They Have Hammer, You’re Defending

It’s another high-profile battle against your arch-rival. Here’s the situation:

C’mon skip, give us a shot that shows off your million-dollar smile. What’s your Pro Call and Club Call—and why?

“If yellow has hammer I’m drawing around R1 into the four-foot. My mom always said my third’s shots be in first to the four-foot.” — Anonymous Puzzler

Well, far be it from me to ever argue with mom. We’ll leave that to Niklas Edin of Sweden, playing red, as he battles Kevin Koe, playing yellow stones, at the 2019 men’s world championship.

In our Daily Curling Puzzle Facebook group, our Puzzlers called a wide variety of well-reasoned shots in response to this situation. It’s really interesting to read through all the different rationales and discussion and I, for one, learn a ton from them. You can find the calls to this situation here. 

So what’s going on? For me, objectives drive tactics. What are your ideal, acceptable and unacceptable outcomes for this end—and what’s your opponent gunning for?

In this case, the opposition has hammer so they would love to score two, would be happy enough for a blank, don’t want to get forced, and definitely don’t want to give up a steal. There doesn’t seem to be much chance of a steal though. The front’s wide open and Kevin Koe will make a draw to four-foot with his eyes closed nine times out of 10, especially with those sweepers of his (any version of Team Koe brushers, right?). But those guards could come in handy for him. He would love to get one of his next two shots under those guards and try to set up a deuce.

So that’s what your opponent is thinking. Of course, you’re Sweden (red stones) and your ideal outcome is to steal (not looking likely; no junk down the centre) and you would be quite happy with a force to get hammer back (definitely possible with a couple of reds split well apart). The one thing you don’t want to do is make a mistake and give up a deuce this late in the end. The danger for you is that they get under those corners and conjure a score of two.

So they have the hammer and we’re defending. The first option to look at when defending is the peel: should you get rid of those guards? Quite a few Puzzlers liked that call and it looks like a very makeable shot. The downside, as many other Puzzlers saw, is that if you peel, B.J. Neufeld makes that double on your reds with his eyes closed, and what looks like a decent chance to force and get hammer back is gone. The end is blanked and they get another go at a big score in the fifth.

So if you want to keep the force in play, you need to leave the guards and stick this one somewhere where there’s no easy triple that allows Koe to blank the end. There were many very good suggestions from the group, and you’ll see Niklas ponder one or two. The guideline here is to avoid leaving your rock somewhere that sets up a 90-degree situation between the top object rock and the two side stones. Ninety-degrees is the killer angle that gets all three going. Nik flirts with this angle on his call.

But the key point—and the one that Russ and Cheryl discuss in the Canadian TV feed—is that it’s better to stick this somewhere where you might give up a triple (leading to a blank) than somewhere that takes away the triple but might let them roll under those guards and set up a score of two. In short, it’s better to risk giving up a blank than a deuce. Sadly, my Swedish never progressed past the Swedish Chef on The Muppet Show, but I bet that’s what Oskar and Niklas are discussing before their next throw.

One popular call by the group was the tap on the top red, R1, to push it behind the guards and protected so that Koe will have to take his single. I learned from bitter experience to never play around corners without hammer, and tapping behind corners kind of smells like the same thing. If they get frozen to you under cover, you’ll never dig them out. They’d be halfway to an unlikely score of two.

For me, and for Niklas, it seems like there is enough space to stick one in the rings and keep the angles in your favour. He elects to go top rings, perhaps thinking it’s a safe spot and that he’ll have an easy four-foot runback if Canada somehow gets under it.

Sadly for him, Nik threw a miss on his last and Canada eeked out a deuce. Maybe he should have taken mom’s advice and gone for the four-foot.

Did Niklas Edin make the right call? What was your shot?

There’s a little bit of geo-blocking gone on with this game. For viewers in Canada, you can watch the shot unfold here:

The rest-of-the-world can view the developments here: