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Mixing it up with Monopoly

How to Beat Your Kids at Board Games is a podcast featuring two brothers and board game enthusiasts who want to share their own (and others’) board game knowledge with the world in a low-key, digestible way. This article is a transcript of our very first recorded episode, “Mixing it up with Monopoly.” Enjoy the audio podcast for this and all of our other episodes by typing “How to Beat Your Kids at Board Games” or simply “HTBYKABG” in the search bar wherever you get your podcasts. Without further ado…

John:

Hello everybody this is John here with my brother Dan.

Dan:

Hey guys.

John:

That’s Dan. Alright, and we’re here to talk to you about board games today; we’re a couple amateur gamers ourselves, like to play a bit of Risk, bit of Monopoly, everything in between. And we just want to make this podcast to help out anyone here that’s, you know, struggled to compete with their friends or family on family game nights, you know, you’re always wondering what properties to buy, all this stuff, about Monopoly, this is where you come, right? So we’re going to offer you a beginner’s guide with some little, some intermediate, possibly even some advanced points later on. But yeah, it’s just going to be a, you know, quick and dirty discussion of Monopoly with a few points that we want to hit.

Dan:

Sure. First, why don’t we go through the rules and some common misconceptions. So, if you’re listening to this podcast and you don’t know the rules of Monopoly, or you’ve never played Monopoly before, you should probably stop listening right now and go read the rules or play a game or something and then, you know, or maybe start a game because, you know, you don’t want to be coming back three hours later…

John:

Right, and then also just take a long, hard look in the mirror and say, “Why have I never played Monopoly?”

Dan:

Yeah, and you know, I think there’s a high likelihood that there is a rock that you have to remove from over your head, and you need to come out and stop living under that rock.

John:

Of course.

Dan:

So anyway, we’re just going to go through some common misconceptions about Monopoly, and just to start off with the rules: there is a lot of general ambiguity in the rules of Monopoly, so, you know, you’ve got the official rules, but, you know, anywhere you go you’re going to have house rules, pretty much. If you play in tournaments, which is, you know, not really what we’re going to touch on here, you might have different rules based on time limits. But basically what we’re going to be talking about is the sort of official set of rules that you would find looking up on the Internet or in the box of the game itself, rules of Monopoly.

John:

And so this is, you know, there’s no huge rule changes when you go from house to house, right? You’re always walking around, you’re always buying properties, building houses, making money, right? But subtle things can change, like how are you dealing with Free Parking? You know, are you put money in the middle, taking it out, or are you, is it just a free spot? That’s one thing we’ll talk about. And also, how are you handling what’s allowed in trades, right? Sometimes some people are a bit more liberal and say anything goes when it comes to trading, and other people like to stick to the books. So yeah, that’s just a couple of things we’re going to talk about, and should we start with the Free Parking?

Dan:

Yeah let’s start with Free Parking. So officially Free Parking is just that. It’s free parking. So you get to land on the square, and you don’t have to pay rent to anybody; you can stay there, for the turn, that is. And lots of people play where, you know, if you land on taxes, that money goes in the middle, et cetera, and then when you land on Free Parking you take that out. That’s actually not officially how the game is played, but of course, you know, if that’s part of the house rules maybe you adjust your strategy, but we’ll get into that in little bit. But that is the official ruling: Free Parking is just free parking.

John:

Right.

Dan:

So, another thing that I thought was interesting, at least, is that the banker, which, most of you know, is responsible for dividing the money among the players at the beginning of the game, is also responsible for making sure players collect their salary. So, in other words, if you pass Go and you realize, you know, that you passed Go and didn’t collect your salary, then you, you know, you tell the banker, and the banker has to give you your salary, and actually it’s the banker’s fault that you didn’t collect your salary.

John:

Yeah, right, you know, it’s not really on you, it’s on the banker to give you the money, so if they forget, you know, they’ve got to pay up.

Dan:

Right [chuckles]. So, yeah, let’s also talk about buying properties. I feel like this is also a — maybe if you’ve only played a few games of Monopoly you haven’t come up against this — but if a person lands on a Monopoly property and does not want to buy the property, that property goes to an auction, and you may have known that already, but even if you are the person who chose not to buy that property, you can still participate in the auction and make a bid for that property, even though you chose not to buy it outright.

