
How to win Monopoly in the shortest possible time - mikestew
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200219-why-monopoly-is-such-a-bad-game
======
jedberg
If your game takes more than about 45 minutes, you're playing it wrong.

Free parking doesn't give you a bonus.

Every property _must_ be sold when it is landed on, either to the player who
landed on it or in auction.

The supply of houses and hotels is limited.

If you have a situation where no one has a monopoly and all the properties are
owned, you have to make trades. If everyone refuses to trade, then you might
as well stop because the game will never end, but you should still reach this
point within 45 minutes.

The entire game was designed to be bad -- it's trying to show that owning land
is evil and that who is rich in life is mostly based on luck.

The winner is supposed to be the person who rolls the luckiest.

~~~
kovek
Wait, are you saying that in monopoly, the one who rolls the luckiest wins? I
think that’s true.

I would like to point out that in real life, that is also the case. The ones
who roll the luckiest also win. Think of your birth situation. You didn’t
chose it.

Now, is Monopoly teaching anything remarkably useful about real life that
could put you ahead? I don’t think so.

It’s a game! Since the strategy is limited, takes a long time, I don’t think
it’s a great one.

~~~
kyuudou
Why do so many, like many immigrants, start from nothing and end up very
successful if it was just a dice roll? I mean, there's always that factor but
it's certainly not everything.

~~~
jakelazaroff
This seems like selection bias. I would bet that _far_ more people end up
successful because they started out successful.

~~~
enaaem
We have to define what success is. Not all become millionaires, but most have
build a good life for themselves in the upper middle class.

~~~
stouset
Data or it didn’t happen.

“Most” and “upper middle class” tells me you’re probably making this up whole
cloth. “Most” _Americans_ don’t make it to the upper middle class.

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Zenst
Article title is: How to win Monopoly in the shortest possible time

As for being bad, perhaps a reference to "The site boardgamegeek.com, a
database which aggregates reviews from players, lists Monopoly at 18,583 out
of 18,591 rated games. The game has an average rating of 4.36 out of 10 from
over 25,000 reviews. The lowest ranked game, if you are curious, is Tic-Tac-
Toe."

Along with the game rule that the bank can not run out of money.

Though I'm not sure that rule is bad, and if they could run out of money, they
would have to add a rule that if it does, all players must give the bank
money. Which would make it a bit too real in many ways for it to be fun.

~~~
ujjain
All players having to give the bank money and all spoils going to the top
player, doesn't sound like a fair game at all.

~~~
nexuist
Nonsense. Just need to use your imagination. Throughout the game the player
can purchase pieces that go on a Risk board.

If the bank goes broke, all players switch to the Risk board, and fight each
other until the winner becomes the new banker and forcibly takes money from
the losers. Kind of like real life.

~~~
tasogare
I once mixed Settlers of Catane with Risk soldiers, to improve the former’s
game military aspect. The result was surprisingly fun and balanced.

Edit: photo of board here
[http://unixorn.azurewebsites.net/img/catane_krieg.jpg](http://unixorn.azurewebsites.net/img/catane_krieg.jpg)

~~~
qznc
Sounds like Junta
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junta_(game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junta_\(game\))

Essentially, everybody has a role in a banana republic government. President
hands out money which everyone tries to get into their swiss bank account. If
the players are not pleased they can start a revolution and it turns into a
Risk game. After a revolution the roles can be switched.

Great fun with the right people.

~~~
distances
You easily notice it's 40 years old though, the game is horribly unbalanced by
modern standards.

~~~
Zenst
interesting and had me thinking on a tangent if banks are more balanced today
than 40 years ago and my gut feeling is that they are less balanced today than
40 years ago. Though can't nail exactly why I feel that is the case.

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sixstringtheory
I recently picked up Monopoly Deal and while I do have a soft spot in my heart
for regular old Monopoly, Deal blows it out of the water. More opportunities
for hostile actions. Much faster pace making it just more fun.

~~~
IshKebab
Yeah Monopoly Deal is still a terrible game by modern standards but it's far
better than monopoly and I've had fun playing it.

You should really try some good board games though. Carcassonne, Catan and
Ticket to Ride are the classic good modern board games. I'd also suggest Love
Letter (great short card game for 3/4 players), Colt Express, Camel Up (light
fun for 4-6 players), Cash 'n Guns (good for parties), or if you want to get a
bit more cerebral, Azul and Sagrada are great.

For two players the best ones IMO are 7 Wonders Duel, Patchwork (this is the
lightest one), and Battle Line (a traditional card game but you can't play
with a 52 card deck, and way better than any other 2 player card game I've
tried).

