Curling: still no respect

I was listening to "590 - The Fan" on the car radio yesterday between 11:00am and 12:30pm before the 2007 Men's World Curling Championships began. Never, not once, did they even mention that the finals of the Men's World Curling Championships were taking place yesterday afternoon. Never, not once, did they mention that Team Canada had been dominating during the round robin.

But they had lots to say about hockey...

Sometimes I wonder if maybe even Glenn Howard and Team Canada couldn't beat the Maple Leafs at hockey....

On Any Given Day...

There is a cliche in sports that on any given day, any given team can beat any other given team. This cliche represents a basic understanding of probabilities applied to binomial outcomes (you win or you lose). It also helps explain why playoffs in most sports (baseball, basketball, hockey) involve the best x out of y games (and probably would in football if the players could play 3 or 4 games in a week.

Another example might be that on any given toss, I could roll two fair dice and get a twelve. The odds of my doing so would be low, but it might happen (on average one out of every 36 times I tried it). Analogously, on any given day a team with a low probability of winning might defeat a team that most of us would expect to win, more often than not. And while the mediots might search for explanations for the loss, it could simply have been due to randomness.

I think that is what happened in the Canada - USA curling game during the round-robing game at the 2007 Men's World Curling championships. As I wrote before, the USA curled MUCH better than expected; and even though Canada curled well (curling 91% to 90% for the US), they missed a few key shots and ended up losing the only game they have lost so far in the entire tournament. I was, quite frankly, surprised by the performance of the US, having seen them get off to a 2 - 3 start in the round robin and, in one game carried via the internet on CurlTV, struggle mightily against France (see my comments here).

The question in many people's minds was what might happen when the two teams met again in the playoffs. Many of us wondered whether the US defeat of Canada had been a fluke ("...any given team on any given day...") or whether Team USA would once again give Canada a run for its money.

I don't think we got a clear answer last night.

The game between Canada and the US was conceded by the US when they gave up 3 in the 7th end and trailed Canada 7 -1 (but they had to pretend to play the 8th end because of a tv contract -- funny but dumb). Once again, Team Canada was in good form, curling 89%; but this time Team USA curled only 79%, with their skip, Todd Birr, curling only 53% (vs 91% in their earlier matchup).

As people at curling clubs like to say, "That's the way it goes sometimes. Sometimes you're on, sometimes you're not." No attempt to explain the deeper, inner causes for the US's poor curling last night -- just, "That's the way it goes sometimes." In other words, shot-making in curling is in large part skill, but also the result of randomness. Curlers who are really, really good manage to have fewer down times and rarely, if ever, have such poor outings at Todd Birr had last night; and this ability to control both the mean AND the variance of their performances is what keeps them at the top of the game. Curlers with high game-to-game variance in their performances are less likely to be able to persist with top performances through an entire round robin and the playoff system in curling; .... but they might.

Today the US meets Germany in the bronze metal game. The loser of this game gets the bronze metal and the winner gets to play Canada tomorrow (Easter Sunday) for the championship. This means that the US, if they defeat Germany today, will get yet another shot at the Canadians on Sunday. Curling is the only sport I know of (though I expect there are others) that uses this "page playoff" system. Here is how it works:

At the end of the round robin (ignoring tie-breaker games), the teams that finish 1st and 2nd play each other, and the teams that finish 3rd and 4th play each other. The winner of the 1-2 game gets a bye until the final championship game, and the loser of the 1-2 game plays the winner of the 3-4 game. The winner of that game then plays for the championship. This way, a team that finishes 1st or 2nd during the round robin gets a second chance, creating an incentive to finish 1st or 2nd during the round robin. Also, it means that if one of the top two teams has an "on any given day..." poor performance (e.g., the US last night), they are not automatically eliminated. Given the vagaries of the ice in some tournaments, and given the variabilities in performances sometimes, I must say I love the page playoff system. It has a tendency to remove some of the randomness from determining an overall champion. For more on the page playoff system, see this.

Overall during the round robin, Canada curled 91% to lead the field, and the US was tied for 2nd at 84%, a substantial difference in performances. But never did Todd Birr, US skip, ever curl worse than 75% during the round robin. In fact after a cursory look through the stats for all the players, I could find only three other games in which curlers did worse than 53%, two from the Korean skip (Korea won only one game in the tournament) and the other from the Danish skip, who had the second lowest curling percentage of all the skips in the tournament.

So was last night's performance truly random and horrible? Probably. At the same time, the performance of Team USA against Canada during the round robin was also an outlier in the other direction. Given the potential variabilities and the randomness, you gotta love the way the tournament is set up with the round robin and the page playoff system.

I know this post is getting too long, but here's more, on a personal basis. My own curling percentages, self-assessed, over this past season have varied from 10% up to maybe as high as 50%. Others at the club level tend to have similar variances but with higher means. Given such huge variances, it is clear, at the club level, that "on any given day...."

Tie-breakers (Round One): Sweden Defeats France 6-5;Germany Defeats Finland 8-5

I watched the tie-breaker between France and Sweden on CurlTV today (with snatches of shots shown from the other tie-breaker between Germany and Finland). Skip Lindholm of Sweden made two absolutely marvelous shots in the 10th end to score two for Sweden. His first shot was a very difficult in-off take-out to get around all the guards and move France's shot rock off the button. And then, after France raised one of their guards to be sitting shot, Lindholm removed it and stuck his shooter to score two for the win.

Once again, Markku Uusipaavalniemi curled a lower percentage than any of the four skips and missed a difficult shot (it looked like a double-raise takeout) with his last rock, allowing Germany to score two in the tenth end. Although, as I had suggested, he improved considerably during the tournament, he just didn't seem as polished as he was last year.

