HOWTO Win at Monopoly
Tim Darling's "Surefire Strategy" for winning at Monopoly sounds plausible -- a great way to suck all the fun out of the game, leaving behind nothing but the relentless pursuit of victory.
* Always buy Railroads; never buy Utilities *Link (via Negatendo)
* At the beginning of the game, focus on acquiring a complete C-G (Color Group) in Sides 1+2, even if it means trading away properties on Sides 2+3. After acquiring one of these C-Gs, build 3 houses as quickly as possible: no more houses, no less!
* Once your first C-G starts to generate some cash, focus on completing a C-G and building 3 houses in Sides 3+4.
o Note: 3 houses is the "sweet spot" in the game as shown in Table 1 below. That's where you're making the best use of your money.
* Single properties are the least good investment if you don't build on them.
* The only exception to the above rules are when you need to acquire stray properties to prevent your opponents from completing their C-Gs to accomplish the above strategy.
Update: Or you could always try Seth Godin's variant ruleset for Monopoly!
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I've seen similar strategy guides in the past, although not for free.
Haven't played Monopoly in ages; the last time I remember playing was with some friends in high school, and one guy got so pissed that I wouldn't go into a partnership with him on some properties (local variation) that he sold all of his properties to my main competitor for a dollar. Good times, baby.
"Suck all the fun out of the game"?
Any boardgame with no built-in time limit is automatically not very fun.
I'm glad the capitalist mystique of the game is now blown open. Monopoly needed its rules broken eons ago-- now maybe people can discover some truly well-designed games, like Puerto Rico.
My strategy was to obtain as much of a corner as possible and immediately build as much as possible.
When anyone came within a few spaces, I would make them an "offer" before they rolled. If they would pay me x amount of dollars, I would give them a "discount" (50-100%) if their roll would put them on one of my properties. At first, they would decline, but once they figured out that landing on a property was much more expensive than the offer I made them, they would give in.
After gaining a fair amount of the sides around the corner, I found myself nearly bankrupting people left and right ... or, as they called it, making the game "totally un-fun."
Hehe. :)
I'm with Yamara; sucking all the fun out of Monopoly is about as difficult as sucking all the liquid out of one of those wax candy bottles. (And that's assuming you're playing with the actual rules rather than "put all the money on Free Parking" and similar nonsense; that's a recipe for an interminable game of tedium.)
I'll second the recommendation of Puerto Rico, but if you really want to use the market to crush the other players, try Power Grid. Creating a shortage of houses so they can't build is one thing; grabbing that one extra coal so they can't power their big power plant is much more interesting.
Sorry, not going to suck all the fun out of Monopoly. I can beat this strategy and any other strategy listed on this board with more than one other strategy. This theory presumes an "all other things equal" starting place, which is unlikely to occur more than 50 - 60 % of the time (variables include die rolling, card pulling, player personality, competing identical strategy, etc.) Monopoly's underlying structure could be a tremendous learning tool for youngsters across a wide range of topics and a wide range of age groups. Alas, the full power of analytical development provided by gaming the young brain has not been realized, but one day . . .
Wasn't this game invented during the depression era, when nobody had ANYTHING to do for long hours except play a boardgame? Just curious.
"Suck all the fun out of the game"?
Not at all. I've been using a similar strategy for a long time, and I always have fun, because I almost allways win.
Only problem is I have to find new people to play with, because my friends hate it.
I love this game.
Boo on you monopoly haters.
I'll strongly disagree with one of the suggested strategy points. While the ROI time is best at three houses, there is a major strategic advantage to building four houses (and stopping there). There are only thirty-two houses and twelve hotels; if the bank doesn't have any of one or the other, players can't build. By building to four houses on all of three sets (plus, perhaps, one hotel), a player may thereby artificially force a building shortage, restricting the ability of other players to develop their properties. The "instant hotel" house rule will reduce the impact of a building shortage, but not entirely remove it.
Of course, a shortage also eventually restricts your own ability to improve, but that can be handled by eventually putting up hotels — only when you're in a position to out-bid everyone else for the four houses about to go up for auction... which generally doesn't take long if you have more buildings than everyone else.
I've never lost any of the games where I had three improvable property sets, was able to force a building shortage by controlling majority of the houses, and where no other players had "imminent" hotels (one property in a set at four houses, the others at the same or a hotel). The only time anyone ever came close was when one player had Boardwalk, Park Place, and nine houses scattered on his various properties; he was able to successfully shift six of the nine to those two properties without getting outbid for "his" houses.
There's a solid analysis of Monopoly's probabilities here.
Another Monopoly hater here... I donated my childhood copy, plus Life and several others that are based heavily on luck. There are too many better thinking games out there for my kids to enjoy and learn from.
yea, what a waste. a game that is more luck than anything, who cares. when i was a child, i played childish things. its amazing how many people don't grow up. now we know who buys all these silly versions of monopoly.