All of those are 10x better than Monopoly Deal, and about 1000x better than
Monopoly.

~~~
bmsleight_
Machi Koro is good for kids of monopoly age. It take 30-40 mins and makes for
a great finish. You build different types of properties About 10,000x better
than Monopoly. [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-
koro](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143884/machi-koro)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z20szhLeDSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z20szhLeDSE)

Agree with Carcassonne, Catan, Ticket to Ride and Patchwork. I will look at
Love Letter.

------
JackFr
So the way to make it fun is to do lots of trading, but let your creativity go
wild.

"You want the third property for a monopoly, yeah I'll give it to you for 50%
of its rent, and 20% of the other two's rent."

"You don't have the $500 without selling houses and mortgaging? Pay me over
time. Let's say $1000 within your next 8 turns."

Admittedly, when I try things like that half the time I get bitten because
I've poorly estimated values -- but it is more fun.

~~~
qznc
If you want a trading game, why not play one that is designed for that? Catan,
Bohnanza, ...
[https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2008/trading/lin...](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamemechanic/2008/trading/linkeditems/boardgamemechanic?pageid=1&mechanicfilter=2008&sort=rank)

~~~
sdenton4
Yeah, but Catan lacks a mechanism for futures markets...

~~~
rckoepke
I've often played Catan by dealing in futures contracts. "I will give you two
sheep for one wood now, and also the next three brick you receive from any
source". That practice is quickly banished in every house I've played in. No
one thinks it's "unfair" per se but everyone, including myself, believe that
it horribly breaks the game.

~~~
kortilla
Not trying to be too nit-picky, but that’s not a futures contract (nor a
forward). Neither futures nor forwards require payment up front for the
exchange in the future. Futures and forwards are for locking in the price for
the future trade, not partially completing the trade in the present and
finishing it in the future.

What you’re describing is just boring old debt.

~~~
rckoepke
Thank you!

------
xivzgrev
Idk how Catan can be mentioned as a counter-example. Everytime I play it's
exciting for the first half, then a winner becomes clear and it's no longer
fun. The article mentions negative feedback loops but...they're not really
there. Sure you can refuse to trade, or place the robber but if someone has a
bigger "engine" than you, then every turn they're getting more and more ahead.

~~~
someguyorother
Maybe something like YINSH
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YINSH](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YINSH))
would be a better counter-example. To pull off the win, you have to
deliberately weaken yourself in the endgame, at which point others can catch
up to you.

------
cryptica
When I played it (4 people game), I would win relatively often initially
(before other players started copying my strategy). My strategy was just to
buy everything I landed on except utilities and rail stations - I would only
buy a utility/station if I wanted to stop someone else from getting all of
them (which typically happens much later in the game and often doesn't happen
at all) but mostly I would use it as a bargaining chip to trade it for a
normal property to complete my set and start building houses (utilities and
stations are just bait; you let others complete their own utility/station sets
and in the process, you get to complete your own regular sets in the process
and build houses). I never understood people who said that utilities and
stations were the best things to buy... You can't build houses on them and
they earn peanuts unless you get all of them, but even if you do, they still
don't yield much compared to lands that have some houses.

Also, through trading, it's difficult to get all the utilities/stations
without giving up something even more valuable.

It's foolish to accept a utility company or station in exchange for one of
your regular properties because it will allow someone else to get a complete
set and they can start building houses - Once they do that it's game over for
you and every other player.

------
WalterBright
Monopoly is boring because the fate of the players is decided by the first few
rolls of the dice, the rest is just the math inevitably playing out.

The ability to influence the result with strategy is about nil.

~~~
exogeny
If the players involved don't actively trade, then yes. If the players trade
often with a reasonable range of decision-making proficiency, the game is very
fun.

For example, just by dice rolling, you could get a lot of properties in the
Red, Yellow, Green, or Dark Blue zones. But those properties are very
overrated compared to Light Blue and Orange, which offer much higher
revenue/investment and much higher landing frequency due to the adjacency of
Jail and GO. A game with active trading where one player knows this and others
don't is almost completely unrelated to dice rolling.