John:

And also, the bidding starts at, you know, exactly $1. You can pay anything for the property; you can pay less than what the mortgage is for, so that just would be a screamer deal, I mean you’d be an idiot not to.

Dan:

Right.

John:

’Cause you just make money: you can buy it and immediately mortgage it. So always be on the lookout for these auctions.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

You know, especially if you’re playing with people that are a little bit more lax and casual, and they’re like, “Yeah I don’t, you know, I don’t want that.”

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

Well, take advantage of it!

Dan:

Yeah, snapping up a property for less than it’s worth is huge, always a win, and if nothing else you bid up the price for the next guy so…

John:

Right. Yeah, bidding strategy is something we can, you know, that’s a whole ’nother, that’s its own podcast right there.

Dan:

Yeah, absolutely, we should do another podcast on the game theory of auctions, for sure.

John:

Oh, yeah.

Dan:

So I think one more aspect of rules before we get into trading stuff, which will be more in strategy, is bank loans. So, you will probably notice, if you look at the property cards, that if you turn it over it says something like Mortgage Value, and this is about half of the property’s value. So basically what you’re allowed to do is if you own a property you can mortgage it, which means you take out a loan from the bank for half the value of that property; meanwhile, you cannot charge rent on that property if anybody lands on it. And later in the game you can pay back that loan at the full value of the property, is it plus ten percent?

John:

Yep, plus ten percent.

Dan:

So, the full value of property plus ten percent, you can pay it off later in the game and then get the right to charge rent again for that property.

John:

Right.

Dan:

So I think for a lot of beginning players — I don’t know, at least when I was a beginning player it didn’t really make sense to me why somebody would ever want to do that — but we will get into it later why you probably do want to do this every game.

John:

And also, when you have a property mortgaged, say you say you had a monopoly, you owned all three of the red properties, but you needed to mortgage one of them — this is a kind of a technical rule — you still get to charge double rent for the other two.

Dan:

Okay.

John:

So yeah, you know, if you have a monopoly you charge double normal — and you don’t have any houses — you get to charge double the normal rent, you still get that bonus if one of the properties is mortgaged; you still count as the owner.

Dan:

Cool, so yeah let’s start hitting the rest of our points here, so I think one more point on rules actually is external pacts or agreements…

John:

Yeah…

Dan:

…Are not allowed, so if this seems obvious to say…

John:

They’re officially not allowed…

Dan:

They’re officially not allowed, so in other words, John, I think you had a good example of something like this that happened.

John:

Right, so I was playing with a couple friends, and we’ll give them fake names: Scotty, Jared, and David, yeah, just unrelated to their real names, and so Scotty was in a great position. He was in the best position on the board if he could make this trade with David, and so he made this pact with David, or he said, “David, if you give me this property, I won’t charge you rent until both of the other players have been knocked out,” the other players being me and Jared. And so David made that pact, and actually it didn’t end up working out that well for him, but that kind of thing — charging or making a deal that extends kind of into the future — is not allowed, not provided for by the rules, so…

Dan:

Yeah, basically everything happens in a cross section; it can’t tie into any other time period, so, you know, you are more than welcome to let a person who lands on your property pass and not pay rent — and you can even do that over and over again as they keep landing on your properties — but you cannot make a declaration or a pact or any kind of deal that says, “You will not need to pay rent on my properties,” or sort of anything of that nature, like John said, that extends in the future. So maybe a fine line, but it’s something to keep in mind. Okay, so now we’re going to talk about actual gameplay, and we’re going to imagine, you know, you’ve just started the game, it’s your first time around the board. So, what are you trying to do this first time around the board?

John:

Yeah I think that’s a good question, I mean for me the main thing is you’ve got fifteen hundred, right? So what are you doing, are you buying every time you land on something, or are you keeping a little of that in your back pocket for the next time around? What do you think, Dan?

Dan:

[thoughtful sigh] Honestly, every time I’ve played, I kind of just end up buying everything I land on the first time, and I also feel like I don’t win all the time, which, disclaimer — there is no strategy that helps you win every time — but anyway, going back: I don’t know. Looking at the board right now and seeing and knowing what we do about certain properties, you know, maybe being more lucrative than others, I’d probably buy the ones that are more lucrative if I get the chance and maybe pass on the ones that are not.

