Five of us played a proper game of Monopoly over the holiday break. I emerged victorious after what was probably three hours of game play. I lucked out and got both Boardwalk and Park Place while no one else was able to obtain a monopoly. I had quite a few properties and was able to prevent most monopolies but those that were possible didn’t happen soon enough. Everyone else mistakenly made deals way too late and it wasn’t until after I had a few houses and collected some serious cash that another monopoly was formed. No one had the money to build anything of significance and therefore no way to keep me from building to hotels. I put the first three players out of business with Boardwalk and the end came not long after that as I built up on my bankruptcy-acquired assets.
This turn of events got me thinking about Monopoly strategies. Surely people have figured out the statistics involved and surely there are countless pages in the internet to document it. I found this article that discusses breakeven probability and cost to own. My method of winning didn’t follow this but it’s interesting to see where the best values are. It’s certainly a good reference when you start trading properties and want to one up your competitor. If you didn’t already know, three houses is the sweet spot.
Stumbled upon this article today.
Pretty cool that it linked the same article I did. I’d say a few of those are “duh” when talking about the real world but applicable nonetheless. The statistics of Monopoly is just plain cool to me.