The hosts, who have looked in superb touch throughout, breezed past Russia in the evening with a comfortable 9-3 win to consolidate their lead at the top of the rankings.

That success came after they thrashed the Czech Republic 11-2 in the morning session inside of six ends, thanks largely to skip Pat Simmons' score of four early on in the match.

Defending world champions Norway lie in second place on the overall leaderboard as they also secured two wins on day three.

The Norwegian side, skipped by the ever-present Thomas Ulsrud, inflicted yet more misery on a hapless Scottish team in the first session of the day with an 11-6 win, before they managed to negotiate a tricky test by beating Sweden 6-5 in a repeat of last year's World Championship final.

"I was getting ready to pack up my bag as I really thought we had lost that one," Ulsrud said.

"Now we're four [wins] and one [loss] - that's pretty good, but we need to keep our game up because all our games have been pretty tight."

Sweden were beaten in the pick of the days matches at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax as they lost to Norway in a repeat of the 2014 World Championship final ©WCF



Switzerland remain hot on the heels of Norway after they proved too strong for the Italians in the afternoon session as skip Marc Pfister scored four in the second end on the way to a resounding 7-1 victory.

The Swiss then built on that win by ousting China 7-4, and there were yet more problems for Italy, who have faltered after a good start to the tournament as they were forced to concede after six ends when they were trailing 8-2 against the United States.

Finland were also at the double on the third day of competition as they claimed a 7-4 win over America in the morning, and they then followed it up by beating Japan 5-4 in what was a tight, low-scoring contest.

The Japanese did however manage to get a win on the board as a composed performance from skip Yusuke Morozumi guided his side to a 9-5 triumph over arch-rivals China.

Elsewhere, Sweden beat Russia 9-3 and Scotland's wait for a victory continues as their torrid form shows no sign of halting after they lost 6-4 to the Czech Republic.

The Czechs also remain in contention near the summit of the leaderboard thanks to an 8-6 victory over the Scots.

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