MONCTON, N.B. April 8, 2009 — Scotland's David Murdoch is a step closer to the playoffs at the 2009 Ford world men's curling championship.

Murdoch's Lockerbie foursome — third Ewan MacDonald, second Peter Smith, lead Euan Byers, alternate Graeme Connal and coach David Hay — took an extra end to beat Norway's Thomas Ulsrud in a second-place showdown.

The result left both teams with 6-3 records, although Scotland has the tiebreaker edge by virtue of its round-robin victory.

"That was a must-win," said Murdoch, the 2006 world champion. "We came out and performed; we knew it would be a tough game with these guys, it's always down to last stone in an extra end or something like that. So a massive win for us. It keeps our hopes alive possibly even for the Page one-two."

In other action, Switzerland's Ralph Stoeckli won his third straight game, dumping Jiri Snitil of the Czech Republic 5-2. The Swiss stole one in the third end, and scored a big seventh-end deuce en route to improving to 5-4. The Czechs dropped to 2-7.

John Shuster of the United States got back over the .500 mark by knocking off Kalle Kiiskinen of Finland 6-5. The Americans were down 3-0 early but scored single points in the third, fourth, fifth and seventh ends to come back and push their record to 5-4. The Finns dropped to 1-8, and the result all but clinched a berth in the Vancouver Winter Olympics for Sweden. The Swedes don't have a team here and needed teams such as Finland to post low finishes in order to keep their spot in the Winter Games.

Denmark's Ulrik Schmidt also likely booked his Olympic trip by shading Andy Kapp of Germany 5-4. The Danes, 5-4, scored nothing but single points on the night, but held the Germans to just a pair of deuces en route to the win. Germany dropped to 5-4 with the loss.

Canada's Kevin Martin (9-0, clinched first place and a berth in the Page one vs. two playoff), France's Thomas Dufour (4-5), China's Bingyu Wang (3-6) and Japan's Yusuke Morozumi (3-6) all had byes in Draw 14.

On Thursday, the round-robin schedule wraps up with draws at 9 a.m., 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., with TSN showing the Canadian games, at 9 a.m. against Denmark and 6:30 p.m. against Scotland.

The top four teams following the conclusion of round-robin play on Thursday night will make the Page playoffs. The first- and second-place teams will play Friday at 6:30 p.m. or Saturday at 9 a.m., depending on potential tiebreakers, with the winner going into Sunday's 6:30 p.m. championship game on TSN.

The third- and fourth-place teams will play Friday or Saturday for a berth in Saturday's 3 p.m. semifinal on TSN against the loser of the Page one-two game.