Monopoly

[L. Mo]

just trying to be different! :D


Discuss!

[ahow]

I always get to focused on either buying properties, or buy houses for my few properties, or I end up in jail way too often...

[Father of two]

Does anyone play the old monopoly or one of the theme versions?


I play NASCAR monopoly with the kids.

[Hagbard Celine]

Forget about the cheapies and the glitzies (Park Place and Broadway??).

Focus your energy on creating hell from the oranges through to the second bottom corner (green or red). Build houses/hotels in this strip as quickly as possible.

Be a slumlord and win.

[Elston Gunn]

Utilities suck.

I'm partial to getting all of the railroads.

How ugly is the color bar for the Connecticut Ave properties?

They should have little plastic slums for the cheaper properties (if you've been to AC you'd understand).

[Hagbard Celine]

I'm partial to getting all of the railroads.

I am also, but it's purely a sentimental thing...the payoffs are never worth it because you can never get all of them.

[Will Durant]

My wife is a viscious Monopoly player. We were babysitting for a friend and she almost brought a nine year old to tears.

(exaggerating, but just a little)

[BC]

The Oranges are the best - you land on them quite frequently on the way out of jail.

[Anonymous]

I LOVE this game...I toyed with entering the Championship tournament when I was younger.

[Ultimate Anyone?]

Monopoly is a great game once you play by the rules (i.e. no "Get all the fine money when you land on Free Parking" or "You get double if you land on Go" type rules.)

I'd really like to enter the US Championships, but I have no idea where/when they're held, or what you have to do to get there - has anyone actually done this before?

[IMP]

i used to have that electronic thing that layed in the center of the board...it did the rolling for you, it held auctions for the properties you landed on but didnt want to buy, it allowed you to take a loan to buy houses and hotels. i was a monopoly freak as a kid...had games that lasted days, i kid you not! most classic, was catching my best friend stealing from the bank...always knew she did, but it felt great to catch her in the act!!

[Ebenezer Kohl]

I love Monopoly.

One of my better Monopoly moments is when I made a great offer that would have helped both sides, as I always do. This person refused so I reversed the offer and again was refused. I then paid $50 Monopoly dollars to a third party so that this person would flip off the other when he eventually lost. :D Best $50 dollars ever spent.

[4sigma]

:lolup:

Do people play with the rule that there are only 32 houses and 12 hotels, and if these are all in use then you can't build any more? Including that you can't build a hotel if there aren't enough houses to build 4 houses first?

I agree with the "own the orange" strategy. I once had a strategy book on Monopoly that gave the probability for landing on each of the individual squares. The most frequently landed-upon square was the "Chance" in the middle of the oranges, since it was a "7" from getting out of jail. As a group, the oranges had the highest frequency followed I think by the reds (Indiana/Illinois) and then the light blues (Oriental / Connecticut)

[Hagbard Celine]

As a group, the oranges had the highest frequency followed I think by the reds (Indiana/Illinois)

See! that's what I was advocating! Oranges and Reds.

The light blues aren't big enough to worry about.

[Will Durant]

Do people play with the rule that there are only 32 houses and 12 hotels, and if these are all in use then you can't build any more? Including that you can't build a hotel if there aren't enough houses to build 4 houses first?
They should. That's what the rules specifically say. They even mention that there's a spare house and hotel that should not be used.

The other rule I find people often don't use is auctioning property if it's not purchased by the person who lands on it. My wife didn't start playing with this rule until a couple of years ago, when I pointed it out to her.

[tommie frazier]

love it. have not played in a while. Illinois ave is most landed on, BTW. oranges as a group are most often landed on. key to winning is those.

utilities are slow, steady income. not sexy, but steady. sort of like...utilities.

[Ultimate Anyone?]

Do people play with the rule that there are only 32 houses and 12 hotels, and if these are all in use then you can't build any more? Including that you can't build a hotel if there aren't enough houses to build 4 houses first?
Of course! Causing a housing shortage is a great strategy - you can tie up 20 houses with the Dark Purples and the Light Blues relatively cheaply - I think that's where their real value lies in the latter parts of the game. (Of course, you're also exposed to the "Building Repairs" card, but usually it's worth the risk.)

Also, don't forget the "you must build all the properties equally" rule as well - you can put a hotel on something until the other properties have 4 houses on them first (i.e. you must be able to physically put 12 houses on the board).

[Jables]

When my friends and I play a game with 3 or more people total (not that great of a game if you only start out with 2 people), we add a rule that you are not allowed to buy property until you have completed a turn around the board first. All other rules apply though, such as rents, fees, even having to auction off an "unbuyable" property to those who have gone around the board already (starting at 1/2 price, since often only one player can buy). It shakes things up and almost always some poor player gets stuck repeatedly in jail and ends up being merely a spectator for the remaining few hours :D

[TakeNine]

I saw the game played at a convention, and discussed with one of the players that great mystery: How is it that everyone across America knows the house rule of putting fine money on Free Parking, when that's not in the rulebook?

I played the game while younger, and a couple of times later on with neighbor kids. We never played with the official rule of auctioning off unbought properties. I'd like to play the game with the official rules. Is there a free online source to play Monopoly?

[fallout]

The playstation one is pretty good. I play the dotcom one with my daughter and her friends.

I like this kind of trade offer. You get your opponents to hold up a bunch of stuff you want, properties, cash... then you make an offer and tell them the first one to drop their stuff on the board gets to make the deal. It's amazing how effective this is with 9 year olds.