John:

Right.

Dan:

But yeah, anyway none of that was very specific, so why don’t you…

John:

Well, why don’t we get specific? What do you…what do you mean by “properties being more lucrative than others”?

Dan:

Okay so, so like…I feel like it’s pretty common knowledge that those orange properties right before free parking are pretty much the best place to be — at least I’ve heard it said — and that’s because they’re right across from Jail, like I think one, two, three…six squares…if you’re if you’re in Jail and you roll either a six or an eight or nine…

John:

…Which is pretty likely, considering that you need to roll doubles to get out of Jail, so six or an eight.

Dan:

That’s what, like…

John:

A third of the time you’re getting out of Jail, you’re going right to an orange square.

Dan:

Right, and so you’re going to have people disproportionately landing on those properties, so I feel like if I have an opportunity to buy one of those properties, Boom! I’m going to buy it. Everything else, I don’t really know, I mean, I guess it depends on maybe where the cards will send you, depends on maybe how expensive it is to build houses and develop…

John:

And by cards you mean Community Chest and Chance, right?

Dan:

Correct.

John:

Okay. Well yeah so, my half-thought on this is that there are so few properties to buy total that every time you pass up on one, the next time you come around there’s going to be, you know, there’s going to be less properties available next time you come around the board. So I think that you just give up too much by not buying on the first time around.

Dan:

Okay.

John:

I think, say you, you know, it generally takes about you know, four or five turns to get around the board, maybe even less if you roll doubles, right? And, you know, that’s four or five chances, four or five properties that you could have if you roll right. Now, you’re obviously not guaranteed to roll on a property every time, or hit a property every time, but I just think, for me I’ve always chosen to try and build up properties in the beginning so you have more of a chance of working your way into a monopoly later.

Dan:

So in other words, buy everything you have an opportunity to at the beginning so that you have an opportunity later to trade those properties, which may not be valuable for you but may be more valuable for someone else if, say, they landed on the same color, or whatever.

John:

Right.

Dan:

And then maybe you get more of a chance of eventually gaining at least one monopoly, which is the name of the game after all.

John:

That’s true. It’s pretty up in the air, I mean you definitely don’t want to come out empty-handed after your first round; there’s no reason to.

Dan:

That’s like a death sentence, I feel like.

John:

Exactly so, I don’t know, yeah.

Dan:

So then, I guess we agree that it’s good to buy anything you can at first.

John:

Definitely at first.

Dan:

Right, so I’ve done some reading on this, and pretty much all these articles that I’ve read have said, like, “Don’t buy utilities,” and there are reasons, there are good reasons, not to buy utilities, you know, or, I shouldn’t say not to buy them but that they’re less valuable than other properties. Is that a reason to not buy if you land on them the first time around?

John:

Now, I would say yes, and I think what Dan’s referring to is a very handy chart you can find on amnesta.com, I believe.

Dan:

Yeah, we’ll get it in the show notes.

John:

Right, and so this chart plots the break-even time for each of the properties, and that just means how much, how long is it going to take for you to recoup what you’ve invested. And it’s on a number of opponent rolls, so like how many turns, so say you’re playing with four people, you know, every turn you take is three opponent rolls, possibly more if they roll doubles, right? So for utilities they have, even if you own two utilities, they have some of the lowest, some of the slowest break-even times, taking roughly fifty rolls from your opponent to make back the money that you put in, so every fifty opponent turns you’re going to make it back — by the way the trial works, $150 — and that’s if you own two, so it’d take you a hundred turns to get back your full investment of $300 — and that’s if you’re able to get both of them. So compare that to the orange properties where if you have three houses on the orange properties you’re recouping your investment, you’re recouping $300 — the same amount you put in utilities — you’re recouping that every ten turns, every ten opponent rolls. So they’re just way, they’re about five times stronger than, no, actually ten times stronger.

Dan:

Okay I didn’t realize that before that…buying three houses on one of your properties, right?

John:

No, sorry, so buying the third level of houses costs three hundred because I believe the orange ones cost a hundred.

Dan:

Right, okay, so then that third round of houses for this orange set of properties costs $300, and that’s the total amount it takes to buy these utilities, which you can’t even build houses on.

John:

Right, they don’t scale; that’s a very big part. Right, and now railroads are another topic, so railroads also don’t scale, but they provide a lot more bang for your buck.

