This is an amazing day for competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! On top of being the 50th Shonen Jump Championship since the tournament series was conceived over three years ago, it has incredible prizes courtesy of Upper Deck’s Premier Event Specialist, Jeff Piroozshad. Jeff is responsible for the awesome playmats awarded to North American Nationals competitors, as well as the collectible Regional event playmats featuring art from the latest set. And today we see the fruits of his efforts in the prize structure for the 2008 Costa Mesa Shonen Jump Championship.

As you may have heard, it is a two-day event, featuring a cut-off of the top 32 players at the end of a 10-round event. Those who make the second day of competition will have more than just packs to look forward to. Four rounds of a Swiss format will be played, after which the event will cut to the Top 8 players, who will play off for an astounding and impressive set of prizes. Some prizes may look familiar, since this event supports and expands upon the old structure. Players who manage to place 9th through 16th after tomorrow will receive packs and an iPod Shuffle, while the 5th through 8th place finishers each receive a Nintendo DS.

Of course, what has everyone talking (and traveling great distances to the event) is the 1st place prize, which already has many people drooling. On top of a sweet gaming laptop rigged with top-of-the-end hardware, the tournament champion receives a copy of the new prize card Doom Caliber Knight, as well as a beautiful trophy with the first five prize cards embedded in it, sealed in beautiful crystal. Six prize cards is fun, but it wasn’t enough for Jeff and the folks at Upper Deck. On top of all that, the champion also receives a copy of each prior prize card that isn’t contained in a trophy (it’s kind of hard to put something like Gold Sarcophagus in your deck when it’s encased in solid crystal). That’s eleven prize cards in all.

The next part is a bit more interesting—2nd place wins a Nintendo DS, a 16GB iPod Touch, and a copy of Doom Caliber Knight, as well as his or her choice of any one of the past five prize card promos. The remaining four are divvied up in the following fashion. The 3rd place finisher chooses one of the four remaining prize cards, and receives a Nintendo Wii and a copy of Doom Caliber Knight. The 4th place finisher gets the same thing, except that he or she chooses one of the three remaining cards. The last two cards are saved for the side event drawing tournament, which will hand a winner one copy of Doom Caliber and hand the runner up his or her choice of one of the two remaining prize cards. The last prize card goes to the winner of the side event drawing.

Of course, some of this is already old news, so here’s something exciting to keep players interested. Anyone who makes Day 2 will receive a bonus prize! Players placing 17th through 32nd get an uncut sheet of ten super rares from Phantom Darkness in a nifty 5x2 rectangle. Players placing 2nd through 16th will earn a similar sheet of Phantom Darkness secret rares. That’s one way to get a copy of Dark Armed Dragon!