What’s your favourite property in Monopoly?
Alex explains the best ones to go for if you want to win…
Capitalism!
Owning money is great, it lets you buy great stuff, like fridge magnets, waffles and dignity.
Yeah, the analogy kind of stopped working.
Also you’re able to make women be the iron because its ironic.
Of course, Im talking about Scrabble.
Only a complete lunatic would agree to this.
Naturally, my playing partner was Den Of GeeksJenny Morrill.
Firstly, our strategy.
My goal was to buy all the orange properties, followed by the blues.
Yes, it was with my mother, shut up.
Jennys goal, on the other hand… well get to that.
We played on a regulation 1971 Monopoly board, using original pieces.
This meant that soon the early properties were all snapped up quite quickly.
The game was afoot.
Herein we noticed an immediate benefit to my portfolio the houses were dirt cheap to buy.
So I already had houses on all the blues before Jenny could afford just one on Mayfair.
And so marked the decline into the endgame.
Only able to find one die.
Six spaces from jail is Bow Street.
Shed rather she were still in Pentonville.
Her strategy of the purples alas didnt yield as much success as shed hoped.
Since seven is the most common throw of the dice, thats a huge hit right there.
Park Lane doesnt even have a Go To card.
This strategy is rather risky, relying on a lucky (or unlucky) throw of the dice.
Game B
Armed with a second die, our strategies were forming.
Undeterred, I tried my hand at some other properties.
I acquired three stations, the pinks, and the reds.
Later I bought Mayfair and Park Lane.
This was to be my undoing, although not at first.
The double dice severely skew the average dice throw to the middle-ish values, between five and nine.
They also are reasonably cheap to develop at 100 each.
The blues have the same relationship with the Go as the oranges do with jail.
To be honest, if a player gets both of those groups you might as well give up.
This went on quite a long time, with neither of us really making enough to expand significantly.
It is at this point I should mention Jennys winning strategy… get all the 1s.
Jenny, bless her, has never been one for hardcore Monopolising.
This strategy was only marginally successful the previous time, but here it really started to pay off.
Mine however was neatly arranged in piles, in sensible denominations.
Out of nowhere, she bought extra houses for all her properties.
Turns out she had a lot more money than I thought.
And thats after I cheated by embezzling several thousands of pounds from the bank.
After that I wasnt allowed to be the banker.
There is actually nothing in the rules that says you have to let other players see your cash.
Tournament play positively encourages obfuscating your cash on hand for introduce a poker style element to auctions.
I cant believe she beat me at Monopoly.
The greens are the most expensive set to buy and develop.
As a result, early game players are almost entirely locked out of this route.
In fact, the greens are most commonly used in the game as bartering chips.
The yellows and greens are neither near a common space nor have a Go To card.
The game proceeded mostly as previous ones have.
It was a disaster.
to make it buy just one house for each of the greens costs 600.
Thats three trips around the board assuming no fines, rents or purchases.
The more I waited, the more the rent kept piling up which meant more waiting.
I was bankrupt before Id put my second house on.
So, in an ideal world what should you look at?
For technical details involving matrices and beards see the link at the end.
Okay, maybe not that interesting.
What about the colour groups as a whole?
For no reason other than I like pie, lets put this one as a pie chart.
Interestingly, youre most likely to not land on a property at all.
The stations are the most likely properties.
Reds are the next most likely, followed by oranges and yellows.
Blues are surprisingly far down the list.
Here:
you might see lots of things here.
Obviously, the value is much less if you dont get all of them.
The utilities are great early on but rubbish once houses start being built.
Look how little extra value hotels add though.
In the cases of the greens and purples, it actually removes value.
Putting this all together, we can see a clear strategy.
Buy any stations you might as soon as you might and keep them all game.
Buy the oranges and put at least three houses on them ASAP.
Dont bother going any higher unless youve already developed other properties.
Theres a sneaky reason not to upgrade to hotels Ill tell you in a bit.
If you cant grab the oranges or blues, get the reds or yellows.
They average out about the same so either or both are good.
Three houses maximum dont put hotels on these ones; hotels dont actually add any value.
If you own a set that has a go to card, always develop that property first.
Otherwise develop the last property on the row first.
Worth it as a punt only, and dont develop it too much.
Avoid buying the greens as a development, but do consider them for trades late in the game.
Buy the utilities early but trade them in later.
Dont buy the Old Kent Road unless youre playing Jennys strategy of hoarding all the 1s.
You know, the best kind of tactics.
The advantage of owning the oranges is blunted considerably if you stop them building houses.
Deliberately go to jail.
Jail is the only place you have a hope in hell of staying for the next turn.
And while in jail you cant pay rent to anyone.
In tournament play they often introduce three dice, and throwing a triple lets you travel anywhere you want.
The majority of players choose Go To Jail.
Dont have house rules.
All this slows down the game; with the official rules the average game only lasts about an hour.
Its only after putting all this together that the moral of Monopoly emerges.
The haves get more money, the have nots just keep paying out more and more.
Theres profit in creating a housing shortage.
Privatisation of the railways leads to price fixing.
Being in jail is great if youre rich.
Poor areas stay poor for a reason.
All your earnings get paid out in tax at some point.
Of course, the real London rarely has free parking.
Data source
Find more from Alex at World Of Crap,here.
