[ritchiebaby]

The international curling spotlight turns to Japan on Saturday 14 March when the ZEN-NOH World Women's Curling Championship 2015, presented by Ford of Canada, gets underway at the Tsukisamu Gymnasium in Sapporo, Hokkaido.


The twelve teams that have qualified are: Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan (as hosts), Norway, Russia, Scotland, Sweden, Switzerland and the USA.



The favourites will probably be Canada who are represented by the Sochi 2014 Olympic champions, skipped by Jennifer Jones, and they will be looking to win Canada’s first World Women’s Curling Championship title for seven years. Defending world and reigning European champions Switzerland will be represented by a team skipped by Alina Paetz.  2014 Olympic bronze medallist skip Eve Muirhead won gold at her last World Women’s Championship appearance and she returns to skip the Scotland team. 2014 European silver medallists and World bronze medallists Russia are skipped by Anna Sidorova. Sweden will once again be skipped by Sochi 2014 Olympic silver medallist Margaretha Sigfridsson.



SCOTLAND

Eve Muirhead (Fourth, Skip), Anna Sloan (Third, Vice-Skip), Vicki Adams (Second), Sarah Reid (Lead), Lauren Gray (Alternate).

The Scots start their tournament against Denmark in the second session on Saturday and continue on Sunday against Canada and Japan. As usual the twelve teams will play each other and the top four teams will qualify for the Play-off games on 20 and 21 March, with the Medal games taking place on Sunday 22 March.

[ritchiebaby]

It wasn't the best of weekends for the Scots. In the first game on Saturday they beat Denmark by 7-5, but lost twice on Sunday - 4-9 against Canada, then 7-9 to Japan. Eve Muirhead has been too strong with her last stone in the final end of the last two games and she seems to be struggling with the speed of the ice. Furthermore her team are not giving her good positions to play to and that puts on an extra bit of pressure. Still, it's better to be like that early on than later in the week.

China, Russia and Switzerland share the lead on 3 wins out of 3. Tomorrow Scotland take on USA and Norway.

[ritchiebaby]

A much better day for Scotland today. The Scots demolished USA 9-2 in the first game, USA conceding after 6 ends. In the second game, Scotland led all the way against Norway and held on to win 8-7 in a tight finish.

Scotland now have 3 wins and sit in limbo in mid-table with China and Germany. Having said that, there are no unbeaten teams left and the leaders, Canada, Japan, Russia and Switzerland are all on 4 wins and are all looking over their shoulders at the chasing pack.

Hoping for no slip-ups, the Scots play China and Finland tomorrow. Canada have the easier games tomorrow, but Russia have to play both Switzerland and Japan, so the top of the table might be totally different tomorrow night.



What can you expect to see at the Worlds? Well, quite a lot of 1, 100% of 2, action-packed sweeping on the shout at 3 and hopefully sneaking in at 4.
1                        2                         3                        4  
          

[ritchiebaby]

What did we see at the Worlds?

In a very tight game this afternoon, China edged out Scotland 7-5 to keep up their hopes of qualifying for the play-offs. Scotland are now in a position of not being able to afford any more losses, to keep their hopes alive and managed to control their evening game and defeat Finland 8-3.

The Scots now have 4 wins and 3 losses in equal fourth position, alongwith 4 other teams - China, Germany, Japan and Sweden. All the teams have played 7 games and Canada and Switzerland lead the way with 6 wins, with Russia in 3rd position on 5 wins. It looks as though these 8 teams are fighting for the 4 available places in the medal games. There are still 4 games to go and a lot could - and will - happen.

Scotland have two tough games tomorrow, against Russia and Germany. In the other session Germany meet Russia, so any country coming out with 2 wins can do themselves a power of good. Let's hope Eve Muirhead will be putin down a merkel     for the rest of the competition.

[St Charles Owl]

Well lets hope the Scottish ladies make the Germans go home like "sour krauts" and the Russians in fear of being sent to Siberia by Putin!!!

