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| 01-14-22 02:45PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
quote:
Originally posted by MKL
I think we're missing the main point of my original reply
That's a fair point, and we're far from being able to formulate a statistically solid handicap system for curling anyway...
... but going back to the original topic, all I'm asking to consider is if we can give a +0.5 point advantage to the team who throws first rock of the game. Do you have any thoughts on that?
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| 01-14-22 02:57PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
quote:
Originally posted by oliviertoisel
Is it denied that WC is doing these rule changes, including booting extra ends, to make the games shorter and more predictable?
The sport of curling has evolved to accommodate various real-world considerations. I'm not denying that.
For example, we have a clock in the game now. Most people nowadays probably don't think much of it, but I bet the really old school people were against introducing the clock in the beginning, using all the same tired arguments.
"You're just trying to shorten the game and make it more predictable! Curling should be decided on the ice, not on some clock hanging on the wall!", etc., etc.
If you're using the same argument against any change to the game that could've been used against introducing the clock in the first place, then I would say those are rather weak arguments. Those arguments already lost once, and they'll keep losing again in the future.
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| 01-14-22 03:02PM |
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MKL
Harvey Hacksmasher
Registered: Mar 2020
Location: Saskatooooooon
Posts: 21 |
quote:
Originally posted by curlingclips
That's a fair point, and we're far from being able to formulate a statistically solid handicap system for curling anyway...
... but going back to the original topic, all I'm asking to consider is if we can give a +0.5 point advantage to the team who throws first rock of the game. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I don't like it, for the simple reason that I don't like it. To me, competitions are about determining who is best at that point in time. That is especially true for me at the higher levels of sports. The +0.5 takes away the advantage of winning the last rock, which I assume the better teams win more often. Again, that's my opinion.
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| 01-14-22 03:11PM |
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hogged again
Drawmaster
Registered: Mar 2019
Location:
Posts: 659 |
On poker chat sites there are long threads where some people contend that in texas holdem the best hand is 5 of a kind. The argument goes you can have a pair in your hand and you can also have 3 of a kind in the community cards, therefore you can have 5 of a kind.
The argument is of course ludicrous but the threads are pages and pages long.
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| 01-14-22 03:33PM |
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oliviertoisel
Drawmaster
Registered: Feb 2021
Location:
Posts: 587 |
quote:
Originally posted by curlingclips
If you're using the same argument against any change to the game that could've been used against introducing the clock in the first place, then I would say those are rather weak arguments. Those arguments already lost once, and they'll keep losing again in the future.
A person can raise the same objection to 100 things and be right about some and wrong about others. Defaulting to "people in the past didn't like X rule change therefore you are wrong" indicates you're not really engaging with anything other people are saying.
But you know what? If we're going down this road, then at least have the where-with-all to acknowledge the true history. Your contention that people object to every change to curling is ahistorical. This latest bunch of changes by WC was not based on player consultation and the reactions were wholly negative. The last minute introduction was also very controversial. On the flip side, the free guard zone was a player initiated concept invented by actual players. Some people liked it, others didn't.
The same is true of your clock example in the inverse. Curling clocks were controversial with some when introduced but there was also support for time clocks despite some controversy; there absolutely were issues with certain teams being VERY slow and a lot of people thought it made for a dull game to play or watch. This still happens in club play where a slow team can reduce the number of ends (a very frustrating experience). Nor does your contention that objecting to change is wrong and advocating for change is good make any sense. We saw this with the most recent time clock changes: per-end time was a brutal failure when it was trialed a few years ago and Hasselborg did a great job of explaining why last fall. Have you even considered what someone of her expertise had to say about that? Thinking time, meanwhile, has proven to be extremely successful compared to even prior variations. I think most people nowadays agree it is an effective way to streamline games. Where did it come from? Issues with the original time clock system that needed to be fixed.
Also where are they doing the most to innovate curling? The Grand Slams, which are more directly influenced by player preference despite being big TV business. Also places like the Continental Cup which...invented Mixed Doubles.
I don't know if extra ends are the best way to deal with round robin ties. But I do know that WC has been clear the changes are aimed at shortening games and keeping to predictable lengths. That is not irrelevant, growing the game is important, but I see 0 reason to pretend it isn't what it is: corporate driven attempts to commercial the sport. The question is what is the trade off and is it worth the benefits. What the players seem to say, and people here, is that the extra end is preferable to the replacement. And I see players saying the right place to trial these are not at world championships which I totally agree with. I personally think the idea that someone is going to love watching 10 ends of curling but then abandon the sport because there's an extra end every so often to be obviously laughable.
Last edited by oliviertoisel on 01-14-22 at 03:37PM
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| 01-14-22 04:16PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
quote:
Originally posted by MKL
The +0.5 takes away the advantage of winning the last rock
How about this alternative idea then.
