Scoring Curling

CNBC has been showing Curling. I don't understand Curling. Not really. So I decided to turn to Google.

The Anchorage Curling Club gave me a great overview of club scoreboards. But figuring out the simple bits of what actually constitutes a score was beyond me. Luckily, Wikipedia and the Potomac Curling Club had some more help.

So let's see if I can summarize.

Those target areas on each end? You are trying to get your stones closest to the center. At the end of each round of scooting the stones down the ice, the team that has stones closest to the center gets a point for each stone that is closer to the center than the closest opponent stone.

So if you get a stone really close to the center, but your opponent gets a stone right next to you, just a little farther away from center, you only get one point. If you can get a few stones in the target area and your opponent gets none, I presume you get points for all the stones.

Only one team scores each "end". So you want to have your stones closer to the center. Team with the most points after a set number of "ends" wins the game.

There's more to it than that, of course, like with any good game. But at the most basic, and what you need to know for watching, is that you want your stones close to the center with no opponent stones nearby. If you want the details, go read those links or visit a curling club.