The Judge Exam what to expect how to prepare

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Genexwrecker
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The Judge Exam what to expect how to prepare

Post #1 by Genexwrecker » Wed Oct 12, 2022 3:19 am

A lot of you have been asking about the exam and wether you can take it twice, If you only get 1 shot ever at a judge position, if passing equals hired and how to prepare. I will be going over some of what to expect and how to prepare. Keep in mind I will never give you info on what is actually on the exams This is merely a preperation guide so you know where to find things and how to approach the exam.

STEP 1 READ THE RULES

The exam has a lot of rules of which you can read on the start of the exam page itself before starting found here
https://www.duelingbook.com/judge-exam

The most important rules outside of obvious cheating regulations is that you have 120 minutes to complete it and the exam is 25 questions. These questions could be anything and you should plan accordingly. Divide up your 120 minutes for an average time to spend on a question If you truely do not know and cannot figure out an answer there is never anything to lose by guessing at the very least. some attempt is better than no attempt. You need to make sure you are reading the questions carefully and make sure you read the rules of the exam. I cannot stress this enough but reading is the most important part of the test. If you cannot even read the starting rules how are you going to fair during a judge call where you have paragraphs of logs to read and dozens of cards to go through in a quick timeframe. I have had a few people come to me asking to take the exam again cause they didnt see it was 120 minutes and did not have the time to finish after they started. Once you fully understand the rules to their fullest and the 25 question 120 minute structure you can then proceed to figure out what knowledge you need.

Other rules
You cannot get any assistance that is human. you may use any non human online resources of if you actually have one a physical rulebook will also be fine.

DO NOT SHARE THE EXAM you cannot share the actual layout of the exam or its contents to anyone who has not taken it. I myself am not giving you the layout of the exam I'm just going over the rules that everyone has access to and the base structure of 120 minutes and 25 questions

Card effects are easily read as the rules page states all card names will have access to an immediate wikia page for the card with its stats and effects visible for you to read.


STEP 2 WHAT TO KNOW AT A BASE LEVEL
want to know whats on the exam? so do I but we dont have that luxury as we are the ones taking it. Since we dont know whats on it we need to take a look at the game itself and what the most important mechanics are. What would be the most core essentials? Something that I should expect to be present in any kind of yugioh test?
You want to know a few things at a minimum.

●Problem solving card text. This is how the cards are written and every bit of punctuation and wording matters for card effects. You can find konamis articles on the shortened PSCT here
https://yugiohblog.konami.com/articles/ ... -card-text

●The basic mechanics of the game which can be found in the rulebook here
https://img.yugioh-card.com/en/download ... _EN_10.pdf

●Knowing how activations of cards and effects work and turn structure of Fast Effect Timing found here
https://www.yugioh-card.com/en/play/fast-effect-timing/

●Knowing the damage step which can be found here
https://www.yugioh-card.com/uk/gameplay/damage.html
●If you are looking for more information though not an official source https://ygorganization.com has a lot of rulings and such posted on their site. Pretty much all of the articles on rulings on this site are linked directly to their official sources which you can check out for yourself so its a nice official source archive as it were. Do keep in mind they also have a lot of ocg rules and mechanics on their site as well which not all will apply the same in the TCG. Keep an eye out for that as you look through.


STEP 3 PREPERATION

Once you think you have the knowledge and skill you need to do well on the exam you want to make sure you can take it.
●Keep a secure internet connection.
●Set aside 2 hours of being undisturbed.
●Disable any hotkeys you have assigned or such that might close out your browser or tabs with one click. you can only take the exam once. if you do not finish it then you cannot return later and complete it.
● Do not fear the timer. Like any exam the timer is just a distraction it should not be a source of stress for you. Only use it as a way to divide your time for your questions and not as a "OH CRAP I NEED TO HURRY" indicator. speeding up will most likely lead to more incorrect answer due to you taking less time to read everything properly.
● Have your resources of choice all set to go and ready within a second you dont want to have to waste time looking for your resources and googling them.

STEP 4 JUDGES ARE NOT RESOURCES
YCS judges and Duelingbook Judges are not a source for how things work. If you are looking to learn a judge is a goodway to get some help but you always want to find a way to check the info yourself once you get a handle on the info you were asking. We are not perfect and can be incorrect. Answering questions wrong becuase a judge at a ycs or on facebook told you something works X way isnt something you want to be sacrificing incorrect answers to.

STEP 5 TAKING THE EXAM
Nice job preparing now good luck

STEP 6 AFTERMATH
Once you finish the exam your score will be submitted and you will get your result instantly.
If you get an 85% on the exam or higher, we may reach out to you about the position. DO NOT REACH OUT YOURSELF. If you get a passing score if you are somebody that is being considered we will contact you not the other way around. If you did not pass the exam Dont get discouraged with yourself and simply look to furthur improve yourself. There will always be the next exam.

STEP 7 CLOSING THOUGHTS
How did you enjoy taking the exam?
What do you think you could have possibly gotten wrong?
What do you think you could improve on?
How does it feel to finally be done?
Ponder these things and look forward to the next exam.
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Post #2 by Christen57 » Mon Oct 24, 2022 2:52 am

2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?

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Post #3 by Genexwrecker » Mon Oct 24, 2022 4:21 am

Christen57 wrote:2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?

The timeframe was actually shorter. We determined the 2 hour timerame after we the judges tested the exam ourselves and ideally realized that a mere 90 minutes was not going to be enough for users if we the judge team took longer than that to finish. If you cant get through the questions on the exam in 2 hours in a timely manner then you have very little hope of being able to quickly read through correctly and asses a judge call.
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Post #4 by Christen57 » Mon Oct 24, 2022 4:50 pm

Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?

