How does scoring work in curling?

At the end of each end, one team scores one point for every one of its stones that is in or touching the house and closer to the centre than any stone belonging to the other team. Only one team can score in an end, because the other team’s nearest stone is what stops the count.

Can both teams score in the same end?

No. The count stops at the opposition’s nearest stone, so by definition only one team can have stones closer than that. If neither team has a stone in the house, the end is blank and nobody scores.

What is a blank end in curling?

An end where neither team scores. Crucially, the hammer does not change hands after a blank, so a team with last stone that cannot make two points will often deliberately throw its last stone away rather than score a single — keeping the hammer for the next end.

How do you read a curling club scoreboard?

Back to front. The fixed row of numbers in the middle is every possible running total. The movable card in a team’s row shows which end that team reached that total in. So a card reading “4” hung against the number 6 means: after the fourth end, this team had six points.

What happens if the score is tied at the end of a curling game?

Extra ends are played until somebody scores. The first team to score in an extra end wins immediately, which makes the hammer enormously valuable — and each team gets four minutes thirty seconds of extra thinking time per extra end.

CurlTi.me/Learn/Scoring

Scoring, and how to read a scoreboard

Scoring in curling takes one sentence to state and about ten minutes to actually understand, and then there is the scoreboard in the clubhouse, which reads back to front.

Last updated 2026-08-18

The rule#

One sentence, from the rulebook:

At the completion of an end, a team scores one point for each of its own stones located in or touching the house that are closer to the tee than any stone of the opposition.

Everything else follows from it. Three consequences are worth stating out loud because they surprise people:

Only one team can score in an end. The other team's nearest stone is the wall the count runs into.
The button is not a bullseye. It is worth no more than any other part of the house. A stone sitting on the button and a stone barely biting the twelve-foot are both worth exactly one point; the rings are a ruler for comparing distances, not a scoring target. A team can win an end 3–0 without a stone inside the eight-foot, as long as the other team has nothing closer.
Touching counts. A stone barely grazing the outer edge of the rings is in the house. That is what a biter is, and what the measure is for.

Counting an end#

The procedure is: find the opposition's nearest stone, then count your own stones that are nearer than it. Stop there.

Red scores three. The fourth red stone is in the house but further out than the nearest yellow, so the count stops.

In practice the two vice-skips do this together and agree the number; the score is not official until they do. If a stone that might have affected the count gets displaced before they agree, the non-offending team gets the benefit of whatever a measurement might have given them.

Blank ends, and why teams want them#

If neither team has a stone in the house when the end finishes, nobody scores and the end is blank. So far, so ordinary. The interesting part is what happens to the hammer.

The rule that drives half of curling strategy

The team that scores in an end throws first in the next one — so scoring gives away the hammer. After a blank end, nothing changes and the same team keeps it.

That makes scoring exactly one point with the hammer a poor outcome. You have traded last stone, which is worth around three quarters of a point, for a single point. A team that cannot manufacture two will frequently prefer to blank the end deliberately — throwing its last stone through the house on purpose — and try again next end with the hammer still in hand.

The published analytics agree with the instinct: a three-dimensional Markov model built on eighteen years of Canadian championship data concluded that a team with hammer choosing between one point and a blank should usually blank. More on the arithmetic in strategy and in the statistics.

The opposite outcome has its own name. Scoring without the hammer is a steal, and it is the most valuable thing that can happen to a team — you have taken points from an end you were expected to lose.

A steal does not win you the hammer

This trips people up, so it is worth being exact. The rule is that whoever scores throws first next end. A team that steals has scored, so they throw first next end — which means the opponent gets the hammer back. Stealing gains you points; it does not gain you last stone. Playing without the hammer and stealing repeatedly is how a team claws back a deficit, and it is hard precisely because the hammer never comes to you while you keep doing it.

The two scoreboards#

Curling has two entirely different scoreboards in common use, and they encode the same information in opposite ways. Here is the same six-end game on both.

The one on television#

Conventional: a column per end, showing the points scored in that end, and a total at the right. Nothing to learn.

The same game as below. Red 5, Yellow 4 after six ends.

The one in the clubhouse#

And this is the one that stops people in their tracks. It is on the wall of virtually every curling club in the world.

The identical game. The fixed middle row is every possible total; the card in a team’s row is the number of the end in which they reached it.

The trick is that the numbers you can move are ends, and the numbers you cannot move are scores — the reverse of every other scoreboard in sport. To read it, find a card in a team's row, look at the fixed number it is hung against, and say: after that end, that team had this many points.

What you see	What it means
A card reading 1 in the red row, against the number 3	After the first end, red had 3 points. So red scored three in the first end.
A card reading 2 in the yellow row, against 1	After the second end, yellow had 1 point.
No card anywhere for an end number	That end was blank. The card is usually hung off to the side of the board so you can tell it has been played.
The rightmost card in each row	That team’s current total is the fixed number it sits against.

Why on earth

Because a club needs one set of cards, not a bagful. The movable numbers are end numbers, so a board needs exactly one card per end per team, and every card gets used exactly once. A conventional board needs an unpredictable supply of noughts, ones and twos and always runs out of twos. It is a logistics solution from before anybody had a printer, and it works.

Ties, measures and concessions#

When you cannot tell by eye#

A measuring device pivots on the pin at the centre of the house and swings out to the nearest part of each stone. It may only be used once the last stone of the end has come to rest — with two exceptions, both of which are about legality rather than score: checking whether a stone is in play at all, and checking whether a stone is in the free guard zone or the no-tick zone before the second through fifth stones are thrown.

If two stones are so close to the tee that the device physically will not fit, the call is made visually. And if no decision can be reached at all, the stones are considered equal, which resolves as follows:

If the measure was to decide who scored, the end is blanked.
If it was to decide an additional point, only the stones already closer count.

Extra ends#

A tie after the scheduled ends goes to extra ends, and the first team to score wins the game outright. Clocks are reset and each team gets four minutes thirty seconds of thinking time per extra end. Because a single point ends it, the usual reason to prefer a blank evaporates completely: in an extra end, one is everything.

Conceding#

Curling expects teams to concede when the game is gone, and the rules make room for it: a game ends when a team concedes, or when one team is arithmetically eliminated — cannot reach a tie with the stones left. An eliminated team may finish the current end but may not start another.

Conceding is not giving up; it is the normal, courteous end of a decided game, and a team is expected to shake hands rather than make the other side play out four dead ends. It is only done while you are the delivering team. See etiquette.

Sources#

Primary The Rules of Curling, R12: Scoring World Curling, 2025The scoring rule quoted above, the measurement procedure, equal-measure outcomes, arithmetic elimination and the concession procedure.
Understanding the scoreboards in curlingOn the club board convention and why it is built that way.
An analysis of curling using a three-dimensional Markov model Journal of Sports Analytics, 2019The published support for blanking rather than taking one with hammer.

What to do with the hammer Look a term up