photos by Matt Rose

At a card table, luck only runs in one direction, says Audrey McLane, a retired nursing professor who’s been playing bridge for decades and now plays against her neighbors for pennies. If you happen to be seated along the unlucky meridian, just switch chairs. And whatever you do, don’t play it too safe. “If you don’t bid, you’re never going to win,” she says. McLane was one of 13 bridge players at the Winning at the Waverly Ladies’ Autumn Luncheon and Bridge Party, held at Diane and John Sheiry’s Waverly Inn in Hendersonville, a late-September fundraiser for Henderson County’s Dispute Settlement Center. Therese Smoke of Columbus, North Carolina, and her partner, Shirley Catanese of Hendersonville, happened to be winning their hand. “It’s not luck, you just sort of pray,” Smoke says. Lee Luebbe of Flat Rock said she learned to play bridge in 1959 while her husband was in dental school. “It was cheap entertainment,” she says. “We taught ourselves—that’s why I’m so lousy.” Luebbe’s frequent bridge partner is 85-year-old Inger Brodin, whose best card-playing advice is: “Stay calm—if you can.”