I just played my first ever games of online yu-gi-oh, and in each of the 3 games encountered strange behaviour that to some extent helped me lose.

I'd like to know, in each case, if this is a bug in the online game, or some catastrophic misundertanding of the rules on my part.

Case1.
In my first turn I set a monster and a trap.
The monster had a flip effect to destroy 1 trap card on the field.
When my opponent attacked my monster, she had no trap cards of her own on the field so I was forced to destroy my trap!!!

Case2.
I cast Soul Exchange in order to tribute summon a level 7 monster into face up attack position using one of my opponents monsters for one of the tributes, but then was not allowed to do anything else and had to end my turn without attacking.

Case3.
I set a monster and also set a trap, Castle Walls, which adds 500 DEF when activated.
When my opponent attacked, I activated the trap but was not allowed to target the monster being attacked for the DEF bonus. In the end I was forced to grant the bonus to the monster that was attacking me!

4th Duel and I won!

But another strange case to ask about.

Opponent attacked my monster with ATK of 1000, with a monster of ATK 800, but also activated a trap card, Reinforcements, so as to gain 500 ATK.
So I reply with my Reverse Trap card, which says it reverses the effect of spells boosting ATK or DEF.
I expected to see his monster's ATK go down to 300, but instead the ATK of my monster went down to 500, and it was destroyed.

Next one.
I lost even though it was my opponent that suffered the strangeness.

She summoned a monster and I sprung Trap Hole to destroy it.
She then chained, I think it was Dust Tornado, to remove all traps and spells from the field, but she still lost her monster.

I found nothing wrong with everything you explained. Its just part of the rules.

Case1: When trap master is flipped its effect allows you to destroy one trap card on the field no matter who's trap it is. So even if you're the only one with a trap card on the field, you still have to destroy a trap card.

Case2: It says so right on the card that you have to skip your battle phase during the turn you use soul exchange.

Case3: You can only modify the atk and def of face-up monsters.

Case4: I don't know what to say about the whole reinforcements thing. That doesn't sound right at all, I think you explained that wrong.

Case5: Theres a difference between destroying a spell or trap card and negating its effect. So if a spell or trap card is destroyed but its effect is not negated then its effect will still resolve even though it was destroyed. So even though Trap Hole was destroyed, its effect still resolved and destroyed her monster.

I suggest you get a structure deck and read the rulebook thats included. It should tell you everything you need to know about the rules. And you'll also get some pretty cool cards.

This message was edited by averex8 on Jul 17 2008.