The timeframe was actually shorter. We determined the 2 hour timerame after we the judges tested the exam ourselves and ideally realized that a mere 90 minutes was not going to be enough for users if we the judge team took longer than that to finish. If you cant get through the questions on the exam in 2 hours in a timely manner then you have very little hope of being able to quickly read through correctly and asses a judge call.


But didn't you also raise the number of questions from 20 to 25 to cancel out the benefits of the time increase?

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Post #5 by Renji Asuka » Mon Oct 24, 2022 8:18 pm

Christen57 wrote:
Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?

The timeframe was actually shorter. We determined the 2 hour timerame after we the judges tested the exam ourselves and ideally realized that a mere 90 minutes was not going to be enough for users if we the judge team took longer than that to finish. If you cant get through the questions on the exam in 2 hours in a timely manner then you have very little hope of being able to quickly read through correctly and asses a judge call.


But didn't you also raise the number of questions from 20 to 25 to cancel out the benefits of the time increase?

If you can't answer 25 questions in 2 hours then you're either being slow or don't know the answers very well.
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Post #6 by Genexwrecker » Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:17 pm

Christen57 wrote:
Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?

The timeframe was actually shorter. We determined the 2 hour timerame after we the judges tested the exam ourselves and ideally realized that a mere 90 minutes was not going to be enough for users if we the judge team took longer than that to finish. If you cant get through the questions on the exam in 2 hours in a timely manner then you have very little hope of being able to quickly read through correctly and asses a judge call.


But didn't you also raise the number of questions from 20 to 25 to cancel out the benefits of the time increase?

no
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Post #7 by Christen57 » Mon Oct 24, 2022 9:26 pm

Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:
Genexwrecker wrote:The timeframe was actually shorter. We determined the 2 hour timerame after we the judges tested the exam ourselves and ideally realized that a mere 90 minutes was not going to be enough for users if we the judge team took longer than that to finish. If you cant get through the questions on the exam in 2 hours in a timely manner then you have very little hope of being able to quickly read through correctly and asses a judge call.


But didn't you also raise the number of questions from 20 to 25 to cancel out the benefits of the time increase?

no


Then why did you raise the number of questions from 20 to 25?

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Post #8 by Genexwrecker » Mon Oct 24, 2022 10:33 pm

Christen57 wrote:
Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:
But didn't you also raise the number of questions from 20 to 25 to cancel out the benefits of the time increase?

no


Then why did you raise the number of questions from 20 to 25?

we didnt
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Post #9 by Lil Oldman » Mon Oct 24, 2022 10:46 pm

"Complacency? How rude. I live the stifling life of a high school student in our problematic modern society."
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https://youtu.be/ZuXI7qcNsHQ
Will try reviewing custom cards if they look interesting.

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Post #10 by Christen57 » Mon Oct 24, 2022 10:58 pm

Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:
Genexwrecker wrote:no


Then why did you raise the number of questions from 20 to 25?

we didnt


Then who did?

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Post #11 by the tester » Mon Oct 24, 2022 10:59 pm

Christen57 wrote:2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?


Why is 2 hours too short?

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Post #12 by Genexwrecker » Tue Oct 25, 2022 1:12 am

Christen57 wrote:
Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:
Then why did you raise the number of questions from 20 to 25?

we didnt


Then who did?
the exam was never 20 questions. It was 25 before and after release the only change was the time moving from 90 minutes to 120 minutes.
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Post #13 by Christen57 » Tue Oct 25, 2022 9:19 pm

the tester wrote:
Christen57 wrote:2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?


Why is 2 hours too short?


Because the questions are super specific and require you to carefully read each answer and think carefully about which one would be correct, which results in each question eating up 5-10 minutes of my time.

Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:
Genexwrecker wrote:we didnt


Then who did?
the exam was never 20 questions. It was 25 before and after release the only change was the time moving from 90 minutes to 120 minutes.


The 2021 version of the exam is 25 questions, but the 2020 version was 20 questions.

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Post #14 by Genexwrecker » Wed Oct 26, 2022 12:00 am

Christen57 wrote:
the tester wrote:
Christen57 wrote:2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?


Why is 2 hours too short?


Because the questions are super specific and require you to carefully read each answer and think carefully about which one would be correct, which results in each question eating up 5-10 minutes of my time.

Genexwrecker wrote:
Christen57 wrote:
Then who did?
the exam was never 20 questions. It was 25 before and after release the only change was the time moving from 90 minutes to 120 minutes.


The 2021 version of the exam is 25 questions, but the 2020 version was 20 questions.

I was talking about just the current exam. If you wanna go the route of the old exam. That exam did have 20 but it was also much much harder. The new one has 25 but is much easier.
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Post #15 by the tester » Wed Oct 26, 2022 3:39 am

Christen57 wrote:
the tester wrote:
Christen57 wrote:2 hours is too short. Why not 3 or 4?


Why is 2 hours too short?


Because the questions are super specific and require you to carefully read each answer and think carefully about which one would be correct, which results in each question eating up 5-10 minutes of my time.


Not every single question is going to be difficult. There's going to be freebies that you just snap up that give you more time to do the rest. There is no reason you'd need 5-10 minutes for every single question. There's enough time to answer the questions, go over them again to check your work, etc. The exams aren't exactly throwing the worst of the worst out there. Just applying Yugioh concepts that should be known/findable using cards that represent the concepts while still requiring you actually read the question to work out what to look at.


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