Something I learned from the article that I didn't realize before is that the surface of the ice used isn't smooth; they pebble it on purpose in order to give it the texture required for the stone to curl. Apparently, getting the right texture is difficult enough that it takes an experienced professional to get it right, and they haven't had satisfactory results trying to automate it. Wild peek into something that I didn't even know was a thing!
I'm sure along with discovering this, it also gave you an explanation for the science of sweeping which is also super neat and to the casual observer, not a well understood part of the game. At the micro level, the abrasive texture of the brooms is melting pebble (not entirely, just temporarily along the sweeping path) and affecting distance, deceleration, curl.
Sorry, kinda nerding out over seeing a curling article on HN.
This is completely true! It also varies a _lot_ between clubs, with curlers describing different rinks as being "straight" or "curly", with the latter being more densely pebbled and thus prone rocks curling more. Some of the better players I curled with had notebooks full of points they'd remembered from each rink they'd played. As one would imagine, the home team advantage is enormous in amateur curling.
Each rink has a professional ice maker on staff whose job it is to maintain the rink for everyone to play on. Rinks usually need pebbling between games, so the ice maker or their apprentice is pretty much on staff the entire time people are using the facility. It seems to be a labor of love, spending hours and hours a day hunched over sprinkling water on a sheet of ice, only to have it all swept away in a matter of hours. You end up being known by name by the entirety of the club, and a lot of folks buy you a nice gift come Christmas!
What's interesting is that several things can affect the sheet of ice and make sheets even within the same building behave differently. Often if sheets on the end of the building have an outside wall, you'll see the outside sheets behave different from the middle sheets of ice. The same thing can happen depending on how cold it is outside. It's grown more scientific in recent years, especially at the professional level.
Ice makers are indeed held to a challenging task and what you said is true - they're recognized across the club, on site, by basically every member and they more often get blame than praise for how the ice affects a game!
During one of the gold medal matches they were talking about how play is different because with only one game going on there were fewer people (aka heaters) in the building
Cricket is somewhat like this. Preparing a 'good' pitch (not too green or uneven, which favours bowlers, but also not too flat and lifeless) is hard. And in the longer forms of the game the pitch seriously deteriorates over the days the game is played. So a good groundskeeper also has to try to arrange a pitch that degrades gracefully.
Coupled to that, the surface is very climate and soil dependent, so there are significant differences between grounds (especially between different continents!) even if they all had the same ground staff.
From what I can understand the challenge with cricket pitches is that you don’t want grass on the surface, but you need strong grass roots, to prevent degradation as balls are hurled into a small part of the pitch at high speed hundreds of times.
Wimbledon similarly has groundsmen who can almost kill grass without killing it. There, the ideal into have very short grass (8mm, according to https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/6667985/wimbledon-head-ground...) and a strong root system. Still, two weeks of tennis each year changes the courts from fully green to, at places, small dust bowls.
Seems like there's plenty of allowance for variation in the air pressure of footballs (American NFL). So much so that we ended up with Deflategate in 2014:
Alpine Skiing. The person who picks where to put the poles to ski around, and at higher levels of competition the person in charge of how the snow is prepared.
FTA: “During each Winter Olympics, Google searches for curling exceed those for figure skating, making it the most popular sport for that period.”
I don’t think that follows. It wouldn’t surprise me if most viewers of figure skating aren’t watching it as a competitive event, making them uninclined to look up how the scoring system works.
Very interesting article. I had no idea curling was big in New Zealand!
I played high school and a bit of college curling, playing every position, skip, vice, second, and lead. Curling's a wonderfully social and elegant game requiring simple but incredibly deep mechanical technique. If you're ever in the position to give it a try, I highly recommend it. You'd be surprised how short the learning curve is, and since you'll probably play lead, you'll mostly just end up doing a lot of sweeping!
Up in Canada, it's tradition and courtesy for the winning team to buy the losing team a drink after the game. There's a certain club camaraderie and sportsmanship you see in curling which makes it very different from our other traditional winter sport.
Still trying to find a place to do curling. I watched bbc they have mini-curling (only little rock) but no sweeping. Just for fun. Good game of “chess”. Wonder how it compares with bowling green.
Also- it's a lot harder than it looks. Give it a try, but you will be sore after a couple of hours if your body isn't used to the motions used in curling.
The problem exhibited so much in the mixed team so dramatic but the man and women team is so boring I think they have to fix it.
I am addicted to curling.
But still the game say the the first game of USA man is a good example. You just play 1 abd hit another most of time. Unlike I still remember the team of Sweden in mix double both get 3 stones out in 1 game by both members.
I have to skipped the iPlayer all the time to get some interesting chess moment (> a few stones in the house) or action.
Some did. But so many boring moment and so many mistakes (each play only 2 stones is the reason?) …
Which games have you been watching? These are some of the best players and they make few mistakes. And different teams have different strategies. Sounds like you fill up the interior and some like to keep it clean... I wished I watched more of the Italians in mixed though, what an impressive pair.
But what do you think is right with the 4 player team play and how do you fix it?
Watching mainly uk teams as in uk. Did try to use vpn to Canada to watch it all. But I miss the Scottish commentary :-).
Not sure I am eve qualified as a watcher. But I heard in the commentary about the inclination people to watch mixed double and not the long game. At least it is not 5 day long like ashes.
You asked and let me try to second guess what is going on in the curling reform based on the mixed double success.
a) there are too many mistakes and too many times of simple I knock you out and you knock me out
You can see that in say yesterday Sweden vs Canada women say the Sweden 2nd player basically miss all her 2 play in the last round.
A bit like football or soccer which you have role. Not everyone is good at everything. More of the skip played say out of 8 each has to play once but for 4 of them they can be decided by the team.
2) same format as mixed double. Have power play abd other than that have fixed stones. To be honest I am not sure why double is so aggressive (as the uk 2nd play has demonstrated even long game one can play aggressively but seems not the atmosphere). But may be come down to this. Also instead of 10 down to 8 round.
3) Italy is good. So far so good. For double, you can sense it is well above the others. That is something. You need to have that kind. You need stars. Not sure how to fix this though
4) not sure I have much to say about time. They already changed the rule once (instead of total time now is in between play time). USA partially lost to uk due to time management ?
More time out. Not that help the Australian double — the horror your couch actually quit you the last minute and join Canada team to fight you instead. But 1 more time out is fine. They are not like other sport time out where it is just a rest. Even us the watcher know why the call. So complicated.
Btw I am a go player not a chess player. It is more like go than chess. You cannot move your stone and you mistake like go - put stone on the wrong places and kill/attack the wrong stones. I even suspect you need commentary more here. But not if the kind rugby and cricket. It is rule you do not know there which require commentary. Here what can be done is hard to think of. You can see the Canadian skip has out think the commentator in real time. That is the fun part.
I agree they are all prof. And I always agreed to Olympic Creed. But sometimes I wonder what happened why the uk skip cannot play the last stone well.
Anyway feel ashamed to watch it. But not easy to watch say world companion etc and hence this is a 4 year fix. Guess the medalist would like one say we will talk about human rights when we are back home.
