Curling Scoreboard

Only one team scores in an end, and only stones in or touching the house count. Find the team whose stone is closest to the button: that team scores one point for every one of its own stones that is closer to the button than the opponent's nearest stone. The opponent scores nothing, however many stones it has in the rings.

So if red has stones first, second and fourth closest and yellow has the third, red scores 2 — the fourth red stone is behind a yellow one and stops the count. In a game of fours each team delivers eight stones, two per player, which makes 8 the most an end can be worth. That is an eight-ender, and it is the curling equivalent of a hole in one; there has never been one at the Olympics.

If no stone from either team finishes in the house, the end is blanked and nobody scores. The board records the end with a 0 for both teams, which is what a blanked end looks like on a tournament scoreboard.

The hammer is the last stone of the end and it is the whole shape of curling strategy: with it you can draw for one, or set up for two or three, or run your opponent's stone out of the house. It is decided before the first end — by a draw shot challenge in serious play, by a coin toss elsewhere — and after that the rule is simple: the team that scores throws first in the next end, so the hammer passes to the team that did not score.

That is why blanking an end deliberately is good play. A blanked end is one where neither team scores, and it leaves the hammer where it was. A skip who can only draw for a single point with the hammer will often throw their last stone out of play instead, keep the hammer, and try for two or three in the next end. This board follows that rule: a blank end leaves HAMMER with the same team, a scored end moves it across.

If the last end leaves the score tied, the game goes to extra ends and is played on until one team scores. The board keeps going past the eighth or tenth end and labels the extra ends for you, so the teams stay in the same rows and the totals keep adding up. A team that cannot catch up can also give the game away: the Concede button records the other team as the winner, which is the electronic version of the handshake.

How many ends you play depends on who you are playing for. This board is set to eight and switches to ten (or six) in the settings.

There are also two different scoreboards in curling and they read differently. Most clubs still hang a numbered board: the running scores are printed along the middle and each team hangs the end number under the total it has just reached — so the board shows you where the score is, not what happened in each end. The layout on this page is the tournament and television one: ends across the top, one row per team, the points taken in each end in the cells, and the running total on the right. That is the version that tells you the whole story of the game at a glance, and it is what a scorer filling in a match card needs.

• The end-by-end row club and tournament scorers expect: ends across the top, a row per team, the total on the right.
• Points for the team that scored the end, 1 to 8, or a blank end — the board will not let both teams score the same end, because the rules do not.
• The hammer, moved automatically to the team that did not score, and left in place after a blank end.
• Eight or ten ends, extra ends when the last end is tied, and a Concede button for a game that is given away.
• Team names and colors (red and yellow by default), take back the last end, tap an end number to correct it, full-screen display mode and a live view link.