hailstone
Swing Artist
Registered: May 2018
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Posts: 407 |
Playing Out Of Order
During this year's Japan National Championships, a most unusual event occurred during the ninth end of the 1-2 match between Chubu Electric (Team Nakajima) and Loco Solare (Team Fujisawa): the sixth stone for Chubu Electric was thrown by the skip.
With the score tied 5-5 and Chubu Electric with the hammer, they completely forgot how many stones they had left, and Nakajima threw the sixth stone. Loco Solare pointed this out after the shot played out and everyone had a good laugh about, but nobody seemed to know what to do about it.
Eventually, the rule was looked up: if a player is accidentally skipped (no pun intended), then the shot would be valid, but the last rock would be played by the person that was passed over. In this case, the final rock was played by third Chiaki Matsumura (last year Matsumura and Nakajima swapped positions, possibly another source of the gaffe), who promptly threw drew a perfect draw for three, essentially sealing the match.
For other violations, such as the fifth rock rule and failing to get the stone across the hogline, the throw becomes invalid. But for some reason, this violation incurs no penalty at all. Does this mean the order of play is completely arbitrary? If you have a third that's particularly skilled at a certain kind of shot, would that open up a strategy of having the skip deliberately playing the 6-7 shots to allow the third to close out the end in specific circumstances?
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