YES IT'S TRUE : BRIDGE DOES BRING OUT THE DEVIL IN ALL OF US...... ( Unholy research By Professor Hu Chi Ku Chi )

Ever since the days when bridge was first introduced into England by Sir Francis Dashwood at the infamous Hellfire Bridge Club , the game has always been associated with the dark arts. As a result many phrases we hear today owed their origin to the Hellfire players , who were in total awe of the horned beast. He was their grand master , a being they had come to fear and respect.
Top players were complimented as being " devilishly clever ". Other less talented players who managed an occasional win were always labelled as " having the luck of the devil ". Certainly, on big competition nights the bridge arena  became a  " hot bed " of activity ,  a cauldron of seething emotions , where everyone's  " ears were burning ". Often, when players were reported to be " on fire ", the reputation of some of their vanquished opponents went up " in flames " . Moreover, players who ended up " at the bottom ", simply equated their losing experience as being in the " pits of despair " , or  having   " gone through hell ".
There is no escaping the fact that the Devil and Bridge are inextricably linked , and that the game has brought out the demon in all of us . The whole concept of the game has always been  to " play  tricks " on opponents in order to win tricks.......to be deceitfully impish in both the bidding and the play in the " endless pursuit of imps ". Indeed, countless bridge players have spent most of their time " soul searching " ,  after each and every abject and abysmal performance.
And let's not forget the evil that lurks within the bridge vocabulary itself :  words  that  were certainly introduced by Beelzebub himself to corrupt the mind of any unsuspecting Dr. Jekyll into a murderous Mr. Hyde.  "Killing leads, killing defence, suicide squeezes, menace cards, sacrifices " are all classic terms that clearly associate pleasure with wrongdoing. 
Yet bizarrely we now live in an age where zero tolerance is being introduced into a game which was purely designed to turn us into towards the dark side. Just how absurd is that ? The administrators of the game have clearly lost the plot. For all players are known to have a burning desire to win.  Indeed,  every  player who sits  down to pick up his first hand, is happy to let the devil inside him take over the driving seat. From then on....it is only a question of time before  the fireworks begin.