Dan:

Especially early in the game, I feel like.

John:

Right.

Dan:

Because, one railroad, if you land on it, you have to pay, like, $25 right?

John:

Right.

Dan:

Even if the, yeah, even if the person only owns that one, you still pay twenty-five?

John:

Right, and twenty-five isn’t, it’s not huge.

Dan:

But everything else is, like six.

John:

So if you have one railroad, someone’s going to have to land on it eight times for you to get your money back.

Dan:

Right.

John:

You have two railroads, it’s going to also be eight times. You have three railroads, you’re in six hundred…and it cost him…six times.

Dan:

Oh, it costs a hundred? Right, that’s right, it goes twenty-five, fifty, one hundred, two hundred.

John:

Right, so the third, if you have three railroads and, you know, they only have to land on one of those three railroads six times for you make your money back.

Dan:

Right.

John:

When you have four, it only takes four times, and you’re going to make your money back, and you have more of them, so they’re way, you know, opponents are way more likely to land on them.

Dan:

Okay, so that makes sense. So I mean, you have, railroads you’ve got four, and no other set of properties has four. Utilities have two, which means they’re really bad, and you can’t build on them.

John:

[chuckles] Right.

Dan:

And railroads you can’t build on them either, but like you just explained, it’s…the recuperation of the funds you put in is really quick, and so it makes sense. Now, we compare that to, let’s say the orange property since our orange standard is our gold standard essentially.

John:

Right, exactly. Here’s the thing. We’ll take kind of the ideal scenario: compare four railroads to orange monopoly with three houses, okay? So, four railroads, you haven’t put as much money in, you should be about eight hundred into the railroads, whereas with the orange I think you’d be about…do some quick maths here…about twelve hundred…possibly more like fourteen hundred, into…OK. So three houses it costs $1,460 on the orange, and having four railroads only costs $800. Now, the railroads will pay back $200 every thirteen rolls. The orange for properties will pay back $300 every ten rolls, every nine-and-a-half rolls, so the oranges are strictly better at that point.

Dan:

Right.

John:

However, you had to have $660 more invested in them…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…And so what it comes down to is that railroads are worth it early in the game.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

Because $200 is a lot early in the game; however, later in the game, doesn’t feel so bad. It’s rough, but it’s not awful. Whereas, with the orange houses you’re getting — I don’t know the rents exactly — but you’re getting way more every time that someone lands on it.

Dan:

I know the original rent but not when you have three houses.

John:

Right yeah, yeah it should also be said that we’re doing this without an actual set of Monopoly on us and…

Dan:

That’s, uh, our bad there…

John:

Bit of an oversight, but, uh, we’ll make it happen, cap’n.

Dan:

Yeah. So yeah, I think…while you were talking about this, I think I realized sort of the value of cash flow. So, railroads are something that I feel like you can maybe…you put much less into it, and so I guess you’re able to have it for longer, probably on average, than you would be able to have, you know, the orange Monopoly with three houses, or really any monopoly with three houses. And we keep on talking about three houses, so we should just say that, in general, three houses is pretty much the sweet spot.

John:

So this three-house rule, if you look at…so, you can do some simple math to figure out why this is true.

Dan:

Mmhm. Or you can just look at the chart that we’re going to include, as well.

John:

Right, but if you look at the rent scheme, the difference from the regular rent to one house will be pretty decent; the difference in rent from one house to two houses will be even bigger; difference from two houses to three houses will be the biggest, so you’ll maybe go up even sometimes like two hundred, three hundred dollars in rent…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

For a hundred-dollar house. The difference from the third house to the fourth house is not as big, and the difference from fourth house to a hotel is about the same as the third to the fourth house. So basically, you’re getting the most increase in rent for your house, which is constantly…which doesn’t change in price.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

So you want to be getting the most out of the house that you’re building, and that’s why there’s the three house rule.

Dan:

Yeah. So basically, yeah, to get the most bang for your buck you want to build three houses, but obviously building three houses on any set of properties is going to take a lot of capital, so our orange ones take $1,460 to buy all the properties and get all those houses built; owning all the railroads takes $800. So like I was saying earlier, getting all the railroads is easier, and it also pays off quicker, which means all that time it’s sort of working for you and putting more money back into your pocket so that you can invest in other things, so that you can fund building on other properties, potentially. So yeah, collecting properties, and now consolidating properties…

John:

Right.

