong cards you have you won't get to play them because you will have lost by the time you draw them!
2) Unless you have a very solid strategy to protect your life points from direct monster attacks, try to make a deck with more than 50% monster cards. This will improve your monster drawing chance when you are in a "tight" situation. This means if you have a 40-card deck, 21 at least must be monsters. Also try to keep the number of high level monsters, which require tribute(s) or special conditions to be summoned, under 20% of your monster cards. For example, if you have 20 monsters in your deck, at best, you should have 4 high level monsters. Off course you can have a strategy that helps you summon all your "BIG" monsters no problem but these are general rules :)
3) Try to make all your cards synergize. That was realy hard at the start of the game when there weren't many support cards but now it's realy easy. To make things even easier, most of them have similar names like "
Zombie Master" and "
Zombie World". But in case you want to make an utterly original synergy or strategy between your cards, you must start learning what your cards are capable of and how can they be combined. A wonderful place to start would be the
yugiohwikia which has a special "Tips" section for each card.
4) Try to keep track of the banned and limited list. These cards are there for a reason and most of them are staple or splashable, which means they can easily fit in any deck. As you realise the majority of them are powerful cards and you should prepare you deck for countering/facing them and the strategies they support, even if you decide not to include them in your deck.
5) Last but not least, try to find which card suits you best. Don't get sidetracked by the above rule. For example, "
Pot of Duality" is an incredible card but in a WATER themed deck it's not nearly as good as "
Moray of Greed".
I hope that my tips have helped you and not repeated stuff you already knew!
