Oh gosh — I came up with the Logic Chain, and still feel some mixed emotions over it —
Ultimately, I believe that the positive benefits it can offer are not enough to offset some of the challenges it presents —
The benefit is that, for a certain type of game, if you set up the chain correctly, it works really, really well for answering q’s — I know it sounds nerdy for me to say, but it can be downright beautiful — right game/right usage, you can easily zip through a game that might otherwise be very challenging in just a few minutes.
A big drawback is that it is only useful for certain (somewhat rare) types of games, and it can often be difficult in the moment to decide whether to employ it or not
Another drawback is that there is a learning curve for it and it can take a while to get used to it
Another drawback is that it is difficult to adapt when games have unique characteristics &
The biggest drawback is that it presents too many chances for unnecessary errors — the worst thing you want to do is create extra/unnecessary chances for yourself to mess something up, and the chain does just that.
The fact is, the chain doesn’t provide you with anything you can’t get without it — you won’t miss any inferences by not using it — it’s just a way to represent information, and there are other ways that, though maybe not as clever or easy-to-use once set up, prove to be just as effective, but with far less chance of error and far fewer implementation concerns —
That doesn’t mean the chain can’t be effective, but those are reasons I chose not to include it in the Trainer — the more I’ve taught LG, the more I’ve become convinced that minimalist (as simple as possible but not any simpler) diagramming is the way to go — MK