The two teams, Germany and Sweden, meet at 4pm EDT in the second round of tie-breakers, which will also be shown on CurlTV.

Things We Don't Really Need to Overhear

The miking of the players during the 2007 Men's World Curling Championships has led to our hearing some things most viewers don't ordinarily hear during curling matches, in addition to the usual utterances of expletives now and then:

"Do you have any Kleenex back there?" -- a reference to the fact that curlers' noses usually run a bit while they are curling, and most clubs keep boxes of Kleenex on the walls at each end of the ice. I've never seen the boxes of Kleenex at the championships, but I assume they are there, somewhere.

"It's really hard to go to the bathroom here." -- Usually curlers take care of bathroom needs before the game or in a mad rush during the 5th end break. If it's a long, awkward journey, making a pitstop during the 5th end break can eat into your team's allotted time.

"Wow, did you see that woman!" -- I didn't really hear anyone say that.

US Defeats Canada 7-6

The US Men's Curling Team from Mankato, Minnesota, curled their starred-and-striped butts off Wednesday night to defeat Canada, scoring three in the 10th end at the 2007 Men's World Curling Championship. Through the entire game, it became apparent that the US team was playing much better than they did against France, often forcing Howard of Canada to blank or take just one point rather than score 2 or more points when he had the hammer (as in ends 4, 5, 8, and 9).

It was an awesome display of curling, as both teams curled over 90% (details here). In fact, Canada marginally out-curled the US percentage-wise, but in the 10th end, with Canade leading by two points, both Hart and Howard had slight misses, culminating with Howard's wrecking on a guard to leave Birr with a gentle tap for three and the win.

As Alan said, even though Canada curled over 90%, they appeared to have a chink in their armor, an Achilles' heel, so to speak. At the same time, though, the US team looked very good in the win.

Ironic that Team Canada's first loss should come after I posted that they seemed unbeatable. Oh well. I'm sure that my posting such a thing in Clinton, ON, had nothing to do with the loss, no matter how much power you might ascribe to chaos theory.

Canada Still Looks Unbeatable after 13

Going into the 13th draw, Germany had been looking pretty darned good and Canada had been looking darned-near perfect. It looked as if this draw might really challenge Team Canada at the 2007 World Men's Curling Championships. In the end, though, Canada was SO impressive, it is difficult to know what superlatives to use. Gentle taps, perfect draws, impressive picks. Canada took two, forced one, took two, forced one, took two, forced one, took three, shook hands. Textbook curling, both in shot-making and in strategy. Have I used the word "impressive" yet?

Team Canada looks so good that it will truly be a travesty if they do not win the championship in the play-offs. I'm thinking of flying to Edmonton to watch 'em live....

French Strategy

Among other things*, I watched the 7th draw of the 2007 Men's World Curling Championships on CurlTV this afternoon. I was intrigued by the strategies of the teams. For the first three ends, the US tried to start by putting rocks in the rings, and the French peeled them. The French managed to blank the first three ends as a result, and the frustration among the US curlers was readily apparent. On the fourth end, to try something different, the U.S. began with guards, and as the end evolved, the French managed to take two points.

Later, in the 6th end, the U.S. was forced to take just one with the hammer, evincing even more frustration. But then they stole one in 8th, so the teams were tied 2-2 going into the 9th end, with France having the hammer. France then scored 3 in the 9th end and 1 in the 10th to take the game 6-2.

I was intrigued by the French strategy. It seemed to frustrate the US team. In fact, the US out-curled the French team in terms of curling percentages 85% to only 77%. It is not often that a team on the short end of that big a difference wins the game, but in this case there was a combination of strategy and luck that allowed or even caused the French to win. It will be interesting to see how others react to this strategy.

If I had been there as a fan, I'd have been tempted to boo the French by the third end, just to register my disapproval, not of their strategizing, but of games that have three blanked ends in a row -- they frustrate the fans at least as much as they frustrated the US curlers.

*I also watched a lot of baseball this afternoon, much of it via mlb.com's premier broadband service. Their 700K telecasts have great resolution, compared with CurlTV; however, the constant re-buffering and freezing up make the overall package considerably inferior to that offered by CurlTV.

Practice Helps - Just Ask Finland

Well, nuts. If we had known that the Finnish team has not been curling all that much during the past year, we probably wouldn't have picked them to finish among the leaders. After two draws, Finland is 0W - 2L, and has not looked all that good in their losses. The losses were not blow-outs, and as a team Finland is curling 78%, ranked 8th among the twelve teams. And the skip, Markku Uusipaavalniemi, has curled only 68%, 11th among the skips.

I expect that as the team plays through the round robin, they will improve. But not being well-practiced appears to have hurt the team.

[Of course I am generalizing from personal experience: I've discovered that when I curl three times a week, I'm better than when I curl only twice a week. I curl 20% instead of only 16%.]

My Picks for the 2007 Worlds

Last year, I predicted that Team Finland, skipped by Markku Uusipaavalniemi, would win. But early on, he injured his wrist, and the team faltered without him. In the end Scotland defeated Canada to win the championship.

This year, Team Canada, skipped by Glenn Howard looks absolutely unbeatable. I predict they will win the championship. Others who might do well are Team Scotland and Team Finland.

Once again, let me remind readers that CurlTV will be carrying the morning draws that are not being covered by TSN. We shouldn't have to miss a single draw (aside from having to work now and then)

Correction: It looks as if TSN will be carrying all the games of the round robin that involve Canada, and CurlTV will be carrying games from all the draws, but none involving Canada during the round robin. Here is the TSN/CBC schedule. And here is a list of the games that will be covered by CurlTV (including the afternoon seniors world championship on Saturday, March 31, between Hackner (Canada) and Prentice (Scotland).