With its battle system being based around an intense card game called Duel Masters, the top duelists in Yu-Gi-Oh! are some of the series' most important characters. Many of these duelists shape the entire plot of the series, with some of the antagonists using their skills for dangerous and evil ends. While the protagonists may have stopped them in the end, it doesn't diminish their dueling prowess.

This is just one factor that makes gauging the skill of anyone duelist particularly difficult. After all there are some characters like Tea who have won every duel they played on screen but aren't actually very good at the game. Other characters may have lost the duels they played but showed off a lot of skill while doing so. Others like Noah or Bakura may have been built up to be big threats, but not actually have the dueling skill to back it up.

10 Pegasus

Pegasus is the creator of the Duel Monsters card game and has access to some of the best cards in the game. Additionally, with his Millennium Eye, he can read his opponent's mind and know exactly what cards they have. This makes him an incredibly formidable opponent in Duelist Kingdom.

Yugi is only able to defeat him by swapping bodies with the Pharaoh to mess with Pegasus' mind-reading capabilities. However, given Pegasus doesn't appear to be as skilled in the more rigid form of the game introduced in Battle City onward, he ranks the lowest on this list.

9 Zigfried

Zigfried is the main antagonist of the filler arc that season 5 of the anime opens with. An old rival of Kaiba, he enters a tournament that Seto throws and does incredibly well, easily dispatching much of the competition, including Joey Wheeler. He also impressively beats both Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood combined in one turn. His victory streak is only stopped by Kaiba, who duels him after disqualifying the man for hacking into his systems. Despite Zigfried's loss, his success beforehand proves that he is an incredibly skilled duelist.

8 Mai

Mai's skill level varies throughout the series. Despite losing early on to Joey, she was still able to make it to the finals of Duelist Kingdom, and she was able to make it to the Battle City Finals as well. However, she was defeated in both of those tournaments.

While she continued to be a pro duelist after Battle City, she never quite got over being sent to the Shadow Realm. This led her to the cult of Orichalcos in Season 4, where, despite almost losing to Joey again, she was able to defeat him. However, she lost to Rafael shortly afterward. This checkered record keeps her from rising too high on this list, but her many victories still show she's one of the best duelists in the series.

7 Rafael

Rafael is one of the few duelists to ever defeat the Pharaoh in a duel, which speaks to his incredible skill as a player. However, a major reason why he was able to defeat the Pharaoh was by goading him to play the Seal of Orichalcos, a card that would affect his emotions and cause him to lose. In Rafael and the Pharaoh's eventual rematch, the Pharaoh was able to defeat him even after Rafael activated the Seal to give his monsters a major buff. Despite this, Rafael technically ended the duel on his own , reviving his monsters at the cost of the game, so it wasn't entirely the Pharaoh's sole accomplishment.

6 Dartz

It's hard to judge Dartz's exact skill level, given he's only participated in one duel throughout the entire show. But, in that game, he had to face both Yami Yugi and Kaiba at the same time and managed to give them a very difficult time. He even managed to defeat Kaiba in the duel, proving that he has incredible skills. This only makes sense given he is the leader of the Cult of Oricalchos to which both Rafael and Mai belong. Ultimately, despite bringing out a monster with an infinite amount of attack, Dartz is still unable to defeat the Pharaoh, which lowers his potential ranking a little bit.

5 Marik

Marik is the sadistic antagonist of the Battle City arc and he serves as a dark reflection of Yami Yugi. One of the key ways he resembles Yugi is in his incredible skill at dueling, which allows him to make it to the grand finals of the Battle City Tournament, despite almost losing to Joey in the semifinals. His final game against the Pharaoh is one of the best in the series, an intense back-and-forth match that is the purest display of his skill in the series. However, part of the reason this game is so close is that he threatens to kill the innocent part of himself if he loses, which causes Yugi to hold back.

4 Joey

Joey is often looked down upon for his goofy behavior and a play style that relies on luck. Over the course of the series, Joey racks up numerous wins against some truly impressive opponents. He even stood up to Yu-Gi-Oh!'s greatest villain in the Battle City Quarter Finals. His growth over the series leads Pegasus to name him the third-best duelist in the world during Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. While it's not explicitly shown, it is implied that Joey may have beaten Yugi in a duel offscreen after the Battle City arc concluded.

3 Kaiba

Kaiba is Yugi's main rival and thus one of the most important characters in Yu-Gi-Oh!, operating on a similar level of skill as the King of Games. He has access to some of the most powerful monsters in the game, and his ambition causes him to always improve himself in order to one day defeat Yugi in a duel.

This has led him to have some of the best duels in the series, especially whenever he faces Yugi in a match. His skill partially comes from being the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian spirit, but this too easily discounts all the hard work he has put into mastering the game. There are very few duelists outside Yugi who could actually defeat him in a serious duel.

2 Atem

Atem is the spirit of the Pharaoh who possesses Yugi's Millennium Puzzle and the one who plays many of Yugi's games when things get serious. His mastery of Duel Monsters is unbelievable, as he has defeated almost every duelist he has played, only losing honestly to Rafael because of his own dark tendencies.

Technically, he has also lost to Pegasus and Kaiba, but in the former, it was due to a time limit, and in the latter Kaiba threatened to jump off a castle if he lost, making it one of Yu-Gi-Oh!'s most extreme duels. For most of the series, Atem would easily rank as the best duelist in the show, but the final episodes of Yu-Gi-Oh! change that.

1 Yugi

While the exact amount of agency Yugi has while Atem is using his body to duel is ambiguous, the young boy has technically won most of his games. However, the reason Yugi is the best duelist isn't because of a technicality, it's because in the tragic final duel of the series Yugi manages to beat his old friend.

This duel is not only the best game in the anime, but it also shows how much Yugi has grown as a duelist over the course of the anime. Yugi manages to defeat all of his iconic monsters in that game, from the Dark Magician to all three Egyptian God cards, which is a feat that no other duelist in the first show could accomplish. This proves that it is Yugi and not Atem who deserves the top spot by the anime's end.

The duelists on the above list stand on the pinnacle of the dueling world in Yu-Gi-Oh!. While there were other good duelists introduced throughout the show, they were nowhere near as powerful, even if they could make one of the better duelists sweat over the course of an episode. In the end, it was the games between these duelists that were the most epic in Yu-Gi-Oh!.