Duels for Suicide Prevention – Zodiac Duelist’s 1st Charity Event

“Yesterday was a special day as the Yu-Gi-Oh! community came together for Zodiac Duelist’s first ever Charity event where 8180 total was raised for the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention. It wasn’t Zodiac alone though, as we had help from Yu-Gi-Oh! Reddit mods and many yugituber’s personal discords. The event aired on ZodiacDuelistTV on twitch while also broadcasting on the House of Champs youtube channel. Tons of sponsors and special guests came together to make this possible and put on both a show as well as incentives to give. The first guest was Alex Cimo (Cimoooooooo) who not only came in for a special “dumpsterfire” highlander formats (each card could only be used once) where banned cards were allowed for donors to pick at $2 a piece, but he also agreed to match donations during his time on the show which led to him matching $1700 in just the first hour! We then had Jeff Jones on who was scheduled for a 1 hour “AMA” (Ask me anything) and he ended up staying for 3 whole hours with non stop questions and stories! Up next was ARG’s Calvin Tahan who showed off some special goat decks against Farfa! Billy Brake was up next with another “AMA” which allowed me to take a dinner “brake”! Then for the duration Worlds Competitors Ryan Levine and Bohdan went head to head where donors could donate $20 to see them play in very specific past formats and matchups! To add to the fun, people started donating to give duelist “waboku” duel skills towards the end.

Many companies came together to give back to those that were giving. YGOSingles came in with a super rare copy of the prize card Number 89: Diablosis the Mind Hacker and $100 store credit! ARG and Ophidian Playmats provided 8 of their Dragon Ruler Playmats, a special test print Dragon Ball Super themed playmat, a Goat Format themed playmat, $100 store credit and a box of Cybernetic Horizon! GEM Playmats provided their Obelisk X Exodia playmat which was completely sold out along with a never released special “Yeezy” themed playmat. Troll&Toad gave $100 in store credit, and a Dueling Book admin helped with several sealed products including a box of CYHO. AkenoSM who had previously won a sealed Elemental Hero Clayman figure from my previous 24 Hour Stream forwarded it to the prize pool of this stream to help support the cause. Billy Brake and I provided a 2011 Yusei/Yugi/Jaden figure signed by voice actors Greg Abbey and Dan Green. Finally the Organization came in not even knowing about the event, and gave away a full display of Maximum Crisis special editions and any token of a winner’s choice! Every $2 given to charity was 1 raffle, and every $5 was 3 raffles. Donors could remain anonymous should they not want to claim any prizes for the cause.

I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who helped make this what it was. From those just watching who helped the number of eyes grow to find people who could give, to those that were apologizing for giving “a little” (every single bit helped). I originally had the goal set to $1000, thinking that people’s wallets would be drained from preparing for travel to the 200th YCS, or from sealed product like the megatins, but instead we hit an entire lifepoint bar’s worth of donations at the end. Most of the content will be uploaded in blocks after September 26th, and a portion of all ad revenue from the videos posted will continue to go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention for those interested in seeing some of the segments mentioned above!”