If scores are tied after 10 ends, give the win to the team that scored first.
So it's basically like giving a bonus +0.5 points to whichever team scored first.
Usually, that would be the team with LSFE, but occasionally the first point of a game is stolen, which of course would turn things around quite a bit.
This might also reduce the motivation for blanking the first end, because now that 1 point is actually worth 1.5.
If this rule was applied retroactively (which is not a valid argument, but bear with me), Michelle Englot would've won 2017 Scotties, and Rachel Homan would've won 2019.
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| 01-14-22 05:30PM |
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oliviertoisel
Drawmaster
Registered: Feb 2021
Location:
Posts: 587 |
quote:
Originally posted by curlingclips
This might also reduce the motivation for blanking the first end, because now that 1 point is actually worth 1.5.
Or maybe it increases it because if you blank 7 ends, score 1 in 8, give up 2 in 9 then all you need to do is score in 10 to win.
If you game the system then it will game you back.
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| 01-14-22 05:34PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
quote:
Originally posted by oliviertoisel
if you blank 7 ends, score 1 in 8...
Why not just blank 9 ends, score 1 in 10 and win?
If this is a legitimate rebuttal, why doesn't anyone do it now, where you're guaranteed to win?
This is not a legitimate rebuttal, and you know it.
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| 01-14-22 06:08PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
quote:
Originally posted by oliviertoisel
Hasselborg did a great job of explaining why
You're bringing a lot of extra baggage into this discussion.
Whether you believe it or not, I already said that I love extra ends. I also said that I think WCF's proposed solution to replace extra ends with Draw to the Button Shootout sucks. I didn't say that timing per end sucks, but that's because it has nothing to do with my LSFE handicap proposal. For the record, I do think that timing per end sucks.
quote:
Originally posted by oliviertoisel
Defaulting to "people in the past didn't like X rule change therefore you are wrong" indicates you're not really engaging with anything other people are saying.
I never said that a person is right or wrong. I said certain tired arguments are weak... because they are!
If someone says, "Hey guys, I have Idea X! Can we discuss the pros and cons, and maybe we can revise it into something good?", and all that you say is "You're an idiot! You don't even curl! Just let us play the damn game! Curling is decided on the ice!", etc., and you're not actually addressing Idea X, then I'd say those are weak arguments that aren't really worth engaging in.
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| 01-14-22 06:09PM |
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IN-OFF-FOR-2
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Mar 2013
Location:
Posts: 1875 |
To my knowledge, since the fgz there has never been 9 blank ends. Even before the fgz there may have been 1 or 2 games in the last 100 years. So talking about blanking to win is not practical. Now I’m sure one of you will search for links and videos to prove otherwise, but in the 10 million games ever played, blanking to win is negligible.
My opinion, play the extra end.
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| 01-14-22 06:25PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
Does anyone know who milobloom is? Apparently title is Administrator? I found an old post from 2016 where a more drastic proposal than mine was presented: a full 1 point handicap for LSFE! (And this was 4 rock FGZ era!!).
Here's the link to the post:
https://curlingzone.com/showthread.php?postid=156465
Thread title is "Blanking curling to death". milobloom's post is dated March 11, 2016.
quote:
Originally posted by milobloom
Team who starts game with hammer begins the game down 1-0. I've always said this will never fly (no one wants to give free points) but mathematically it makes some sense.
For the record, I'm OK with blank ends, and I think 1 point handicap is way too much, and it still doesn't prevent extra ends anyway.
All I'm asking is 0.5 point handicap for LSFE. That's a number you can ignore, unless score is tied after 10 ends, which is a minority case in curling anyway (extra ends are not that common in present day curling).
Last edited by curlingclips on 01-14-22 at 07:09PM
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| 01-14-22 07:16PM |
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dugless_zone 13
Drawmaster
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990 |
Both teams start the game off exactly the same, even. You score more points than the other team, you win. No handicap. Its not t-ball and its not supposed to be even each end. Maintaining or obtaining hammer in certain ends is part of the strategy of the game.
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| 01-14-22 07:23PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
quote:
Originally posted by dugless_zone 13
You score more points than the other team, you win.
This principle still holds true with 0.5 point handicap for LSFE. I agree that this is one principle that can never be abandoned.
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| 01-14-22 07:27PM |
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dugless_zone 13
Drawmaster
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990 |
You don't need any handicap, if it's tied at the end of regulation you play an extra end.
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| 01-14-22 07:27PM |
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oliviertoisel
Drawmaster
Registered: Feb 2021
Location:
Posts: 587 |
quote:
Originally posted by curlingclips
Why not just blank 9 ends, score 1 in 10 and win?
