Should I record my tournament games?

[EdLee]

I'm going to practice recording...

Yes, practice (before the actual tourney) is very important.
Another method worth trying is the simple point-and-shoot digital camera --
make sure it does NOT have a POP-OUT lens (mechanical movements drain the battery much faster),
that it does have a very fast response time (under 2 seconds total from Off to photo taken and back to Off again),
disable the flash, disable all beeps and chimes, use the lowest resolutions (e.g. VGA 640x480) --
advantages: no need to "find" the moves on your iGadget/galaxy/Surface/laptop,
much less "thinking" (conserve your brain power for the actual game), less chance of recording wrong moves.
I've been doing this since 2007, 5 years, and have taken tens of thousands of photos this way.

[Joaz Banbeck]

One opponent of mine just brought a laptop with integrated camera and set it beside the board. It would be tedious to reconstruct the game, but it is then zero distraction.

[xed_over]

I've recorded all my tournament games since I started (sometime around 2003), and beginning about 17k.

Yes, its distracting. And I figure I lose about 2-4 stones in "handicap" strength (not as much any more, but more back then). But to me its worth it to have a record for later review.

And with practice, I've since gotten better with remembering most of my games (but I'd still rather record them for now).

[virgo]

IMHO, do it for several reasons :

* You can have a review by a stronger player when you want.
* According to my experience, touching a screen after playing don't distract me.
* You can more easily disconnect from a local series of moves to have a more global view (depends of people).
* ...

I have recorded all my games @ EGC excepted one because I made a mis-mannipulation and the soft get back without saving. (I won 7 games out of 9)