By Cole Gallagher / August 23, 2026
GSOC Invitational · October 13–18, 2026 · Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre, Victoria, BC · Grand Slam of Curling Season Opener
🥌 The Season Starts in Victoria 🥌
Homan and Mouat are confirmed as headlining the field. The complete entry list is announced closer to the event.
The Grand Slam of Curling season opens at the Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre in Victoria from October 13 to 18, and Team Homan and Team Mouat – the top-ranked women’s and men’s teams respectively – headline the field. It is the first competitive curling that matters this season, which makes it simultaneously the most interesting event on the calendar and the hardest one to bet. Compare where to place these bets in our top betting sites guide.
GSOC Invitational Outright Odds
| Team | To Win |
| Team Homan (Women’s) | Check Odds → |
| Team Mouat (Men’s) | Check Odds → |
| Women’s Title (full market) | Check Odds → |
| Men’s Title (full market) | Check Odds → |
| Field (excluding headliners) | Check Odds → |
Expect Canadian books to post Invitational markets in the days before the event rather than now. Fields for Slam events are confirmed late, and traders will not price a market they cannot fully populate.
Victoria, October 13–18
The Save-On-Foods Memorial Centre is a mid-sized arena on Vancouver Island, and Victoria is a strong curling market that does not often get a top-tier event. Expect a full and knowledgeable building.
More relevant to bettors: this is arena ice, installed for the event, and arena ice at the start of a season is its own variable. Curlers spend the first draws of any Slam reading a sheet they have never played, and early-week results at these events are frequently less predictable than late-week ones for exactly that reason. Teams that adapt quickly to unfamiliar conditions have a genuine edge in the opening draws, and that edge tends to be worth more in October than at any other point in the season.
Homan and Mouat Headline
Team Homan is the top-ranked women’s team and Team Mouat the top-ranked men’s team, and both headline the Invitational field. That is the confirmed part.
Rachel Homan’s rink has been the standard-setter in women’s curling for a considerable stretch and has an established reputation as one of the most consistently excellent teams in the sport’s history. Bruce Mouat’s Scottish rink occupies a similar position on the men’s side – a team that has been at or near the top of the world game for years and is a fixture in the late rounds of Grand Slam events.
Both will be short prices. The question for a bettor is whether they are short enough to be worth backing or short enough to be worth opposing, and the honest answer in October is that you cannot know yet. Neither team has played a competitive game this season. Rink personnel, off-season changes and early-season rust are all unknowns.
What Is Not Known Yet
It is worth being direct about this, because a lot of season-opener content pretends otherwise.
The complete Invitational entry list has not been published. Beyond Homan and Mouat headlining, we do not know which teams are in. No games have been played this season, so there are no current-season results, no form lines, and no evidence of how any rink is performing. Any article telling you which team is “in great form heading into Victoria” is describing a season that has not happened.
That is genuinely useful information for a bettor rather than a disclaimer. It means the market for this event will be priced almost entirely on last season’s reputation and ranking, and reputation-priced markets at the start of a season are where the mistakes live – in both directions.
How to Approach a Season Opener
Three practical thoughts.
Reputation lags reality in October. Curling teams change personnel between seasons, and a rink’s ranking reflects results that were earned by a lineup that may no longer be the lineup. Before you back or oppose anybody at short odds, check whether the team on the ice is the team that earned the ranking.
The first draws are the noisiest. Unfamiliar arena ice, no competitive reps, and a compressed group stage produce upsets. If you are betting individual matches, the early-week ones are the ones to be most cautious about – or, if you like variance, the ones where a longer price is most likely to be genuinely mispriced.
Watch before you bet. This is unglamorous advice but it is the right advice for a season opener. Curling is a sport where you can learn an enormous amount from watching a single draw – how the ice is running, how much curl there is, whether teams are hitting or drawing. A couple of hours of television on the Tuesday is worth more than any preview, including this one, for anything you plan to bet on the Friday.
The Markets Worth Your Attention
Event outright. Available for both the men’s and women’s draws once the fields are confirmed. Small fields mean short favourites; there is not much value at the top of a Slam market.
Match winner. The main event for in-play. Every game is a straight two-way market since ties are settled with an extra end.
Hammer. The team with the hammer holds last-stone advantage in an end, which is a real and quantifiable edge – they are playing to score multiple points while the other team plays to force them to one or steal. Hammer changes hands based on who scores, so a team may blank an end on purpose to retain it. First-end hammer is determined by a pre-game procedure that varies by competition. Check it before you bet a match.
Totals. Usually offered on points scored. Curling games end early by concession more often than newcomers expect, and settlement rules for conceded games differ between operators, so read the terms.
Our Prediction
Cole’s Pick: Homan and Mouat to be the outright favourites in Victoria, but the season opener is the wrong week to be betting big on either
The first half of that is close to a certainty. They are the top-ranked teams on their respective sides and they headline the field, so the market will make them favourites. The second half is where the actual advice sits. A Grand Slam opener on fresh arena ice, with no current-season form on anybody, priced off last season’s rankings, is the least informed the market will be all year – and short-priced favourites in an uninformed market are the worst combination available to a bettor. If you want a position in Victoria, take it in the match markets after you have watched a draw, not in the outright before anyone has thrown a stone.
Confidence: high on the favourites, deliberately none on a winner. No games have been played and the full field is unpublished.
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Cole Gallagher covers soccer betting for WorldCupBetting.ca, specialising in match predictions, odds analysis and tournament futures. Based in Toronto, he has followed the Canadian men’s national team since their 2022 qualifying campaign and brings a line-shopping, data-first approach to every pick.