In curling, the “hammer” is the advantage of throwing the last stone in an end, which gives that team the best chance to score or to ruin the opponent’s plan at the very end of the round.

What the hammer actually does

  • Lets a team see how all other stones end up before they throw the final rock, then choose the perfect shot to score multiple points or limit damage.
  • Often used to either:
    • Draw into the house to score 1–3 points, or
    • Hit an opponent’s stone out to prevent them from scoring.

A simple way to picture it: the hammer is like having the last move in a chess endgame, when the board is almost set and one precise move can decide the score.

Why it’s such a big deal

  • Teams with the hammer usually aim to score at least two points in that end, because one point is considered a “waste” of the advantage at high levels.
  • The team without the hammer tries to:
    • “Force” the hammer team to only one point, or
    • “Steal” points by scoring even though they don’t have last rock.

Over a full game, how well you score with hammer and defend against hammer is one of the main predictors of who wins.

How a team gets (or keeps) the hammer

  • To start a game, the hammer is usually decided by a pre-game draw to the button: both teams slide a stone toward the center; whoever gets closer chooses who has the hammer in the first end.
  • After that:
    • The team that doesn’t score in an end gets the hammer in the next end.
* If an end is “blank” (no one scores), the same team keeps the hammer.

This is why you’ll sometimes see teams deliberately blank an end to keep the hammer for a better scoring chance later.

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