Quote:Right you are. The card game first shows up in volume two ("The Cards With Teeth!") in the story that introduces Seto Kaiba, then again in volume four as Kaiba initiates his revenge plan, an epic storyline that concludes with another card game in (I think) volume six. then it's back to other things for a while. (this whole epic storyline is condensed to the first episode of the dubbed anime.)
After finishing the first volume of the manga yesterday, I'm still ignorant -- it bears no resemblance to what fragments of the anime I've seen. The manga version of YGO reads more like a high school version of The Twilight Zone than the TV show's Utena Plays Magic: The Gathering.
Somewhere in here, It became clear to the writer that the fans and the merchandising people both wanted to see more of the collectible card game. (The first animated version had also begun at this point.) So Takahashi-sensei came up with the card game tournament storyline to test the waters (with outs so he could cut it short if it flopped.) The fans loved it, the new version of the TV show was based entirely on the card game, a success story was born.
Takahashi also started several of the character arcs moving forward in this story, notably Yugi/other Yugi's and Jonouchi's.
Unfortunately, this meant that the story was pretty much permanently trapped in CCG territory until the final story arc (which reveals all the secrets of the past, many chapters completely without card games) which just finished in Japan, but won't be appearing in the anime for a while yet, and naturally the dub is another six to twelve months behind.