This is why playing against 3 AI opponents is often more fun than playing
against humans.

~~~
goostavos
Trading and haggling is exactly what makes the game fun. Too many people think
it's a buy and hold game. No, no! If you're not making Cockamamie deals where
you're demanding rent immunity from their tiles for 10 turns, you're missing
out on the best parts of monopoly imo.

------
sandymcmurray
Mega Monopoly is the best official variant I've ever played. There's an extra
dice with a symbol on two faces that forces you to move to the next unowned
property after you complete your first turn. When all properties are owned,
the same roll sends you to the next space where you have to pay rent after you
complete your turn. This speeds up the property distribution and the end game
considerably.

Mega Monopoly has other fun changes, including one more property on each
colour group, an extra level of building above hotels (skyscrapers), "depots"
on railroads that double the rent, and "bus tickets" that permit you to move
forward to any space on your side of the board instead of rolling the dice.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly:_The_Mega_Edition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly:_The_Mega_Edition)

------
ankit219
Playing Monopoly as an adult was a totally different experience. The game can
finish fast if we all played aggressively and willing to trade, but we did not
as we wanted to kill time during a lockdown. The key is to be enterprising in
the trades you offer. Get the two brown ones first anyhow and with any kind of
trade, and then for anything, if you are feeling stuck, offer to slash the
rent, or even rent free. Then comes the installments or things like giving
rent for next three rounds and stuff like that. As a kid, never thought about
those, but now, with these new rules, it became more interesting and exciting
to play. I tipped this to my nine year old nephew yesterday, and I guess I
will get a call from his mom in a few days about ruining the game for them.

~~~
jimmyvalmer
Brown ones? Installments? No one has any idea what you're talking about.

~~~
SyrupThinker
You should not speak for others, parent obviously talks about the lowest value
properties (colored brown) and upgrades such as houses and hotels.

~~~
jimmyvalmer
Fair, but ftr, parent meant "installment" to mean financing not "improvement",
and my 1980s edition has the lowest value properties colored purple. And if
anyone can parse "Get the two brown ones first anyhow and with any kind of
trade, and then for anything, if you are feeling stuck, offer to slash the
rent," then color me a buffoon indeed.

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jmiskovic
There's well written write-up [0] about passive-aggressive winning strategy,
which also pinpoints all the design issues with Monopoly.

[0] [https://imgur.com/gallery/vX3zm](https://imgur.com/gallery/vX3zm)

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crawfordcomeaux
I want to design a game where the setup involves starting off playing Monopoly
and then everyone choosing to switch into playing a game for practicing living
in a gift economy. Anyone want to help with the concept?

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andreig2191
“People overestimate the probability of things happening,” says Myers. “In
social psychology literature it is fairly well established that people are
poor at assessing risk."

Please tell me who are these people who believe there is a good chance of
buying Park and Boardwalk on the first loop?

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dredmorbius
I'd strongly recommend a deeper history of the game at The Landlord's Game:

[https://landlordsgame.info/](https://landlordsgame.info/)

 _...Most Americans who play Monopoly think it was invented by an unemployed
Pennsylvania man who sold his game to Parker Brothers in 1935 and lived
happily ever after on royalties. That story, however, is not exactly true.
Ralph Anspach, an economist and refugee of Hitler’s Danzig, unearthed the real
story and it traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and to a forgotten
feminist named Lizzie Magie. The Monopolists is in part Anspach’s David-
versus-Goliath tale of his 1970s battle against Parker Brothers, one of the
most beloved companies of all time. Anspach was a professor fighting to sell
his Anti-Monopoly board game, which hailed those who busted up trusts and
monopolies instead of those who took control of all the properties. While he
and his lawyers researched previous Parker Brothers lawsuits, he accidentally
discovered the true history of the game, which began with Magie’s Landlord’s
Game. That game was invented more than thirty years before Parker Brothers
sold their version of Monopoly and she waged her own war with Parker Brothers
to be credited as the real originator of the game. Ironically, the Landlord’s
Game, like Anti-Monopoly, was underpinned by morals that were the exact
opposite of what Monopoly represents today. It isn 't surprising that Magie's
game was embraced by a constellation of left-wingers from the Progressive Era
through the Great Depression, including members of Franklin Roosevelt’s famed
Brain Trust...._

~~~
true_religion
This sort of confuses me. How can a game with the opposite principles of
Monopoly be the true originator? It seems totally debatable which is why they
had to go through a law suit twice over this.

~~~
Crestwave
See
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game);](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_\(game\);)
according to the article, she created two sets of rules for the game: the
classic monopoly game to show how unfair monopolies are, and another one to
demonstrate how she thought it should be fairly done.

------
jonp
Here's a collection of the shortest finish in many games:
[https://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/mathmagic/1112.html](https://www2.stetson.edu/~efriedma/mathmagic/1112.html)

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dr_dshiv
May I point out that "fortnite monopoly" is actually a delight to play -- it's
not just a surface redesign, but actually a far better game than monopoly.

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RickJWagner
Monopoly is fast, compared to RISK.

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malkia
Love Monopoly still!

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dangus
This is a really tired subject on the Internet by now.

~~~
distances
For you sure, but for ten thousand others this is the first time around.

[https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