[Klaymen]

Don't the rules say that if someone declines to buy a property, it gets auctioned off immediately? I've never played that rule nor known anyone who has, but I remember reading about it...

GAMES magazine once published a 10-question Monopoly rules quiz which was surprisingly difficult, because there are some subtle rules. Here's one I got wrong: I thought that if you landed you someone's utility you either rolled one or two dice and paid the appropriate amount. But if you read the card, it says something to the effect of "Amount shown on dice" but says nothing about rolling them. How many of us have done that wrong?

[Maine-iac]

I love the original version, but have a hard time finding other players who will take the time for a full game. I play the computer a lot.

- I've always played with the auction unsold properties rule.
- The fines on free parking is an optional rule, and I've never used it
- The dark purple Baltic duo isn't worth much effort, but I've had good luck with the light blue Connecticut/Oriental/Vermont and the light purple St. Charles, et. al. Favorites are probably orange and red, though.

[Anonymous]

The dark purple Baltic duo isn't worth much effort, but I've had good luck with the light blue Connecticut/Oriental/Vermont and the light purple St. James, et. al.

Nothing quite like rolling past Go, collecting my $200, and then landing on one of those properties and handing my hard-earned $$$ to you...

[Happy Extinction]

We used to put two boards together and play figure 8 monopoly. We had a bunch of fun rules and would always use more cash than the rules suggested.

If you put two different boards together (UK version and US version for example) the fun really begins.

Where is the online game?

[snafu]

We used to put two boards together and play figure 8 monopoly. We had a bunch of fun rules and would always use more cash than the rules suggested.

If you put two different boards together (UK version and US version for example) the fun really begins.

Where is the online game?

We did the same thing with the university licensed versions from rival universities. Had some additional penalties such as doubling the cost of landing on the utilities for the university you didn't go to and free pass through the properties that corresponded to your major.

[Klaymen]

I once played RISK putting two boards together - a new and old version. 8 players. 6 hours.

[Mel-o-rama]

I own a special edition Monopoly, a Wizard-of-Oz Monopoly, and Mormonopoly.

[Kaput Shakur]

I own a special edition Monopoly, a Wizard-of-Oz Monopoly, and Mormonopoly.


[cheap Mormon shot]Hey Mel, how many times does your character get married in the Mormon version of Life? Does it matter if you start out with a male or female character? [/cheap Mormon shot]

[Wannabe Actuary]

I always aim for getting the side between jail and free parking. The WHOLE side. It's so hard to jump past an entire side, and that's the most effective side given the relatively low cost of buying and developing for the amount of rent they bring in each time.

I hate playing with the auction rule b/c it gets properties out too fast and too cheap while deplenishing the players money supply.

Frequently if we don't want the game to last forever we play the free parking rule. I've also played that you start each time with 500 on free parking (makes the game go really fast) as well as getting 500 for rolling "snake eyes" (if you want the game to end in and hour or so play both of these rules).

I haev the UConn version of the game (which is where I just graduated from), but have not opened it yet. Maybe on a rainy day in the near future.

[Ultimate Anyone?]

Frequently if we don't want the game to last forever we play the free parking rule. I've also played that you start each time with 500 on free parking (makes the game go really fast) as well as getting 500 for rolling "snake eyes" (if you want the game to end in and hour or so play both of these rules).
You find that adding money to the game shortens the game??

My experience is the opposite - when the goal of the game is to bankrupt everyone, the last thing you want to do is give an extra source of outside money to everyone!

[Mick Fan]

Frequently if we don't want the game to last forever we play the free parking rule. I've also played that you start each time with 500 on free parking (makes the game go really fast) as well as getting 500 for rolling "snake eyes" (if you want the game to end in and hour or so play both of these rules).
You find that adding money to the game shortens the game??

My experience is the opposite - when the goal of the game is to bankrupt everyone, the last thing you want to do is give an extra source of outside money to everyone!

I agree. Whenever we played with the free parking jackpot rule, it made the game take forever!

[Wannabe Actuary]

I've found that adding money to the game makes it so that people can develop to hotels so fast that others don't even get a chance to buy properties. Therefore they're paying out rents for hotels and taking in rents of little value. This makes them go broke fast. Some times, there might be a lucky person who keeps hitting the money enough to stay alive despite paying lots of rents and not having any substantial property. But as we know, luck like that doesn't last.

[4sigma]

I always played with the rule that unbought properties get auctioned.

I believe GAMES magazine had an issue a while back where they discussed various rule changes in order to make Monopoly more fun. One that looked good to me (but that I never played) was to start the players with much less money. I think they recommended starting with $500.

When you start with $1,500, the optimum strategy is pretty much to buy everything that you land on. When you start with $500, that's no longer true. It makes the early game strategic in terms of what properties to buy, particularly if there are less than 4 players. Most properties end up going to auction and you have to actually bid what you think the property is worth. Rather capitalistic for a game called "Monopoly."

[Mel-o-rama]

I own a special edition Monopoly, a Wizard-of-Oz Monopoly, and Mormonopoly.


[cheap Mormon shot]Hey Mel, how many times does your character get married in the Mormon version of Life? Does it matter if you start out with a male or female character? [/cheap Mormon shot]

Alright, you! There is no Mormon version of LIFE. So there! :P And FTR, my spouse wouldn't let me have more spouses in the game anyway. I tried, though.