What is the hammer in curling?

The last stone of an end. Throwing last is a substantial advantage — commonly valued at around three quarters of a point — because you get to see the whole end before your final shot.

Does a steal give you the hammer in curling?

No, and this is the most commonly muddled point in the sport. A team that steals has scored, so they throw first in the next end, which means their opponent has the hammer. A steal gains you points, not last stone.

Why do curling teams blank an end on purpose?

Because scoring one point with the hammer means giving up the hammer, and the hammer is worth about three quarters of a point. Trading it for a single point is close to break-even. Blanking scores nothing and keeps last stone for another attempt at two, and the published analytics support doing it in most situations.

Does the hammer change after a blank end?

No. Nobody scored, so nobody throws first by virtue of scoring, and the order of play simply carries on. The team with the hammer keeps it.

CurlTi.me/Learn/The hammer

The hammer

Q: Who gets the hammer in curling?

Whoever did not score in the previous end. The rule is stated the other way round in the rulebook: the team that most recently scored delivers the first stone in any subsequent end, and delivering first means the other team has last stone. In the first end it is decided by the Last Stone Draw, or by a coin toss.

Last stone of the end is worth about three quarters of a point, and one rule decides where it goes next. Get that rule the wrong way round and half of curling strategy stops making sense.

Last updated 2026-08-18

~0.75points, the commonly quoted value of last stone
1rule decides who has it next
0change to the hammer after a blank end

What it is#

The hammer is the last stone of an end. It is an advantage for an obvious reason: you throw it knowing everything, and your opponent has nothing left to answer with. If the end is close, last stone usually decides it.

The figure usually attached to it is about three quarters of a point. That number is worth carrying around, because a great many decisions in curling are a comparison against it.

The one rule#

Everything else on this page falls out of a single sentence in the rulebook, and it is phrased in the direction people find least intuitive:

This order of play shall be maintained until one team scores, after which the team that most recently scored delivers the first stone in any subsequent end.

Delivering the first stone means not having the last one. So, turned round into the way curlers actually think about it:

What happened in the end	Who has the hammer in the next end
The team with the hammer scored	The other team. Scoring costs you last stone.
The team without the hammer scored — a steal	The team that already had it. It does not move.
Nobody scored — a blank end	The team that already had it. Nothing changes.

Say it once, properly

The hammer moves when, and only when, the team holding it scores. Nothing else takes it away.

Play the ends forward#

Add end outcomes and watch the score and the hammer move. Nothing here is estimated — it is the rule above, applied, and the running score that follows from it.

Red has the hammer. Choose what happens.

No ends played yet.

End	Hammer	Outcome	Red	Yellow
Nothing yet.

Try a run of blanks and watch the hammer stay put. Then try a steal, and watch it not move either.

With scripting off, the buttons do nothing and the rule table above says the same thing. The simulator is a way of checking it, not a way of learning it.

What each outcome does#

Outcome	Effect
Hammer scores 1	The hammer team takes a single. They scored, so they throw first next end.
Hammer scores 2	The target outcome. Hammer changes hands.
Hammer scores 3+	A big end. Hammer changes hands.
Blank end	Nobody scores. Nothing changes, including who has the hammer.
Steal of 1	The team without the hammer scores. They threw first, and now they will again.
Steal of 2+	The same, worse.

Why scoring one can be a mistake#

Here is the arithmetic that governs the last few ends of most close games.

You have the hammer. You can take one point, or you can throw your last stone away deliberately and blank the end. Taking one gains a point and costs you an advantage worth about three quarters of a point. Net: roughly a quarter of a point, and now your opponent has last stone.

Blanking gains nothing and costs nothing, and you get to try again for two.

The published version

This is not just folklore. A three-dimensional Markov model built on eighteen years of Canadian championship data concluded that a team with the hammer, given the choice between one point and a blank, should blank in most situations. That is a rare case of analytics confirming what good skips already did rather than contradicting it. See the statistics page.

The exceptions are the interesting part, and they are all about the clock rather than the arithmetic:

Late, and tied or one down. Ends are a finite resource. A point is a point when there are two left.
In an extra end. One wins it. Blanking is pointless.
When the alternative is a steal. Taking one is much better than trying for two and giving up one. The choice is rarely as clean as the arithmetic pretends.

The thing everybody gets backwards#

A steal is scoring in an end where you did not have the hammer. It is the most valuable thing that can happen to a team — you have taken points out of an end you were expected to lose one in.

What it does not do is win you the hammer.

Work it through. You are without last stone; you steal one. You scored, so by the rule you deliver first in the next end. Which means your opponent has the hammer. You are still without it. Steal again and you are still without it.

That is why a comeback without the hammer is so hard, and why it is so impressive when it happens: the team doing it has to keep winning ends from the wrong side of the advantage, over and over, with the hammer never once coming to them as a reward. And it is why the team that gives up a steal has one consolation only — they still have last stone next end.

If you take one thing from this page, take that. It was wrong on two pages of this site until the simulator above was built and made the hammer visibly fail to move.

Who gets it in the first end#

Nothing has happened yet, so the rule above has nothing to work with. Two ways it gets decided:

The Last Stone Draw. At competitive level, each team throws two draws to the button after pre-game practice — one clockwise, one anticlockwise, by different players. The team whose stones finish closer chooses. Those distances are also banked all week as the Draw Shot Challenge tie-break.
A coin toss, when there is no LSD.

In mixed doubles the LSD decides who chooses where the positioned stones go, which in turn decides who throws first — a slightly different mechanism to the same end.

Extra ends, where all of this inverts#

If the score is tied after the scheduled ends, extra ends are played and the first team to score wins.

Every piece of reasoning above collapses. A single point is not a poor return on the hammer, it is the game. Blanking is not a way to keep an advantage, it is a way to be asked the same question again. And the hammer, which is worth about three quarters of a point across a normal end, is worth something much closer to the whole game.

Teams get four minutes thirty seconds of extra thinking time per extra end — three minutes in mixed doubles, six in wheelchair curling — which is a reasonable measure of how much harder the decisions get.

Sources#

Primary The Rules of Curling, R5(a) and R12 World Curling, 2025The order-of-play rule quoted above, which is the whole page, plus scoring and extra ends. Extra-end thinking time is C6(c).
An analysis of curling using a three-dimensional Markov model Journal of Sports Analytics, 2019The published conclusion that a team with hammer should usually blank rather than take a single.

What to do with it once you have it How the score itself works