The eight teams with the best record embarked on the championship round robin today.  This is a pretty grueling procedure, as all eight teams have to play four games in two days.  They play them back to back, as it were--one at 2:00 and one at 7:00.  That's about 2 hours between games.

The quality of play really ramped up today, very obviously, even to a neophyte like me.  Not surprising, really, since all of the weaker teams have gone home.  The road to the medal round is pretty hard--the top four teams all have no losses or one loss going in. The other four all have two or more--some have three.  They keep the record, so a team with three losses basically has to win all four games to make it to the medal round.  Needless to say, that does not happen very often, and already three teams with three losses going in were eliminated from the medal round today. That means five teams duking it out for four places.  Alberta is already in; they won both games today and are undefeated.  They could lose both of their games tomorrow and still be in.

There were at least four games with really exciting endings today. Alberta got pushed hard by the Wild Card team, and only managed to win when Kevin Koe threw a terrific shot on the last throw.  The team from Northern Ontario, which, I find, from talking to folks around the arena, does not get a lot of love from fans, because they are quite arrogant, came into the championship round not only having lost no games, but having won the hammer to start the game EVERY game, AND they had never been behind even for one end.  The team from Ontario, led by Scott MacDonald and making its first appearance in the Brier, came to play.  They have three losses and can't afford more.  They stole the lead from Ontario in the first end and then stole another point in the second end, and led 3-0. They would eventually lead 5-1.  Northern Ontario isn't undefeated for no reason, though, and they clawed their way back to a tie at the end of regulation 10 before Ontario actually put an end to the winning streak in 11. Some truly amazing play.  You can read all about it here, if you wish.

Tomorrow is the last day of qualifying--8 more games and then the medal round starts on Saturday.

One interesting observation:  although curling in Canada has WAY more fans than curling in the US has (there are something like 2000 curling rinks in the country), it does not get televised all that much.  People complain.  Only about four big tournaments a year get televised, and I can get most of those at home.  That surprised me a lot.  On the evening news, let me just say, it's all hockey all the time.  Here we are in the middle of the national championship for curling, with the winner to head to the World Championships in a few weeks (where Canada is always a contender and often the winner), and IF curling gets mentioned at all, it's 10 seconds and one clip of the winning shot.  Hockey, on the other hand, is covered in detail for hours.  No kidding.