Faster Curling

I’ve been watching the Olympics mixed doubles curling, a variant of the game designed to be faster than the traditional game played with four people on each side. To speed the game:

1. There are six stones per team per end, instead of eight.
2. The first stone for each team is placed on the center line, the team with the hammer gets the stone in the back of the house, while the team throwing first gets the stone in a guard position.
3. Thinking time, the time for considering strategy between shots, is greatly reduced.
4. There is a power play. Once during the match, when a team has the hammer, the guard stones can be removed early. Normally, they can only be knocked off the ice after the third stone.

It works. The game is fast paced, decisions are made quickly, and I don’t see a huge erosion of accuracy. Cutting down the time between throws with a soft time limit works. Maybe instead of a specific pitch clock, baseball could have a “Ten Pitch Clock.” Set the clock to two minutes, and that’s the time the pitcher has to deliver the next ten pitches. So if he needs to think about a pitch, he can take his time on one or two, and then speed along with the rest.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2BhWvPT