Yu-Gi-Oh Tournament - Oh My!

My youngest son is currently obsessed with Yu-Gi-Oh. A friend of his got him into it and now he collects the cards and watches episodes on the computer. He's even gotten his older brother into it, although he's not quite as interested. So his friend told us about a card shop that has tournaments on weekends. He's been going about every other weekend for about a year now and my son really wanted to try it out so I agreed.

We met the friend, his mom and another boy there to try it out. It started at 2pm on Saturday and the mom told me it could last until 6 or 7! I already told my sons that we would only stay for a couple of hours, not the whole time. Well, all I can say is that it was strange. There were probably about 25-30 people there and everyone except for my sons and the two other boys was in their teens or their 20's. The guy my youngest son played (he's 9) seemed to be in his mid-20's. My 10-year old played a guy who seemed a little younger, like his early 20's. Of course, my sons couldn't compete with these guys and the one playing my older son seemed nice but the other guy was strange and not very nice and my son said later that he was mean and he didn't like him. After the first game, both sons had had enough and didn't want to continue with the tournament. That was fine with me! The whole scene kind of gave me the creeps. It seems odd to me that men in their 20's would be so into Yu-Gi-Oh. I didn't think the tournament would be like that - I thought it would be a bunch of kids playing together and that it would be kind of cute. Boy was I wrong!

Have any of you had any Yu-Gi-Oh experiences or similar ones with other games or collectible items? What were your thoughts?