Wide Range of Olympic Options

Here’s a puzzling situation suggested by Penny Shantz, 1988 Olympic gold medallist and silver medallist at the Canadian Seniors, playing with Mary Anne Arsenault for B.C. Our Daily Curling Puzzle Facebook group had a wide range of opinions about what we should do.

Oh-boy-oh-boy-oh-boy. This game hasn’t gone the way you’d expected it. Sure, you’re in the other team’s home rink, but still. You’ve been shooting less than 70% and now you find yourself two down in the 10th. Can you pull a rabbit out of the hat, or is it time to throw in the towel, head to the bar and collect your free drink?

Here’s the situation:

Come on skip—deliver us from the jaws of certain defeat! What’s your call—and why?

Mike DePolo: “I’m just hoping this particular shot was used as the puzzle because Yellow did in fact find a way to score two.”

Well, that would have been particularly cruel, Mike, so yes she did. And then Anette Norberg went on to steal a single in the extra end to win women’s gold at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. A glorious comeback for Sweden. Not so much for Canada’s Cheryl Bernard.

But as we look at the puzzle, all that is to come in the future. At the moment, us Puzzlers—and Norberg—are faced with a pretty dire situation. We need to make our last two rocks count and have just one lonely guard and virtually no backing to help us. Grim.

I think Anette Norberg might be the most successful player ever, with two Olympic gold medals, three world titles and a whole host of European and other major championships. I would love to understand her discussion during the Swedes’ timeout but sadly, my Swedish tuition consisted of just a few lessons from the Swedish Chef on The Muppet Show. Happily for us though, Staffan Axelsson, one of the many Swedes in our group, is available to translate.

“Right away, Eva (third) says there is only one shot, the freeze to R2. Anette thinks that with the R2 freeze, Bernard has a short run on her red to get rid of it and win the gold. Coach comes out and quicky says there are two options: freeze or hit/roll. Anette says she thinks that the hit-and-roll is the shot to score two, even if it is hard, and the coach agrees.

But then the second brings up the freeze again, and together with the third they convince Anette to play the freeze. But halfway down the ice, Anette changes her mind back to the hit-and-roll. She throws it with the weight she called and almost gets the roll she wanted.”

So the team discussed two options, and our Puzzlers naturally raised both of those. However, Gerry Richard, Brier and world champion lead for Rick Folk, raised a third shot that could work. Let’s take each of these in turn.

The first was to freeze down to the corner of R2, lie shot and hope Cheryl misses a three-foot runback, allowing you to draw with your last and score two to tie the game. But Anette has only thrown three draws all game and is averaging just 67% on those. Cheryl is a pretty good hitter—and it’s only three feet. The probability of Anette making the freeze and Cheryl not picking it out is slim at best.

The second option is to play the hit-and-roll across the rings to get under the yellow guard and lie second shot. By peeling the top red, you’re opening up the back red for your second shot, when you’ll very likely have to deal with that to score your deuce. If you open it up now and roll across to get buried to lie second shot, Cheryl would have to make a very precise draw to sit two again and leave you no doubles with your last. But …

“The problem with this option,” says Mickey Pendergast, two-time reigning Canadian Masters Champion, “is that a hit-and-roll across the rings is about the lowest percentage shot in curling. A six-foot hit-and-roll? One-in-five or one-in-ten maybe …?”

And the third option—Gerry’s call—is to play a very makeable shot, dangle some bait and coax a miss.

“The shot I like is the inturn around the yellow guard Y1. Don’t freeze to R3 but show them half of rock sitting just above the tee-line for second shot creating an angle onto R3. It puts two thoughts in their head: should I try to remove it, or freeze to it? A jam should create a double for two.”

As is always the case in our group, not everyone is convinced. Here’s an extract of the discussion that followed between two champion curlers.

Mickey Pendergast: “Gerry, I don’t mind that, but if you make it perfectly, don’t they guard their R1 and R2?”

Gerry Richard: “Mickey, that’s why you bait them with half showing. Think you will get some to chase. The half open rocks require them to throw both correct line and weight. Not a great situation. (If they guard) it leaves the slash runback with the yellow guard.”

Mickey: “Gerry, I know what you’re saying, but I think a quality skip could also come down with tee-plus and sit two with no doubles. But baiting them with a big half of your rock is better than wrapping dead buried, for sure.”

So, freeze and hope for a missed runback, hit and make a long roll, or coax a jam then make the long slash runback to score your deuce. None of them look very appetizing, and perhaps this comes down to skip’s preference. You could go for the hard shot now—the hit and roll—that could leave an easier shot later. Or you could go for an easier shot now—the freeze or draw—that might leave a more difficult one later.

Anette ultimately decided on her preference, made the hit but not quite the roll, almost leaving the half-buried rock that Gerry had been calling for; watch the sequence—from Canada’s previous stone—here. Cheryl’s hit hung a little high and jammed, leaving Anette an easy hit for a pair.

My takeaways from this puzzle, an almost hopeless situation in the biggest game of your life? Stick to your guns. Play what you feel … and hope for the best.