Konami Announces 2013 Updates to Organized Play

During the 2013 NAWCQ, Konami's coverage blog published a series of articles covering four new programs set to begin for Organized Play later this year: OTS Championships, YCS Dragon Duel Championships, Yu-Gi-Oh! Day events, and a host of side events that will take place at Worlds this year. Let's briefly break each of these down, starting with the least relevant to the vast majority of players:

1. The events taking place at Worlds are actually quite extensive, and I can't cover them all in detail here. But for your convenience, here's a list of what is planned:

a. 32-player Regional Qualifiers for the 2014 tournament season
b. 8-player Dragon Duel WCQ Qualifiers
c. Attack of the Giant Card Tournament
d. 16-player Win-A-Mat Tournaments
e. 8-Team Tag Duel Tournaments (with "unannounced mystery prizes")
f. Carnival games offering stamps that can be redeemed for prizes
g. The first ever Giant Card Challenge

Be sure to check out the article itself for more details!

Source: http://www.konami.com/yugioh/blog/?p=14498

2. The Dragon Duel Championship post mainly just explains how the winner of a Saturday Dragon Duel tournament at a large event is no longer allowed to play in the Sunday event as well, and will instead compete against the winner of the Sunday tournament for a trophy and other things.

Source: http://www.konami.com/yugioh/blog/?p=14462

3. Next, on to the good stuff! Yu-Gi-Oh! Day is a new monthly celebration starting on July 27 that will happen only at Official Tournament Stores in the Americas (North, Central AND South). The basic impact of all of this is that once a month, there will be a special tournament offering a (currently unannounced) prize exclusive to Yu-Gi-Oh! Days. There will also be a raffle aimed at new players to give one person a free mat, in addition to game demos for people who are new.

Source: http://www.konami.com/yugioh/blog/?p=14436

4. And finally, we discuss the new Official Tournament Store Championships! This is a series of Tier 2 tournaments that will occur every other month at OTS locations across the Americas. The winner gets a special mat, and the top two finishers will get an invite to the upcoming WCQ. The intent with this program appears to be introducing a level of organized play that should be larger than a local tournament, but smaller than a Regional, which is pretty awesome. Unfortunately there is no given date as to when this will actually begin, but we can safely assume it will be before the end of the year.

Source: http://www.konami.com/yugioh/blog/?p=14404

Thanks for reading guys. I hope this post was helpful!