How long to see improvement on games? I'm getting really frustrated.

[candiceo]

 I am getting so pissed off! I am drilling and drilling and drilling on the games. 2 hours yesterday afternoon, 4 hours last night, 40 minutes this morning. I thought I was getting a little bit better. I am through LGB except for the last section. So this afternoon I sit down to do a timed games section (from LSAT#22, June 1997) and this is what happens:
Game#1:  takes 14 minutes, 6/7 correct
Game #2: wha?? move on to next game
Game #3: wha??

at this point I stop the timer and get all pissed off and rant and rave to my poor husband.
It seems like if you don't get "the trick" of the game, you are screwed. How many of you who get great games scores, spend lots of time looking for inferences and little tricks before looking at the q's,  versus how many of you do a quickie diagram and plow into the questions? I always do the questions in the order presented. Maybe I should try doing all the "if" ones first(as PR suggests although I do not like that book), so I can get a taste for the game.
 Well. I think I am done doing games for 2005.

[Steve.jd]

The games were my best section - but if this helps you I rarely saw a 'trick' - sometimes I got the trick or the little inference - and that made it much easier...when I didn't see it, I would just plow through (almost brute force like .

[mikey_10]

practice practice and more practice.  as everyone repeats on here, games make up the most learnable section.  if you are doing poorly on that section, everyday do at a minimum 5 games (or whatever number will allow you to see every game from every test by the time you write).  maybe try 1-2 untimed to warm up then the rest timed.  mark them, then without looking at the explanations try to see where you went wrong.  do not give up and look at the explanations - this will help you greatly on test day - you will become less likely to panic if you hit a speedbump.  sit there as long as you have to in order to figure out every question you got wrong (or guessed right).

[sck]

I sit down and diagram everything out first thing. Usually, this means the base level rules as well as the 'Well, A can't go here or here because it's ahead of B and C...' stuff. That's key.

Grouping games are the hardest, and making a good diagram can be hard. Do the linear ones first.

I'm generally good at games in general, but I adore logic problems. I really do recommend doing those logic games puzzle magazines if you don't already. They're good for basic things and honestly? After doing the lsat, I'm doing the harder puzzles in those magazines without blinking. Not because the lsat is necessarily harder, but because the combination has gotten my logic skills better.

But the best advice really is just practice, practice and practice more. You might want to buy the Powerscore set-ups guide to help you out, if you're having trouble seeing how to lay them out. I also found that working through the LGB twice helped me a lot. The first time through, my score fell! When I didn't rush through the second I did much better. (And I was already good at them, just my score fell.)

[sunfunliving]

I sent you a p.m. reply also....I have gone from almost all wrong to almost all right in the games...I sent you my phone number on the p.m.  Vera

[Jontor]

practice practice and more practice.  as everyone repeats on here, games make up the most learnable section..

I totally agree

[Fidelio]

If you do a logic game, look over what you did or didn't do wrong.  Then give yourself a few days, then do that same game again with all the edges polished.

[Commie Panda]

Hey Vera, what exactly did you do and how long did it take you to see that kind of improvement on the LG section? I went over the LGB once, and now I'm done about half-way thru for the second time, and have done about 5-6 preptests so far. I got 10 of the older preptests so that I can focus on applying the LGB techniques to the games in those tests. I haven't really seen an improvement yet but I'm hoping to practice more intensively over the next 2-3 weeks..?