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German trading card game (TCG) veteran Torben “Viper” Wahl secured the championship title at the US$100,000 YGG Parallel Showdown, the headline competitive event of the YGG Play Summit in Manila.
Wahl defeated Jobsad of the Devmon team in the finals on November 21, taking home the US$20,000 top prize. The victory adds to Wahl’s extensive résumé; a former competitive Hearthstone player, he amassed over US$270,000 in earnings between 2016 and 2022.
“It’s completely crazy to win this event,” Wahl stated after the match. “Last year, I came here as a spectator… Now I was competing, and it’s just indescribable to be here.”
The Tournament
The tournament featured 16 top players who qualified through global online rounds in October. The roster included talent from YGG Esports (Sequinox and Zeliaser) and the Filipino guild One Turn TILT (Gaben and Boolzi).
The competition followed a double-elimination, best-of-three format, requiring players to win with three distinct decks to advance. In the finals, Wahl faced Jobsad, who had earlier eliminated the defending champion Zeliaser. Wahl secured the title after Jobsad dropped two consecutive games following an initial win.
Parallel Ecosystem Updates
Parallel Studios co-founder Kohji Nagata joined YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon onstage to present the awards. Nagata used the platform to announce that Parallel, the sci-fi TCG powering the tournament, is now officially available on the Apple App Store.
The game’s mobile version had initially launched for Android in March 2025, with a regional rollout starting in the Philippines.
“It was our Parallel tournament last year here that really solidified to me that we have to do a big live event,” Nagata noted, citing the strong reception from the local community as a key driver for the studio’s investment in live esports.
Summit Highlights: Ubisoft Debut and Infrastructure News
The Parallel championship was the culmination of a week of high-profile competitive gaming at the summit.
Just days prior, the event hosted the debut tournament for Ubisoft’s unreleased TCG, Might & Magic: Fates. In that invitational, Tyler of YGG Esports claimed the championship, defeating content creator Archer Perez to validate the competitive depth of the upcoming Web3 title.
Beyond esports, the summit served as a launchpad for significant infrastructure announcements. The Ronin Network announced a strategic partnership with local exchange Coins.ph to integrate the PHPC stablecoin with the national QRPH standard. The initiative aims to allow Ronin Wallet users to pay for goods at over 600,000 merchants across the Philippines by 2026.
Awards and Future Events
Following the Parallel tournament, the annual GAM3 Awards took place at the Samsung Hall. The battle royale shooter Off The Grid emerged as the night’s biggest winner, claiming five awards including Game of the Year, while Cagy was named Best Content Creator.
The summit continues this November 22 with the finals of the Vibes Asian Championship and the Metaversity “Prompt to Prototype” workshop, a session powered by the Base network designed to teach developers how to build games using AI tools. (Read more: YGG Play Summit Returns to Manila, Highlights Web3 Resilience and Ecosystem Launches During Conference)
This article is published on BitPinas: German Pro ‘Viper’ Wins US$100K Parallel Showdown at YGG Summit
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