Rediscovering Monopoly
 

I have been playing a bit of Monopoly lately... I picked up a trial version of the game for the Palm OS, and have been fiddling with it a bit when I have a little time to kill. By the way, I don't have agreat sense of how skillful the computer opponents are, but this is a very faithful rendition -- very, very well done.

Anyway -- playing a few games lately has gotten me to thinking: Monopoly is actually an underrated game, I think. And playing a few times has persuaded me, more than ever, to believe that serious harm has been done to this game by the series of "house rules" that people everywhere have used in playing the game.


Specifically, I believe the biggest problem is with the "Free Parking" spot. It seems that many -- even most -- families have adopted some rule that a player landing on Free Parking is entitled to some reward. The rules, of course, say it's just a free spot - nothing hapens. With my current group of board gaming friends, we usually have played that FP accumulates all the incidental payments made in the game -- the various taxes, payments from Chance and Community Chest cards, etc. The player who lands on FP gets all that cash - which can be substantial sometimes. My family, and many others, had the habit of "seeding" the FP spot with a $500 bill, making it all the more attractive. I understand that these habits are very widespread -- probably more people play with some "bonus" for FP than those who play by the actual rules.

No. No. No.

I believe more firmly than ever that this really undermines the game. Making money in the game too plentiful is a problem -- it makes the decision-making elements of the game close to pointless. Land on a property, buy it without thinking. Of course you do, why not? All you tie up is half its purchase price... there's hardly ever a time when it doesn't make sense to buy an available property. And thus, the game becomes largely a contest to see who gets lucky in the first few times around the board, and manages to land on the best set of properties for purchase. It devolves into a game of luck.

Now - take that familiar scene, and remove the house rules. All those $150 tax payments and "you pay $50" Chance cards result in money leaving the game and going to the bank. There's no recycling back in by FP, it's just gone. Suddenly, money is a far more scarce commodity in the game, and it takes on a new element altogether. There are plenty of times when it might not make sense to buy the property you landed on -- you run a much greater risk of putting yourself too short to buy something else more valuable later, or to pay a cost that might befall you in time.

Plus -- this introduces a fairly little-known rule form the original game. If the player landing on an available property doesn't buy it, it goes up for auction. Most homes, I think, just leave the property unpurchased for the next player who lands on it. Auctions, though, are both interesting and very efficient at requiring precise decision-making. Is Marvin Gardens worth $300 to you? What about $350? $450? What if you already have one yellow property? What if your opponent already has the other two yellows? The presence of the auction (both by using that rule, and by keeping the money system confined so some properties actually go to auction) makes this a completely different game -- much more strategic, much less pure dumb luck.


I have heard of people playing an alternate version of Monoply, where the purchase price of every property is double what is listed -- meaning that many more properties actually go to auction. I'd be interested in playign this way, too, but honestly -- with the original rules followed faithfully, this might not even be necessary.


In any event... you probbaly have a dusty old box of Monopoly sitting around the house somewhere. Pull it out some day, and fire that bad boy up. Or get a version on the computer, if that makes you feel more self-respecting. Ths is a game that gets short shrift... in part because we have emasculated it with stupid house rules and more friendly-seeming additions.

QuikSand bashing house rules...isn't this a sign of the apocalypse?

My family actually played a game of Monopoly in I don't know how long last year. It was fun...until it got seriously competitive. Man, I had no idea my sisters were such underhanded connivers. That won't be played again anytime soon.

Before I got two sentences into this post, I knew that QS was the type of person who would HATE giving a bonus for free parking.

FYIITA

But I still say, even without the Free Parking house rule, you always buy a property whenever you land on it.

My 6-year-old and I have been playing this a lot lately. I often find myself thinking about what it would be like to play against three other adults and what type of strategies I would employ to try and win. It reminds me a lot of poker, because there is a nice mixture of math, skill, and luck involved in the process. And of course, I thought about how I could turn it into a game where real money is at stake. Perhaps you could "buy-in" for the $1500.00 at five cents on the dollar and then distribute prize money based on final finish. Or maybe play a timed version where total wealth is added up after, say, two hours, and prize money is distributed.

There has got to be a site out there that allows head to head on-line Monopoly play, right?

I think Yahoo Games has Monopoly.

I think the biggest problem with Monopoly is the amount of time it takes to play a complete game, start to finish. In some cases you might have to stretch a game across several days and by then you'll likely have people losing interest and boredom kicking in. *shrug* Just my thoughts.

Quik - I don't like the house rules much either.

As for dusting off old Monopoly games...this reminds me that I need to catalog my collection sometime. I have games dating back to the 30's in some cases (did you know that early versions of the game did not have printing on the back of the title deed cards, and early tokens included a handbag and a lantern?). Many foreign editions too. Maybe 40 in total? Possibly more?

I think that's probably true, or close to it... but I have my doubts about the utilities (under any circumstances), and other lesser properties under others.

There's also the consideration that you might pick up the property cheaper in an auction (especially if the game is cash-strapped) than its face value. Playing against computer opponents, I have routinely seen first-row properties sell for lass than face value in the auction -- if someone only has $300 in cash, and is about to roll into the final stretch (greens and blues) it makes no sense for him to bid at all for Connecticut Avenue. Under some circumstances, I have landed properties for half their face value... and have myself stopped bidding at $50 for $200 properties.


The auction is a powerful decision-making tool, and any rule that increases its prominence in the game is a good one, I think.

Is it really a rule that unbought properties go up for auction?

Very, very cool.

Tell me, Mr. Collector -- are there any interesting variations on the hat token? I sometimes use one as a totem when playing poker, and if there were old ones made of different material or somehow noticeably different I'd be interested in tracking one down.