The only fun to be had in Monopoly is in trying to get caught cheating. Grab a few extra bills from the bank… move your piece quickly after rolling to a spot near where you rolled but not exactly where you rolled… etc. Gradually make your cheating more and more obvious until caught. More of a social experiment in trust and credulity. Otherwise it's really boring, random, and gets lopsided quickly when played "fair".
Mike Lotus I have to laugh out loud at you, tool, trolling around Boing Boing. Why you so angry, can't find a boyfriend? Didn't go to college? Don't have any kids? If you think all the people that play monopoly are silly why do you come to this site? To pick on people you think are geeks? What you do for entertainment? Watch TV? You're analytical skills appear to have suffered dramatically from a lack of gaming.
ABB3W good post, will have to rethink my position and give this strat a try sometime.
I've got a couple of those "silly" versions of Monopoly, but my favorite so far is a 1930's edition I picked up at a yard sale for a buck. It's kinda cute.
"The best way to win Monopoly is not to play." rotflmfao, barbeque.
One thing I don't think the article explains very clearly is the reason that side 2 is so good. The reason is that when people go to jail and then get out, they exit onto side 2. Therefore people don't spend 25% of their time on each side of the board. They spend more than 25% on side 2.
The classic reason I've seen given for not buying hotels is that it creates a housing shortage. I think the article's analysis is weak on this point, because it treats the flow of money as continuous, when really it comes in random chunks at random times. As in real investing, you don't just want to maximize the expected return on your investment, you also want to minimize your variability. The great thing about building a hotel on boardwalk or park place is that it vastly increases the variability of your opponents' situation. That variability increases the chances that they'll go broke at some point, because thir net worth is undergoing big fluctuations up and down.
The article's analysis also ignores trading and negotiation. He depends on the listed prices of the properties, but in reality it often happens that people land on a property but don't buy, which opens it up to an auction, and then it becomes more like a poker game. You can, e.g., try to bid up the price of the property, and then back out of the bidding and let your opponent pay more for it than you think it's worth.
Does everyone know the history of Monopoly? It was originally created as "The Landlord Game" by Elizabeth Maggie Phillips and patented in 1904 as a pedagogical tool to help people learn about the consequences of unbridled capitalism. It was originally distributed rather like free software, with people making their own copies and localizing them to help people learn about monopolies. The site referenced above also has an extensive history of the legal battle over the Monopoly trademark, which is how the history of the game was rediscovered. Interesting stuff.
Surefire, only if you're playing against reluctant people who complain the game is boring and takes too long.
I play against cousins, siblings, etc. who are all heavy players, with strategies similar to those posted...so the playing field is very even, and very un-"surefire."
New York Ave is also a recommended property...it may benefit from the "go back 3 spaces" chance card.
Again, I hate the "it takes too long" complaint. With seasoned players, it lasts less than 2 hours. Some games can even go under 60 minutes.
Sorry, I'm in the Monopoly basically sucks category (all 1300+ versions), although there are plenty of other games that suck more.
I'll second Power Grid for people who want to switch to a better economic game, as well as Acquire. But for a simple plain easy to play game, just get Settlers of Catan. (Buy these at Amazon.com or elsewhere).
Yehuda
http://jergames.blogspot.com
Steven (#16): I suppose there's a humorous lesson in the way that the "landlord game" did less to show the dangers of unbridled captilism than it did to make everyone realize they just wanted to be the landlord themselves.
Anyway this analysis relies on the application of Markov probability theory to the game. I remember once Scientific American had a Mathematical Recreations article on it, which is reproduced here: http://www.math.yorku.ca/Who/Faculty/Steprans/Courses/2042/Monopoly/Stewart4.html
There's more discussion of it here: http://www.tkcs-collins.com/truman/monopoly/monopoly.shtml , and elsewhere if you Google on "markov Monopoly".
Nice blog Yehuda, added to my list. I think there are people that like to boardgame more than others, and move on to more complex simulations than monopoly. Acquire is a nice game, produced by Avalon Hill in 1954(?), but if I remember correctly it's more appropriate for high-schooler. I still love Monopoly as a simple, albeit elemental, "learning" game, or as a gateway to more complex gaming, for younger members of the family. Setting up a system for the game really kind of defeats a lot of the purpose, and makes the victory more about manipulating game mechanics than illustrating the excesses (I say "tendency") of unbridled capitalism (Steven Brewer). Settlers of Cataan is now a must for any boardgamer's library ;-)
My strategy was to quit when I got bored or tired. Sorry, that game used to bore me to tears. And it's not because it went on so long, because I could play Risk or Trivial Pursuit all day. I guess I just find capitalism tedious.
Spice up your next game of Monopoly by playing craps at the same time. You've got dice and "money." Let Dame Fortune do the rest. "Whose gonna fade me for Marvin Gardens??"
You can tell a lot about a person by how they lose at Monopoly. UNO's another story...