A Yu-Gi-Oh! competitive champion, known as Hitsuji, was discovered to have cheated during a Hatti Grand Championship tournament, the largest Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament in Japan. The tournament’s blog posted the results of their investigation on Tuesday, stating that a player named Hitsuji was found to have:

• manipulated the order of the cards in his deck
• not shuffled his deck properly throughout the match
• drawn cards without shuffling

As a result of these misdemeanors, Hitsuji has been barred indefinitely from participating in the Hatti Grand Championship and in any tournaments related to the Hatti Championships. I suppose it could have been worse. What do you think?

A video was posted on Twitter showing Hitsuji performing a false shuffle:

メリュシークでトップ割拠を確定させるシーン pic.twitter.com/kFQKjfLksQ

— ぺぴゃ🇹🇼 (@pepyadon) November 26, 2018

Hitsuji doesn’t appear to think he was cheating, stating in a tweet:

“Although it’s true that the video shows me not doing a deck cut, I didn’t deliberately change the top card on the deck.”

However, he later posted an apology, stating:

“Regardless of the results of the investigation into my illegal play, I apologize for causing inconvenience to the Hatti Championship organizers and to my opponent Ucchi.”

Hitsuji, whose real name is Ryosuke Tsujimura, previously won the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championships in 2017.

Source: Anime News Network via Hatti Championship official blog via Yara-on!