Dan:

…is probably what we should talk about next, so…go ahead…

John:

So yeah, we already kind of moved into it a bit, but what we mean by consolidating properties is this idea that at a certain point in the game, you’re not going around the board expecting to pick up new properties. There’s just probably very few of them, there’s probably three or four properties left on the board, and, you know, odds are that you aren’t going to be the one to land on them, right? So if you’re playing with four players, you know, you might get one out of those four properties; you shouldn’t expect any more than that. And so, this is when you should look to see — well, you might even be looking before this right? — you should see this coming, know that the game’s going to hit this stage. Plan in advance what your endgame is going to be.

Dan:

Mmhm.

John:

Think about, “What monopoly am I going to win this game off of?”

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

And obviously that can change because of what happens when you make another player go bankrupt and things open back up, but what I’m saying is if you have Baltic Avenue, right, and then you have two of the pink…

Dan:

So for those who aren’t looking at the board the Baltic is one of the two purple properties that are right next to Go and really cheap.

John:

Right, so if you have one of the cheapest properties, which is only a monopoly of two, so you’d only need one more to get your monopoly if you want to trade with someone, as opposed to your two pink properties, which are right outside of Jail — they’re moderately priced, a little bit on the low side — but you have two of them already, you’re going to think to yourself, “Well…” you know, and say you have other kind of random properties, right? So you’re going to think, “Well, I’d really rather develop the pink monopoly,” because the purple one’s just not going to bring in enough money to win you the game. Even if someone hits a purple, Baltic Avenue, with full hotel, they’re only paying four hundred, and that’s just not game ending, right? You’re not going to put someone out. So this is kind of the stuff that you need to be thinking about, is, “What’s the strategy that’s going to win me the game?” And then you do whatever you can to pursue it without giving into other peoples’ winning strategies, I guess. So other people will have their monopoly that they’re planning to put together, right? So you have to really think about this when you’re deciding what to trade and what to sell. So you can sell properties as well as trade them, and you can also buy properties, of course. Like sell and buy to other players, is what I mean. I think it also brings up another point which maybe I should have mentioned earlier, which is that past your first time around, maybe even, you know, past your second time around, again, you should always be thinking forward. The general rule of thumb is, you buy properties for two reasons: one, because you’re working towards a monopoly, and two, because it will cut someone else off from a very strong monopoly. So if you have the chance, if someone has two orange properties and you land on the third, you’re going to buy it. You should buy it because if they get ahold of that, you know, that’s possibly game over.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

So, there’s…

Dan:

And then you can, you know, then you can…I mean, suppose you have your own monopoly with two things, maybe you can hold that property as leverage if that person ever ends up with the one that you need.

John:

Right.

Dan:

I don’t know…

John:

Exactly.

Dan:

Maybe that’s not the best thought process, but…

John:

Well, and also the nice thing about that scenario where you buy something to block someone else is that you can just immediately mortgage the property…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…And you get half your money back…

Dan:

Yeah, that’s fair.

John:

And you don’t want to collect rent on it anyway; it’s not going to pay back any time soon if you don’t have any houses on it. So, you know, that’s just an easy choice, but sometimes you do take up the third property of someone else’s monopoly just to use as trade bait.

Dan:

Right. So yeah, I kind of want to talk — and I think we can get more into trading now — but going back to your scenario where you have one of the purple cheap properties and you also have two of the pink properties. I can see a scenario where, you know, your opponent also has one of the pink properties and one of the purple properties and you say, “Oh, I’ll trade you this purple for that pink, and then we’ll both have monopolies,” and that might work out all nice and good, but what if it’s not that simple? How are you going to get somebody to give you that third pink property?

John:

You’ve got to, I mean, your only option is to offer them something that’s worth it for them, which is kind of the tough part. So, say you’re stuck with kind of, you know, a lower value monopoly like the pink or the light blue. It might seem like a bad idea to kind of trade away the third, you know, yellow property to someone to get your third light blue. And that’s where you have to decide, “Is it worth it?” In a lot of games, if you’re playing with a lot of players, there’s only so many monopolies to go around, and if you don’t get one — like, you know, getting more than one monopoly is almost unheard of in these kinds of games…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

Until there’s less players.

