CNBC: Women's Curling, USA vs. Japan

[Zomby Woof]

Your ZW Olympics update. :patriot:

[trof]

1. So this is, like, a beauty salon competition?

Wow.
What next?
Straight Razor Shaving event?
:rofl:

[fishwax]

2. USA stole 2 points in that 2nd End

That's pretty unusual :woohoo:

[tigereye]

4. I should have known you would know about this!

My husband says, have him give us the scoop! I think it's kind of zen - I like the way they release the rock and strategize to move the other stones out of the circle.


:hi: How are ya?

[fishwax]

5. lol -- I don't always fully understand it, but I certainly find it mesmerizing

:) The basics are that you get a point for every stone that is (a) touching the circle and (b) closer than your opponents closest stone. The team that has the hammer (the last stone of any given "end") has a big advantage, since they have the last chance to takeout opponents rocks or to get close to the button. If you have the hammer, scoring 2 points is a good end and only scoring one is a bit subpar. But if you manage to score while the other team has the hammer it's a big achievement.

Also, if the team with the hammer fails to score (i.e. if no team scores or if the other team steals a point) then they keep the hammer for the next end. So sometimes a team will deliberately not score. For example, we're about to enter the 8th end in this women's match, and the US has the hammer, so if they score two points they'll be up 1. Then Japan will have the hammer in the 9th, and if on the last stone the US had one rock in the circle and Japan had none, they might try to both knock out the US stone and to keep their own rock from scoring, because that way they'd retain the hammer for the 10th and last end. So there's tons of strategy that effects not just the end that you're playing but also the next one and so on. A lot of strategy on every shot.

I like your "kind of zen" comment--I think that describes it pretty well. The first time I got into it was during the Salt Lake Olympics -- My wife and I went to Salt Lake City for that, and one of the events we went to was the Super G, which involved being bused up to the mountain and then (since we'd taken an early bus to get a good spot) waiting a loooooong time for the event to start. While we were waiting, they showed some curling on the big video screen/scoreboard to keep the crowd entertained. It was mesmerizing. I didn't really know anything about the game, and I don't imagine many people in the crowd did either, but there were a couple thousand of us who were absolutely riveted to that screen. As the stone would slide down the ice, the crowd would get louder and more excited, like a tennis crowd does when a player challenges a call and they show the computer animated replay. And when there was a takeout (a stone knocking another stone out of scoring position) the crowd really roared. And this was just watching it on the video screen. I've been hooked since :)

":hi: How are ya? "

Things are going good here--kind of busy so far this semester, but I'm loving watching the Olympics. :D How're you? :hi:

[tigereye]

3. it's really cool to watch!

surprisingly so. And yes, we've been stuck in the house way too much with so much snow here.