[ritchiebaby]

The first part of the Scotland/Russia/Germany mini-league went well for the Scots as they comfortably beat Russia 9-5, after falling behind early on. In the second session Russia defeated Germany by 8 shots to 2 to rescue their day's work and still be in the hunt for a play-off place. Scotland led Germany from halfway in the last game of the day and ran out winners by 7-5, leaving Scotland with two wins to Russia's one.

In the standings after Day 5, Switzerland are out on their own in front with 8 wins, with Canada in 2nd place on 7 wins. Scotland are in joint 3rd with China and Russia on 6 wins with 2 games each to play.

Scotland take on leaders Switzerland in the morning session and then Sweden (5 wins) in the afternoon game. Russia are involved in another mini-league tomorrow against China and Finland. It'll be tough for Scotland tomorrow, but one win out of two should be enough to earn them a tie-breaker slot at least, with a potential last four place depending on other results. Two wins would guarantee them a last four place.

[ritchiebaby]

Switzerland guaranteed themselves top slot after their 8-6 victory over Scotland in the opening session of yesterday's play, while Canada joined them in the 1v2 Play-off game by beating Germany 7-5 after an extra end. Meanwhile, Scotland were straight back on the ice to play Sweden to see if they could get into the last four at the expense of either Russia or China, who defeated Finland by 6 shots to 5.

As it turned out, the Scots controlled the second half of the game, running out 10-7 winners to leave them in the tie-breaker against the loser of China v Russia in the last session. Russia had beaten Finland 8-2 in the same session. Russia dominated their final game, beating China 11-5 and finishing in 3rd place in the round robin games.

In the tie-breaker game this morning, Scotland easily disposed of China by 9-4 to qualify for the 3v4 Play-off game against Russia, but then suffered a reverse of that game as Russia swept them aside by 7-2. Scotland still have a medal to play for in the Bronze Medal game on Sunday morning.

The remaining games tomorrow are Switzerland v Canada in the 1 v 2 game, where the winners go straight into Sunday's Gold Medal game. The losers will play Russia in the sole Semi-final and the winners of that will play in the Gold Medal game. The losers will play Scotland for the Bronze Medal.

Just for the stats lovers, in the game against Finland, Sweden's Sara McManus scored 100%, a rare feat in any competition.

[St Charles Owl]

Just for the stats lovers, in the game against Finland, Sweden's Sara McManus scored 100%, a rare feat in any competition.

When you say she scored 100%, do you mean that every stone she sent down ended up scoring a point??

[ritchiebaby]

Not quite, SCO, but you're on the right track. If things are going well for each player, it's unusual for anyone except the last player to score a point (us oldies call them shots, but it's more and more common to call them points). The trick is to try to engineer a situation where the opposition team is forced into playing shots that are more difficult.

Each shot played can be given up to 4 points for accuracy and the resultant position. 0 is a complete miss and 4 is exactly what was requested by the skip. Sara obviously did what was required for all of her shots. Over a possible 10 ends at 2 stones per end she would have scored 80 points. None of this matters as far as deciding games is concerned, but is a good indication of each player's form as well as the overall team performance.

Of course, when I tried to access the website to give an example of what I mean, I couldn't get on!

[St Charles Owl]

Not quite, SCO, but you're on the right track. If things are going well for each player, it's unusual for anyone except the last player to score a point (us oldies call them shots, but it's more and more common to call them points). The trick is to try to engineer a situation where the opposition team is forced into playing shots that are more difficult.

Each shot played can be given up to 4 points for accuracy and the resultant position. 0 is a complete miss and 4 is exactly what was requested by the skip. Sara obviously did what was required for all of her shots. Over a possible 10 ends at 2 stones per end she would have scored 80 points. None of this matters as far as deciding games is concerned, but is a good indication of each player's form as well as the overall team performance.

Of course, when I tried to access the website to give an example of what I mean, I couldn't get on!

That makes sense.  Essentially as you say its a record of the accuracy of the individual players and how they are performing irrespective of the team result.