Dan:

Sure.

John:

So, you know, sometimes a mutually beneficial trade where you’re both getting a monopoly but you’re both ahead of the other two players can be worth it even if you’re at a slightly lower position after the trade.

Dan:

Yeah, so but again, now we’re talking about a scenario where you have two and this person has two, and I’m going to give you your third one, and you’re going to give me my third one, and it’s nice and neat, but what if I have two of the light blue and you have two of the pink and Josh over here has the third one of the pink and Jilberto over here has the third one of the light blue…

John:

Right.

Dan:

How do you make this pan out for you?

John:

Great question, and I think the only way to do it is to be thinking three steps ahead. Say that you know that another player has stuff that you want; a third player has stuff that the second player wants, but they’re not willing to trade. You can trade with the third player in kind of a neutral trade…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…To get stuff that’s more desirable to the second player, who has what you want, and then make the trade. You can do that. A lot of times, though, if you’re playing with people that know what’s going on…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…there’s sometimes just not a way to make it work.

Dan:

Sure.

John:

That’s why you need to, that’s why you want to have as many properties as possible.

Dan:

Sure.

John:

So you have the most options when trading and you can put something together somehow…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…Make it work. It’s not always going to come out clean, and a lot of times games are won and lost by whether you can make that jump.

Dan:

Sure. So yeah, you bring up a really good point there in that if you have people who know what they’re doing, you know, they’re obviously going to see right through, “Oh, I’m just giving this guy a monopoly if I do this seemingly neutral trade, if I just see ahead.” So I do want to talk about the human element of this a bit, but before that, I think one more important point to go through on trading is, let’s stick with the example you gave of the light blue trading for the yellow.

John:

Okay.

Dan:

So, in other words, the light blue — this is Connecticut Avenue, Vermont Avenue, Oriental Avenue — it’s the three right before Jail. And then the yellow, we have Atlantic, Ventnor, and Marvin Gardens, and these are, ironically, right before the Go to Jail square, so, on opposite sides of the board. Buying a house for the light blue monopoly costs $50; buying a house for the yellow properties costs $150. So, you mentioned that it might seem disadvantageous to give this person the yellow monopoly, and you only have this little light blue Monopoly, which maybe doesn’t pay up as much, but at the same time it’s easier to develop. So by the time…you can pay $150 per property and have three houses already, be in the sweet spot, and meanwhile your opponent who has, you know, these other properties, will have only one house, and the payout of the one house on the yellow properties is way less than payout of the three houses on the light blue properties. Meanwhile, you’re gaining money on those and, you know, maybe opening yourself up for other ventures.

John:

So, timing of the deal can also be big too because of this. Say you both have, you know, just for sake of argument you both have $0 and no liquid funds, right? If you give the other player the yellow monopoly and you get a weaker monopoly, they’re going to get more rent immediately from their yellow, and so they might be able to kind of outrun you in the long run. Whereas, say you go into this deal and, since you’ve been buying cheaper properties like the light blue, you have $400 in cash — well, let’s make it a little bit more realistic — so say you have $600 in cash, and your opponent has $200 in cash; you have four hundred more, but he still has a little bit.

Dan:

Sure.

John:

This is great timing for you to make the trade because you can immediately capitalize on the monopoly, whereas they cannot. Even though they get what can be considered a stronger monopoly, you have the ability to capitalize on it. Yeah, and so this is also leads to kind of a paradigm shift in what you think of it as a strong monopoly, too. So if you look at it straight from kind of the perspective we’ve been giving it, you know, maybe from the other side you wouldn’t want this trade to go through, maybe you wouldn’t even want the yellow monopoly.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

Because you know that it’s harder to develop. So that ultimately ties into the human element.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

You’re not going to be playing experts; you’re going to be playing other people.

