Beat the Family Dog at Monopoly
Monopoly – a capitalistic game of luck and skill most popularly known for inhabiting family reunions and making sure that they stay sufficiently far apart.
Monopoly is a popular board game released by Parker Brothers (now Hasbro). The rules of the game aren’t difficult to learn, but they would be time-consuming to go through here, so if you want to learn the rules or brush up on your knowledge, please read about the rules here.
Assuming going forward that you have a good understanding of the rules of Monopoly, the strategy is fairly straightforward if slightly counterintuitive.
In Monopoly, you only have a few choices to make on each turn. You choose to buy houses or hotels, you roll, and then you choose whether to buy an unowned property that you land on.
As a refresher, the board is laid out as follows:
Copyright Hasbro, also Trademark and whatever else. Back, lawyers, back!
Strategy
Since you only have a few choices to make, the game is heavily reliant on the die rolls, but there is a way to maximize whatever rolls you get.
Beginning players immediately notice that Boardwalk and Park Place are the most lucrative properties to own, in that they produce the largest one-time paydays. This is, of course, true, but leads to a skewed perspective on the game. In order to understand which properties have the greatest value in a game of monopoly, it pays (all in fake money!) to do a little analysis.
One central concept in Monopoly (and many other games involving money or resources) is ROI, or return on investment. ROI is simply the amount of return that one can expect per unit invested. For example, if you invest $100 in a lemonade stand and receive $200 back when the lemonade stand is finished with business, the ROI for the investment was 100%.
Using ROI analysis (done by Tim Darling in 2007), a ranking of profitable properties appears:
1. Orange Properties Monopoly with 3 houses
2. Red Properties Monopoly with 3 houses
3. Light Blue Properties Monopoly with 3 houses
4. Yellow Properties Monopoly with 3 houses
5. Blue Properties Monopoly with 3 houses
6. All 4 Railroads
7. Light Purple Properties Monopoly with 3 houses
This is a rough estimate of the value of the properties at face value throughout the game. The more players involved in the game, the more value separates each tier.
The reason that 3 houses is the optimal number to have on a set of properties is because of the large jump in rent between the values for two and three houses on all properties, and the comparatively small jump past three houses. Knowing this ranking, however, does not in and of itself equate to a strategy, but it provides a good starting point to work from.
Starting the game
Always take the hat piece, it’s super lucky. Fight violently for the right to use it if necessary. If you lose the taekwando match that usually results from the dispute, fashion a similar hat out of paper and glue and use that one in lieu of one of the other options, they will all damn you to poverty and despair. Especially the horse thing. And the cannon.
Buy everything you land on, except Utilities because of the pitiful ROI of the Gas and Electric companies. Having cash reserves may seem important, but the scarce resource in Monopoly is the real estate. Owning properties will allow you to trade to complete a monopoly (or possibly, if you are extremely lucky, naturally roll one). Railroads are at their most valuable early in the game, since the low investment price on them is very accessible and allows you to put your opponents under pressure early and build your cash reserves for negotiations later on. If no one has a monopoly, owning even just 3, but preferably all 4 railroads is by far the best position to be in.
Early in the game, pay your $50 to get out of jail as soon as possible, you can’t be dicking around in the clink when uncle creepy’s shipping out free dough at Go and there are a bunch of real estate agents holding open houses just around the corner. Bribe the jailer and put your boots on the street.
If you are lucky enough to build a Monopoly early in the game while no one else has one, build 3 and exactly 3 houses on that crap as fast as you can. You’ll have family members begging for loans in no time (this is a good thing in the Monopoly world, one of the counterintuitive parts of the game).
Also important – make sure your idiot family isn’t playing with the stupid free parking rule where all fines paid to the bank go ‘under’ free parking and make it a massive freakin’ payday for anyone who lands there. When I’m lucky enough to find free parking, it is not often that I find a huge stack of unmarked bills in the parking spot, and neither should your opponents. If they insist upon this made-up rule, make sure you add the additional rule that The Forgetful Bookie Wants His Money Back Now(TM).
It was ‘free parking’, uncle Tim, not ‘the Browns covered the spread and Knuckles doesn’t care about the profits getting themselves in the hands of some trenchcoat-wearing accountant parking’
Middle Game
If you have a monopoly by now and it is the only complete one, do everything you can to prevent negotiations from being completed to allow other people Monopolies. Spill drinks. Bring up painful divorces. Whatever it takes. Same thing goes if you have all 4 railroads and there aren’t any monopolies.
In the more likely event that you haven’t completed a monopoly, this is where knowing the above property hierarchy will come into play. If you can trade a light blue property that completes a monopoly for another player for an orange property that completes yours, do it. This is where getting those dark blue properties really becomes valuable, since many players will trade very well to complete the dark blue properties, while you will end up with a more valuable set of properties. Your goal for the middle game is to complete a monopoly and put three houses on it so that you can start slum lording.
The middle game is where jail starts to become a little different. If another player has a completed monopoly with houses on it and there is no unpurchased property, it is to your advantage to stay in jail as long as possible. The outside is a scary, uncertain place. Remember Brooks.
“I friggin’ hate bagging groceries. Hate it. And cars.”
End Game
By the time one or more players have completed a monopoly, it is time to let the dice do the talking. If you have a fat stack of cash by this point, it might be worth developing past 3 houses on your properties to put additional pressure on players that land on your monopoly, but for the sake of everything holy, keep enough cash to pay for a catastrophic roll. The bank pays super crappy for returned houses and mortgaged properties, so avoid putting yourself in a position where you have to sell your hard-earned property for the pittance the too-big-to-fail crew is willing to pay you.
In many cases, the winner of the game is the one who is able to complete a second monopoly, and it may be worth it (and necessary) to stretch past your comfort level in order to achieve this goal. It may be worth it- try to make the trade when you’re temporarily out of danger. Make risky deals when you’ve just passed your biggest opposing set of houses. Or in jail, say. In Monopoly world, you have full access to the internet and banking information when you’re in jail, so deal away from the pokey whenever possible.
Mandatory Gloating and Showboating
When and if you win, make sure that you gloat and playact as a 1920s communist conception of a capitalist. It amplifies both your fun and your opponents’ intense suffering while reminding them of the real-life financial problems they have and that this brief game form of escapism from their real-world problems has left them in an even worse financial and emotional situation than they were in before. 100% necessary.
‘Wu Tang Clan ain’t nothing to f— wit’ is a recommended phrase. See, it’s funny because normally it would be out of character for this guy, but his expression makes it plausible.
Several other routines to run as you grind your nearest and dearest into financial ruin include:
Stewie – Best for use on the older generation, who has no idea of how hard this has been run into the ground.
Stephen Lynch- Understated, Powerful.
George Thorogood and the Destroyers – Good for those comeback against dad when he can’t pay no rent.
The Bullwinkle Rejoinder – The only reasonable version of “I can’t pay the rent” I was able to find.
Thanks again for reading, readers! Remember to leave a comment if you liked the post, or if there is a game you’d like me to cover next week. We’ll see you again next Monday!