Hey 7Sagers! Had a student email me in with this question and I thought you could help out. Here it is:
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I finished your online course while ago and I'm doing PTs now. I have a question while I'm trying to improve my LG that you didn't mention in the online course. How do I decide whether to pull out all the subgameboard in such a short time?
I found to pull out all the subGB really useful for some of the LG questions like PT69 S2 G3, some are absolutely unnecessary. However, for some of the questions, like PT70 S3 G4, it looks like a game that you can, and might need to draw down all the possibilities by reading the rules but actually the questions are super straight forward. Drawing out the subGB is just burning out time and I didn't get enough time to transfer my answer to the answer sheet which is crucial.
I used the method in the course, which is, do the LGs which I think I haven't mastered multiple times. I always can finish the game within time and without mistakes by the second or the third time because I already knew how do I setup the game board and whether I should split it.
So, inside 35 mins on test day, how can I decide very quickly that if I should split the game board without wasting time? I found it is especially hard under pressure.
Comments
If all the questions are scenario based, try one and see if you can do it easily without splitting all the boards.
If there are more boards than questions, better to err on less splitting.
No time spent splitting is wasted. You either learn by laying out a new world or eliminating one. The wasted time comes from debating and spinning your wheels. Give it a whirl, put pencil to paper and move on with your life.