If this is a legitimate rebuttal, why doesn't anyone do it now, where you're guaranteed to win?
This is not a legitimate rebuttal, and you know it.
But it is a legit reply because the error was your initial comment that 0.5 for first score could reduce first end blanks. The problem is you didn't catch the twist and fumbled into seeing the weakness but confusing who made it.
Blanking serves one purpose: preserve hammer so you can score 2+ points. 2+ points is still worth more than 1.5 points (with the 0.5 only counting in one situation). So the motivation to blank is still there. What 0.5 could do is reduce the risk level as a steal of 1 first is more consequential. But if anything that'll only make teams with hammer MORE defensive in the first end because they 100% cannot risk the steal. And so the incentive is to play open. Now maybe that'll inversely increase the team without's aggressiveness, but then we're going to end up with a new problem: safe 1s in the first end. Teams will just accept the 1 and take fewer risks. All of these are hypothetical but they emphasize one thing: you can game any system.
The entire thing also confuses why we have blank ends in men's play: the power hit. As long as men can throw the hard run back there will be a lot of blanks because it's a good way to bail. If you want to avoid that you need to limit hits, not try and game some weird reverse engineered tie situation. The free guard zone rule solved a similar problem—the inability to get rocks in play—but run backs have negated that. On the women's side they tend to be less aggressive because they can't play that shot; the 5 rock rule has had a bigger impact there because of it.
quote:
Originally posted by curlingclips
You're bringing a lot of extra baggage into this discussion.
Whether you believe it or not, I already said that I love extra ends. I also said that I think WCF's proposed solution to replace extra ends with Draw to the Button Shootout sucks. I didn't say that timing per end sucks, but that's because it has nothing to do with my LSFE handicap proposal. For the record, I do think that timing per end sucks.
I never said that a person is right or wrong. I said certain tired arguments are weak... because they are!
If someone says, "Hey guys, I have Idea X! Can we discuss the pros and cons, and maybe we can revise it into something good?", and all that you say is "You're an idiot! You don't even curl! Just let us play the damn game! Curling is decided on the ice!", etc., and you're not actually addressing Idea X, then I'd say those are weak arguments that aren't really worth engaging in.
I didn't call you an idiot. I also have specifically defended you against rude comments about you not curling and said it doesn't matter...in this very thread. I appreciate you're fighting a war on five fronts here but that's because you keep going after random non sequiturs.
There are four pages to this thread. Your idea was discussed at length. This entire thing went off the rails because you cited WCF saying blank ends are too predictable. I pointed out that that's a disingenuous explanation because there are more predictable outcomes in curling and they don't tackle those. Because of politics, TV ratings, etc. You consistently refuse to engage that going as far as to talk about everything (archery!) but the central point: this is all about controlling game lengths for TV. And sacrificing skill based outcome for that is the tradeoff. Whether that's worth it is opinion but that's the point, not because the game itself will be better.
Last edited by oliviertoisel on 01-14-22 at 07:30PM
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| 01-14-22 07:38PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
quote:
Originally posted by oliviertoisel
I didn't call you an idiot.
Correct, you did NOT call me an idiot. When I said "you", I didn't mean you, oliviertoisel, who have been nothing but courteous.
English is not my first language, but Wikipedia says this is called the "generic you".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you
//edit: I think next time I'll use "y'all"! Sounds way more fun, and way less confusing!
Last edited by curlingclips on 01-14-22 at 07:48PM
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| 01-14-22 08:16PM |
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dugless_zone 13
Drawmaster
Registered: Jan 2005
Location: the Banana Belt
Posts: 990 |
Just as a point of interest, the vast majority of elite teams think the draw to the button instead of extra ends is ridiculous and I don't see that idea ever becoming reality.
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| 01-14-22 09:54PM |
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hailstone
Swing Artist
Registered: May 2018
Location:
Posts: 407 |
quote:
Originally posted by curlingclips
[B]
WCF explained their rationale: extra ends are "increasingly predictable" (their words, not mine) because they're won by team with hammer 80% of the time.
Well, I'm sure that that statistic comes as a relief to Tracy Fleury. I hope her Olympic preparations are going well.
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| 01-17-22 02:07PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
I contacted milobloom, and he pointed out that this 0.5 point LSFE handicap idea was briefly mentioned in passing in a Curling News/Rock Logic episode with Gerry Geurts and Jason Gunnlaugson.
How Many Ends? The great debate: Eight ends or 10?
https://www.si.com/curling/rocklogic/how-many-ends
Quote from 29m40s:
Jason Gunnlaugson: "Extra ends, I think are --- A way we can start trimming the game would be to have, you know, if you start with hammer, and you are tied with, at the end of the game, the other team would win..."
