How curling scoring works

A game is played in ends

A curling game is split into ends, often 8 in a club league and 10 in a championship. In each end, the four players on each team throw two stones each, the teams taking turns: 16 stones in all.

The score is counted only once the 16th stone has stopped. The next end is then played the other way down the ice.

The house and which stones count

The house is the set of rings at the end of the ice. The small circle in the middle is the button. A stone is in the house if it touches the outer ring, even barely, seen from above.

Only one team scores in an end: the team with the stone closest to the centre. It gets 1 point for each of its stones closer to the centre than the other team's best stone. A stone outside the house never counts.

When you cannot tell by eye, measure from the centre. If the two closest stones, one from each team, cannot be told apart, nobody scores: it is a blank end.

The hammer, or last stone

The team that throws the last stone of an end has a big advantage: it can answer the other team's last shot. That last stone is called the hammer.

In the first end, the hammer is decided by a coin toss, or by your league's rules. After that, the team that scores throws first in the next end: the hammer goes to the team that did not score.

Scoring without the hammer is called a steal. With the hammer, a team tries to score at least 2; scoring only 1 is often being forced by the other team.

Blank ends

If no stone is in the house when the end is over, nobody scores. The team that had the hammer keeps it for the next end.

That is why a team with the hammer sometimes clears the house on purpose: it would rather blank the end than score only 1, to keep its advantage.

Conceding

A team that can no longer come back can concede: its players shake hands with the other team and the game ends there, with the score as it stands.

Many leagues and competitions ask for a number of ends to be played before a team can concede. Check your league's rules.

Extra ends

If the score is tied after the last scheduled end and a winner is needed, the teams play an extra end. The hammer follows the usual rule: it goes to the team that did not score in the previous end.

A blank extra end settles nothing: the teams play another one, until a team scores. Many club leagues accept a tie in the regular season instead.

Reading the scoreboard

Clubs show the score in two ways. Here is the same 5-end game on both.

The club scoreboard

On a club scoreboard, the middle row does not show the ends: it counts points. When a team scores, the number of the end is hung on its side, next to its new total.

To read the score, find each team's highest end number: its total is the number next to it. A blank end has no place on the row: depending on the club, its card goes to the side or is not hung.

The baseball style scoreboard

The baseball style scoreboard puts the ends in columns and each end's points in the team's row, with the total at the end. A blank end is written 0 for both teams, sometimes X. A dot marks the team with the hammer in the first end.