A NIGHT TO REMEMBER....... ( A snippet from a newspaper article by a bridge correspondent , who had the misfortune to turn up as a visitor for a Saturday night duplicate , at the Slaughter House BC )  

" ........This club was hell on earth......with a room heaving with hard-nosed men , and rather robust women , who would have made a troop of war veterans from Afghanistan look like a bunch of brownies on a Sunday school outing. The duplicate there was an intense and bitter war of attrition , a dog-eat-dog debacle, where bridgemates, fists and insults were constantly flying everywhere.

I have seen ruthless gold-diggers play nap in the Australian outback , twenty stone bruisers   holding blackjack banks on a South Sea pirate ships, and sharp-eyed   mavericks take on mean spirited ex-cons  in big money games of poker ,  with everyone keeping a magnum point 45 very close to hand.......but I've never met a more scary bunch of card sharps as I did that night at the Slaughter House Bridge Club.

Indeed , I felt an extremely lucky man to survive the evening with my body and head intact  , since it was obvious from the start that my presence there was not welcome. Most of the players set out to bait me ,  hoping to seize upon my instinct to respond in order to channel their pent up ferocity into full scale attack. But I was wise ,  and kept my head safely below the parapet.

But if this is what a duplicate night in the 21st century is all about then I would rather spend a day locked up in a cage with a giant over-sexed gay gorilla high on viagra......than go back to a  place where Armageddon and bridge had collided..... "