Gerry Geurts: "With a half a point!"
Jason Gunnlaugson: "That's what I'd like to see changed..."
Kevin Palmer: "That's a whole another episode! You just branched us into a whole another episode!"
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| 01-18-22 11:01PM |
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Observer
Swing Artist
Registered: Apr 2016
Location: River Falls, WI, USA
Posts: 445 |
Play two extra ends, but they’re half-length
Since the problem with extra ends seems to be it being too difficult to steal for the win, why not give both teams a hammer to make that more fair?
But wait, you say, that’s basically two extra ends, and that makes the game too long. So, make the two tiebreak ends half their normal length. Only throw eight stones in both of these ends, four for each team, with each player throwing just one stone instead of two. By the end of the second tiebreak end, sixteen stones will have been thrown-exactly the same as it is now. But each team gets a hammer. No matter who scores in the first tiebreak end, the other team still gets their tiebreak hammer in the second.
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| 01-18-22 11:18PM |
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curlingclips
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Oct 2019
Location:
Posts: 1523 |
I read about a similar concept in Go (the board game), called Komi.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komi_(Go)
In Go, the player who makes the first move is at a considerable advantage, so nowadays the player who makes the second move is given komi points as compensation. Half point is used to break ties.
When two players are equally ranked, current standard Japanese and Korean komi is 6.5 points. Different sanctioning bodies at different times have used different komi values. Modern players had to abandon "classical" strategies that only wins by 3 points, and must now be more ambitious in their games.
Because no one knows what the perfect komi value actually is between any two ranked players, sometimes an auction system is used: each player state how many komi points they are willing to give to their opposition in exchange for the privilege of first move advantage. The player who offers the highest price wins the auction.
Curling could do something similar, where the 'better' team bids for the price of LSFE. This facilitates a natural process by which handicap is determined (Koe states that he is willing to give up 3.5 points to Van Dorp to start the game with hammer; Van Dorp can accept this, or reject it and take LSFE for himself for 0.5 point).
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When playing against lower ranked player, standard practice in Go apparently is to give first move advantage to the weaker player! Contrast this with curling where the better team is currently further awarded on top of that with the LSFE advantage!
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This is a different topic now, but if giving up 3.5 handicap points is too "weird", then maybe the handicap can be in form of "free stones" in the first end. This is similar to the handicap in Go (which is a different concept than komi), where the weaker player is allowed to essentially make several "free moves" at the start of the game.
So basically Koe can state "I'm willing to throw away my first 3 stones in the first end", instead of straight up giving 3 freebie points to Van Dorp.
Last edited by curlingclips on 01-19-22 at 12:47AM
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| 01-19-22 01:06AM |
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IN-OFF-FOR-2
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Mar 2013
Location:
Posts: 1875 |
FTLOG let it go. Do you get paid by the word? 50 links and BS quotes. Good gravy man/lady let it go. Back to the Big Bang theory. Penny falls in the shower,Sheldon tried to help her get dressed. Grabs under her arm to help her get dressed, Penny says is that my arm? Sheldon feels around around whilst fondling her breast, and she says is that my arm? No. Then let it go.
Just let it go. Stop the 50 links, the 50 quotes. LET IT GO.
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| 01-19-22 08:07AM |
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johnnysmoke
Drawmaster
Registered: Nov 2002
Location:
Posts: 612 |
quote:
Originally posted by hailstone
On the list of things that could be done to improve the watchability of curling, eliminating the extra end has to be one of the worst that I've heard of. What's more interesting than sudden death overtime?
.
Agreed, if indeed WCF is considering eliminating extra ends, they are dum-dums.
As for the statistics around 1st end last rock advantage, I have no doubt this is a real thing, at least at a competitive level.
There's this secret, little-used strategy called "going for the steal'. The last time I saw this used at a Canadian women's curling event was never, but it can be a useful tool to score a point, thereby nullifying any last rock advantage.
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| 01-19-22 10:49AM |
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guido
Super Rockchucker
Registered: Feb 2011
Location: Winnipeg
Posts: 1418 |
quote:
Originally posted by IN-OFF-FOR-2
FTLOG let it go. Do you get paid by the word? 50 links and BS quotes. Good gravy man/lady let it go. Back to the Big Bang theory. Penny falls in the shower,Sheldon tried to help her get dressed. Grabs under her arm to help her get dressed, Penny says is that my arm? Sheldon feels around around whilst fondling her breast, and she says is that my arm? No. Then let it go.
Just let it go. Stop the 50 links, the 50 quotes. LET IT GO.
👆🏼
__________________
It’s me!
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CurlingZone > Chat Forums > General Curling Chat > Rock Talk > Idea to eliminate extra ends: award win to the team that throws first rock
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