The first seven volumes are full of different games and quite entertaining. It's also much darker than one would assume when thinking about the franchise. At the end of the seventh volume, the whole trading card game stuff starts with that tournament, which is also interesting and more about character development. Later volumes concentrate more on the card game.Lately I've been thinking about reading Yu-Gi-Oh!. The franchise has never really interested me, though I do own some cards from when I was a kid (also I love The Abridged Series), but then I heard that the manga had a lot less to do with Duel Monsters than the anime (less filler as well). I was already aware that the manga began as a story about several different "shadow games" (a really cool concept imo), but I didn't know that even the later arcs were less card game-centric than the anime. Would anyone recommend reading the manga?
So yeah, I'd actually recommend it. Not a masterpiece, but rather entertaining.