/agree

I think that's the reason why Free Parking became so much more than Free Parking.

Agreed, in general. Part of my attraction to playing on a computer (or, in my case, my phone). I can get through an entire game in maybe 15-20 minutes, withotu much loss of immersion. It just automates all the tedium, and lets you jump from decision to decision.

(I have had similar experiences with Risk, a game I find tedious in real life but fascinating on the computer, where the endless dice-rolling becomes instantaneous)

Yup. Hard to believe, since nobody plays it that way.

Maybe, but can't you mortgage your properties to afford these costs? Or are there only certain times you can do that?

And FWIW, I don't think the game really takes THAT long, if you have people who know what they're doing play it. Sure, if it's mostly kids it will take way too long for childlike attention spans.

In the official rules, I believe you can only raise money (by mortgaging poperties, etc) when it's your turn. You can't do so as someone announces an auction.

That has ripple effects throughout the game... do you leave non-monopoly properties open, or mortgage them to get the cash on hand? I generally mortgage everything -- I cna live without my $12 rent, but I'll be damned if I'm going to lose the auctioned fourth railroad just because I don't have the cash to bid on it.

Count me amongst those.

I don't have one with me ( :) ) but I think the older hats are a little bit larger. Same basic style and shape, but a little different. You may even be able to see a little seam in the middle from the two sides of the token being pressed together? Most notably though would be the color of the token - very dark, almost black from age (more a patina rather than dirt). I think the hats from my British/Irish versions are also quite a bit larger, but their tokens on the whole are larger.

The hat coincidentally has traditionally been my favorite Monopoly token to use.

As with all right-thinking people.

No way! The iron r0x0r!

Dynasty time!
 

Dynasty thread, yes? I believe Quik should write a monopoly playing dynasty
:p

What is this Monopoly you speak of? Is it available for PSP?

Says you. I'd rather travel around all those properties in my nice shiny racing car. A hat makes for a pretty slow ride...

Hmmm... Twelve bucks on ebay as we speak.

Rookie mistake.

A start: http://boardgames.about.com/od/monopolyonline/

I used to play Monopoly an awful lot - with and without the house rules, with and without the auctioning. One summer in high school, a group from our neighborhood played probably three dozen games in the course of two months - nearly all those games with 6 people, out of a pool of about 10. Brought up some interesting strategies, as well as how those strategies changes when we began keeping track of cash-on-hand across multiple games (we didn't always play until a single winner remained).

I always thought the hat was the token for the guy who thought he was good, but was actually just average.

Now the statue (what I call the guy riding the horse)......

That's not bad actually. Much better than having one sent from there and having to pay in pounds. That's the version I have, mine was circa the mid 80's. The Irish version is nearly identical except for the properties. I think they did away with that version at some point, but have an Irish special edition put out by Winning Moves (?) that is more like a city edition, with landmarks, banks, soccer teams etc. rather than proper street names.

The Winning Moves games are high quality though, more along the lines of the Deluxe version here in the States. They are much better put together than the specialty versions produced here by USAopoly.

Dola - the Brit games used to be produced by Waddingtons...the changes to the game came after Hasbro bought Parker Bros and started producing the games over there rather than licensing them.

Quik-
Which Monopoly game are you using? Link?

/tk

Here's a link:

Handmark Monopoly for the Palm OS

Yeah, but do you have El Paso Scene? ;)

Bingo :p

So, in everyone's opinion, what color set is the best? I remember when I was in elementary school, I found a book on Monopoly strategies, and it gave its suggestion. Anyone want to give their opinions?

The orange and red properties are the best investments iirc, and the orange is cheaper than red.

"The trio of orange properties is an excellent monopoly to own because of their relationship to Jail. A roll of 6 or 8 (two of the most common rolls) from Jail lands you on an orange."

I think another thing with orange is that the hotel rents aren't that much lesser than the red, and building on that side of the board is cheaper.

Well, I am poking around the Games.com version now and will report back. I am really interested in setting up a competitive league...

I think a more interesting discussion could be: how did it come to this? How did a game, with very clear rules, that almost everyone owns, morph into this new set of rules that are virtually universal?

I need to read a psychology paper on this.

Monopoly has been a favorite of mine since the 1960s. There was a classic strategy book written in the 1970s that I still of a guy who wrote a FORTRAN program simulating the game and then running it 1000 times to isolate changing conditions. One of the things that the book impressed me the most, besides a definitive qualitative analysis of property values and their ROI, is the importance of trading. Not just straight-up trading but very clever conditional trades - usually to give more of an advantage to the better (and the ones that KNOW THE RULES) over those less so. As far as personal strategies, I can't count the number of times I have won just by owning the Orange monopoly and the RRs. Those are the best ROI properties in the game - if you get them in the middle game (the late game puts more values on the expensive properties, esp. Yellow and Green).

Is it legal to trade "safe passage"? That is you can land on me X amount of times and not have to pay in exchange for X property.

No, not according to the rules. Only tangible property may be traded.

my playbook needs updating then.

Thanks! Monopoly was one of my favorite games as a kid (we were one of the families that played both ways - sometimes we seeded Free Parking, and other times we played with no money in FP depending on if we wanted a long or short game.) Also, I've been wanting a new game for my Palm. This will be perfect.

Do we need to find a way to set up a FOFC Online Monopoly league?

Dola...

Can you whisper to other players on here?

Want to play a game? Just got my ass kicked, but hopefully can do better with some practice.

I'm RaidersArmy on games.com. Which lobby are you guys in?