The stakes are even higher than just play-off qualification in this World Curling event, with only the top 16 teams qualifying directly for next year’s Championship, to be held in Kelowna in Canada.

This evening’s 24th session at Sørmarka Arena in Stavanager featured all eight teams in Group C, and Czech Republic had a 10-8 win over China when their female player Zuzana Paulova successfully played a double take-out on two Chinese stones to win and keep her team’s qualification hopes alive.

Meanwhile, Italy beat France by 6-4 to move to the top of the table in that group.

After their win, Paulova said: "That was a big shot [to win], we knew that we had to score two, so we thought we had to make it and we did it."

Paulova's partner Tomas Paul put the result in perspective,

"We need to win against Wales tomorrow now and we should be fine for the play-offs, so this was an important win here," he said. 

In other games in this group, Wales beat Croatia by 9-5 and Australia, who are still in the play-off hunt, beat Nigeria 15-3.

Also tonight, Denmark beat Romania by 12-7 and Belarus beat Ukraine by 8-1, although none of these four teams can now qualify for the play-offs