Can't crack -8 on games!

Officechairtextbook

Hi everyone,

I'm about 5 months into intensive studying for the LSAT and am struggling to see big progress on my games section. This is pretty much the only section I've studied as I started off averaging -3/4 each on LR and RC so I decided to focus my effort on the one I struggle with.

I scored a 157 on the November LSAT after averaging 161 prior to it, and just hit my first 164 practice test the other day (could have been luck). Despite everything, I've still never cracked -8 on the games section. I try to foolproof every type of game but I'm starting to panic with my LSAT coming up in January and needing to get a minimum of 163 to be competitive for my law school choices.

If anyone has any advice on how to go from -8 to -3/2 in two weeks please share, it would be so incredibly helpful. Thanks so much!

Lizardking-1

I struggled with LG for over a year. I'm finally scoring in the high 160's, but it took hundreds of hours (maybe even thousands) of practicing LG. I found that mastering the easy games was really important to allow enough time to even get to the last game. I was consistently short on time.

Do you finish all of the questions before the time is up? If not, I'd work on really mastering the basic sequencing and grouping games that tend to be placed at the beginning of the section. This means becoming very proficient at stringing conditional rules together and sequencing ordered chains correctly. If you are at all shaky with these skills, then focus on strengthening them.

Arguably the most important aspect of LG is the setup. Does it take you a long time to figure out the set up for each game? If so, create problem sets with only one kind of game and drill away. Do this with any game type set-ups you have trouble with. For set-ups you're really struggling with, set the game up repeatedly without even proceeding to the questions.

Relatedly, knowing when to split vs. dive right into the questions is super, super important. Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules for determining this. Lots of people advise not to split if there are more than 6 game boards. But this leaves open a lot of room for interpretation. Personally, I believe intuition that results from repetition is really the answer. I can say that I wouldn't recommend over-splitting. I see user comments in JY's video's outlining a 6 board split that "saved tons of time" for a three star game. I doubt that this actually works out for them in a timed setting. What I've found particularly effective is to do 'partial splits' with tricky games that would require 5+ boards/worlds, so that I have less information filled in (aka less placed pieces), but only a few boards. I realized that these were surprisingly helpful and allowed me to conceptualize things a lot easier without the huge time sink. JY does a really good job at this in his setups. He knows the right balance.

Take some untimed LG sections. Removing the time will help you I.D. your weak points. I wish I would've taken more untimed practice sections earlier in my study process. Timing isn't going to improve quickly if there are significant proficiency issues. It's hard to see these roadblocks when you're always racing from one question to the next. Blind review is helpful in this regard, but I found that my concentration was way better when I took untimed sections vs. B.R.

Best of luck

Burden.of.Floof

Thanks for the great advice @Lizardking-1 ! I’m currently averaging -2 to -3 on games because I run out of time for the last few questions, it’s so aggravating. I keep hoping that I’ll get faster the more games I do, but I wonder if I’m losing time because I’m not instinctual enough on the setup. I often can’t decide fast enough when to go to the questions and when to figure stuff out before hand. (I know a lot of times it’s a little of both.) I feel like when I try and figure stuff out beforehand I run out of time, and when I try to go straight to the questions without figuring out too much, I’ve missed a major inference and then it takes me too long. The idea of ‘partial splitting’ is a great one!

I noticed today that there’s also something very mentally draining about games that the other 2 sections don’t seem to have… like it requires way more concentration that I can’t always muster. Plus there’s always the panic that sets in that tends to snowball when I can’t answer a question because I’m missing an inference.