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curling what happens if you touch a stone

In curling, what happens when you touch a stone (often called “burning” a stone) depends on when and how it’s touched. The rules are surprisingly detailed and try to balance fairness with sportsmanship.

Basic idea: “burned stone”

A stone that is touched or disturbed by a player or their equipment is called a burned stone.

There are three main situations:

  • Touching a moving stone between the far tee line and the near hog line.
  • Touching a moving stone near the house (inside the playing-end hog line).
  • Touching a stationary stone.

Each has different consequences.

1. Touching a moving stone between ends

This is the area from the tee line at the delivering end to the hog line at the playing end.

  • If your own team touches its own moving stone here:
    • That touched stone is immediately removed from play by your team.
  • If the opposition team touches your moving stone in that zone:
    • If it is the delivered stone, it is usually allowed to be redelivered or placed depending on competition rules, but in simplified/club interpretations it is normally placed where your team reasonably thinks it would have ended up.
* If it is not the delivered stone, your team places it where you reasonably believe it would have come to rest.

In everyday club play, skips often talk it out and agree on a fair placement if an opponent accidentally brushes a stone.

2. Touching a moving stone near the house

Once the stone has crossed the playing-end hog line (i.e., near or into the house), the non‑offending team gets options.

If a moving stone is touched by the team to which it belongs inside the playing-end hog line :

  • All stones are allowed to come to rest.
  • Then the non‑offending team chooses one of these options:
1. Remove the burned (touched) stone and **reset** all stones to where they were before the infraction.
2. **Leave everything as is** , exactly where they came to rest.
3. Place all stones where they reasonably think they would have ended up if the stone hadn’t been touched.

This rule gives the innocent team control so that the offender cannot benefit from the mistake.

3. Touching a stationary stone

If someone bumps or moves a stone that was already at rest, the usual approach is:

  • If the displaced stone would not have affected a moving stone’s outcome:
    • The non‑offending team simply replaces it where it was.
  • If it could have affected play, then the skips confer and try to reconstruct where everything should go; competition rules again give the non‑offending team the final say.

Club curling leans heavily on honesty and agreement here rather than ultra‑strict enforcement.

4. Special note: touching before release

A couple of extra nuances that often confuse new players:

  • If the player “double‑touches” the stone (brushes it again) before the hog line at the delivering end, that is not a violation and the stone stays in play.
  • However, if the stone is not clearly released before that hog line, it’s a hog‑line violation and the stone is removed.

So “touch” isn’t automatically bad; it matters whether the stone is officially in play yet.

5. How this plays out in real games

In real‑world leagues and online discussions, you’ll see this framed as: “If you burn a stone, the other team decides what happens.”

Typical outcomes:

  • In friendly games, the non‑offending team often just says “Leave it, that’s fine” if it clearly didn’t change much.
  • In competitive games, teams make fuller use of their options, especially in late ends when a single shot can decide the game.

Forum threads and blog posts also discuss edge cases, like intentional burning to protect stones, which is strongly condemned in curling’s ethics code and can be treated as unsportsmanlike conduct.

Quick recap (for your post)

For your “curling what happens if you touch a stone” post, you can boil it down to something like:

  • Touching a moving stone early (between delivering tee line and playing-end hog line):
    • Your team burns its own stone → that stone is removed from play.
* Opponent burns your stone → your team decides a fair placement.
  • Touching a moving stone near the house (inside the hog line):
    • Let everything stop, then the non‑offending team chooses: remove and reset, leave as is, or reposition as they judge fair.
  • Touching a stationary stone:
    • Non‑offending team replaces it where it was or to where it should reasonably be.

All of this sits under curling’s strong emphasis on sportsmanship and fair play, so players are expected to be honest about any contact and work together to restore a fair result.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.