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6.    Why to sweep

Another weird thing that you can see in Curling is ‘Sweeping’. Several people very intensively clean ice in front of the rock and skip shouts at them ‘Haaarrrrry! Haaaaaaard!’. Or it could be ‘YES!!! SWEEP!! Stop! Stop! YES! YES! Stop! YES!! Stop!’ 

This is one of the most complex parts in the game. The idea of sweeping in not just cleaning of the ice, but melting of it. So you have to brush the ice really very intensive.

Sweeping impacts the stone motion in two ways. First, stone starts to move faster, and sweeping extends stone path. Good sweeping can make stone move 5-6 meters longer. In this case skip shouts like in the first example. Second, sweeping kills curl – it makes stone trajectory more straight. It could be important when a team tries to put a stone in the house behind another stone and it shall pass as close as possible, but not to touch still stone. Then the skip shouts like in the second example.

7.    How to count scores

After all 16 stones delivered to the opposite side of the sheet, it is time to count scores. It is easy when you know how to do it. To know who won, you have to define, whose stone it closer to the center of the house. To know how many scores, you have to count stones of the winning color till the first stone of the opposite color.

Let’s take a look at the picture. Three gentlemen are counting scores. You see, that red stones are closer to the center, and both of them are closer than any of yellow stones. Scores are 2-0 to red. If there are no stones touching the house then score is 0-0.

8.    Scoring, what is good, what is bad

Before the game begins teams toss a coin and decide who has a ‘Hammer’. When a team has a hammer it means that it has the last stone during the first end. To have the last stone is advantage, which means that it can be put in the center of the house and a team will win.

At the picture you can see a scoreboard, a hummer and scores. The Koe team have got a hammer. That means that they had the last stone advantage in the first end, and they have got one stone in it. Next end the team who lost the previous end has the last stone advantage. And so on. So, the last stone in the end is good!

What is bad? Bad is when you take only one stone having the last stone advantage. Because next end opponents team will have this advantage and they can take more than one stone this end, that is what happened in the second end at the picture. So, if you have an advantage, take 2 or make 0 scores, to keep this advantage.

9.    How long does it lasts?!

Average gave that consists of 10 ends lasts about 2.5 - 3 hours, but can be longer. If after 10 ends teams have equal scores then an extra-end is played. If extra-end scores will be 0-0 then the second one shall be played and so on. So the game can last up to 4 hours, but fortunately that long game is a seldom thing.

During one game curlers slide back and forth about 3.5-4 kilometers! And you have to keep balance on a slippery ice during 3 hours in low temperature conditions. And don’t forget about hard sweeping. During World Championship one team plays 11 games in Round Robin, which is two games per day, which is about 6-7 hours per day on ice. This is really hard.

10.    What’s interesting in all this??

When I started to play curling, I was not able to watch this boring thing more than half an hour. People were sliding back and forth without dynamics as in football, throwing stones without any system and so on… 

But once I have started to understand rules, tactics, tricks I started to like it! After one year of playing curling, once I was drinking beer with my team and we all agreed than cannot imagine our lives without curling anymore! During the last European Championship I was watching curling about 12 hours per day during 10 days. That means something!

11.    Final Test.

Now since you know all basics in curling, we offer you to pass a small test. Look at two pictures below and say what is wrong:

 
(Answer: normally curling stone does not have a power cord, but irons have.)