When should I split my game board?

Martin01

I like to spend time up front by solving for all the boards. This makes me more confident for selecting the correct answer and I can get through the questions faster.

However, some games have so many possibilities that it takes a significant amount of time to solve for all the boards. So, to save time, I do not solve for all possibilities. I finish the games a lot faster, but I may miss 1 or 2 questions.

My questions are: when should one simply brute force their way through the answers to save time?

Is it better to compromise accuracy to save time?

What is a happy medium?

BinghamtonDave

Excellent question. The answer in my estimation is to find what works best for you. Like you stated, some games have too many possibilities to draw upfront (I'm thinking here for instance of PT 68 Game 4). My recommendation would be to try and find a potential pattern in what you are missing, is it could be true except questions? Must be false questions? Try to keep track of what you missed and it might glean important insight into deficits in your approach and enable you to correct them. A recommendation here would be to collect a sample of your misses over a two week period and then spend a week analyzing them. This approach might seem to sluggish at first but sometimes we have to take a step backward on this exam to take three steps forward.

I am not aware of any hard and fast rule that would enable one to know precisely when to split the game boards. In my estimation one can develop a general awareness of when to split: for instance if a game appears simple or has really restrictive rules.

What I do is sort of a synthesis between those who spend time upfront and those who don't: I occasionally draw out 1 board just to get a feel for where things go and just to be able to see what pieces can move where: I did this for instance on PT 36 Game 3, spending 2 minutes and 36 seconds upfront drawing one valid game board, on in my estimation the hardest game of all time. For me it paid dividends and allowed me to finish the game in just under 13 minutes For me personally this approach has helped. It doesn't waste time and gives me (along with the standard acceptable situation question) possibly 2 valid game boards to start approaching the questions with. I qualify that statement with "possibly" because I have found that sometimes the game board I draw out ends up being the standard acceptable situation game board.

Another thing you can do is not draw any game boards and skip directly to the "if" questions. Most of the time these questions are asking for you to set up a board anyway. What I do for these questions is circle that game board and put a "+" symbol next to it once I have ran through the rules to ensure it meets our stated conditions. This means to me "valid." I try to do this when I see that the last question in the game are the dreaded rule substitution questions. For me the more worlds I have for those the better. This approach is great because it allows me to draw boards while answering questions.

In short, the balancing act here is between timing pressures and techniques. I used to feel that given 5 additional minutes I would never miss a question on games. That's all I needed to have some solid boards drawn. Find what works with you and stay in touch with any additional questions.

Hope this helps
-David

Cant Get Right

Knowing when to split and when not to is a vital skill to LG success. I've got several guidelines that I follow:

1. Can I see that a split will lead to inferences and the placement of some other game pieces? If so, a split may very well be worth pursuing. If not, what am I going to gain?

2. Can I represent a rule concisely through a split that would otherwise be unwieldy? If so, then representing that rule visually via a split board may save me from making a mistake with a rule I'm not entirely comfortable with.

3. What do the questions look like? If each question starts with "If," then a split is not going to be worth my time. These "if" questions are telling me exactly which game board I'm going to need, and it will be more efficient to write out the specific game boards question by question.

4. What is the question to game board ratio? If I've got five questions, it's not worth my time to split into 8 boards.

5. Does a split allow me to establish concrete distribution? If distribution is undefined and a split can give me all of my potential distributions, I'm always going to want to move forward with that split, even if I can't place any game pieces.

There may be other considerations, but these are the main ones for me.

There's also a great webinar on this: https://7sage.com/webinar/splitting-boards/

Cant Get Right

Another great exercise to do concerning splitting is to split the same game along different rules. Sometimes, I make bad decisions about when and where to split. Practice on working games through based off of bad splitting decision does several things (I'm apparently doing lists today, lol):

1. It reinforces why the decision was a bad one and helps me to make better decisions in the future.

2. It gives me experience with ineffective setups. Splits are never "wrong" unless you mess something up. The better way to think about splits is that they will be either more or less effective. If I do screw up and opt for an ineffective split when it counts, I have experience in handling that as well as possible. So while simultaneously maximizing my ability to avoid this mistake, I'm also maximizing my ability to deal with it. It's a win/win.

3. It provides added value from the game. Sometimes a game's mechanics will completely change based on where we split. This is great. I've felt like I've gotten 3 or 4 different games out of a game before by approaching it with different decisions on if and where to split. That's just more experience to add to the bank, and that's always a good thing.

Sami

I think the advice above is great. For me I try to stick to two reasons for splitting.

1. Is there a rule which would neatly break up my board into sub game boards and most importantly, does this rule trigger another rule and lead to inferences? . Ideally I like to split my game board up according to rules that only allow for two or three options.
For example, if X can only go in 1 or 7. My decision to split this game according to this rule will depend upon if putting X in 1/7 will trigger other rules and lead to more inferences. No point in doing it If I'll just have two game board with X in 1 or 7 but maybe not much that can be inferred from it.

2. How many questions do I have for this game? So if my rules will require 5 sub game boards but I only have 5 questions, splitting the game board and spending time up front on them will not be a good use of my time. This is because two or more of the questions might just ask about one of the game boards. Also, I am going to have to draw a game board for each of these questions, why would I draw five additional ones to begin with. This would just make me use my time in an inefficient manner.