Dan:

Yeah, I think talking about the human element is maybe going to sound silly to some people, especially if you’re like a, you know, die-hard into the numbers and want to hear us talk about the numbers of Monopoly — I think mostly we’ve been doing that — but I mean, you know, you have to remember too that you’re playing against people. People have emotions, people are not perfectly rational, and people form associations that are not necessarily true, form bonds of trust where they maybe shouldn’t. I think a lot of the human element in this game is being able to sort of cultivate that trust in your opponents early on so that later they might be more receptive to trades. This is what’s known as the norm of reciprocity — there’s a fantastic book that goes into detail about it that I can include in the show notes — but if you give something little in the beginning, people will often feel like they sort of owe you something, you know, “I let you pass free without paying rent on my property early in the game, and now I’m offering you this trade, which is, like, pretty even…” not that you want to necessarily bring that up, but you know, they’ll remember that you let them pass free, and they’ll be like, “Ehhhhh…Yeah, okay, we’re square now.” And I feel like that’s maybe a little bit of a more difficult part of the game to navigate or make concrete statements about, but it’s something you should always remember, is who you’re playing against.

John:

You’re playing against people, and so you can manipulate their opinion of the game.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

That’s a big way do it is to convince them, “Hey, we don’t make this trade, you’re not going to ever get a monopoly.” Play off their fear…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…That this is their only option. Or, you know, in that case you’re just manipulating them emotionally or manipulating their perception of what the game state is in order to make the trade seem more favorable for them, or at least…yeah, make it more favorable; make them feel like they have no choice almost, sometimes, is one way to do it. This is just possible if you’re a little bit crafty about it.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

You can’t be too obvious…

Dan:

Sure.

John:

…Or people will mistrust you.

Dan

Exactly. Yeah, so know the game but also know your opponents. You know, different people will respond to different things as well because they have different personalities.

John:

Right.

Dan:

That’s kind of a lot of what makes it fun too is the human element, and also the element of chance, which I don’t think we’re going to go into that too much, at least not right now, but…

John:

It doesn’t come into the game too much as far as strategy goes, other than the fact that it’s the reason why the orange and red properties pay off the quickest.

Dan:

Right.

John:

You know, you have stuff like rolling two dice and summing them together, you’re generally going to get about seven, you’re going to go about seven spaces as the most common roll.

Dan:

Right.

John:

Stuff like that will slightly, very slightly, influence which properties are most likely to be landed on, and there’s also stuff like Community Chest and Chance that make other properties more likely to be landed on. So, much of what we’ve been talking about has been already incorporating this chance…

Dan:

Right.

John:

…Into our analysis, as far as it’s concerned with how you play. A lot of times there’s not really a way to play around chance; you know, sometimes you just get the “Go to Jail” card.

Dan:

Sure.

John:

You know, Community Chest, there’s not really much you can do about; it even if you know that it’s in the deck, you still can’t control what you roll, right? You know, there’s not much you can do.

Dan:

Yeah. So yeah, it is what makes it fun, it is what makes it so a beginner can, you know, maybe beat an expert like one out of ten times, but if you can play the game in a way that the outcome is not solely dependent on chance — you’ve got a good strategy, you know your opponents, you have a game plan based on how your first time around the board panned out — you know, I think that you will win more times than you should if it were purely based on chance.

John:

Right.

Dan:

Okay so I think we touched on…we talked a lot about trading, and that was helpful; we talked about the different values of properties and why you would or would not want to have them, and how you should value them respective to one another in trades and such — like, of course, first time around the board you probably want to buy, but after that you want to have metrics by which to compare. So now we get to the fun part, and we’re going to talk about Jail. So how are we doing on time…we’ve got maybe fifteen or so minutes left. So yeah, let’s talk about Jail. So there are a few different ways that you can go to Jail: you can land on the Go to Jail space on the board, or there are, I think there’s one of each in Chance and Community Chest, a card that just says, “Go to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”

John:

Right.

Dan:

Always very fun when your opponent takes that card, but, as we’ll see, going to Jail is not always a bad thing.

John:

Right, so I can take the lead on this one. The thing about Jail is that it prevents you from moving around the board, so it doesn’t prevent you from doing anything else. In the beginning of the game, this is huge because you need to be able to land on properties to buy them. It’s almost never worth it to be in Jail for any amount of time in the beginning of the game because you just need the movement, the $200 you get for passing Go is huge, and you need that income. However, as soon as houses start showing up, especially houses on your opponent’s side, you start to lose money by going around the board. So everything, you know, discounting what you’re getting from rent, just the fact that your opponents have high-rent properties on the board makes it so that you just taking your three or four turns to walk around the board, you’re probably going to pay more than $200 in rent, so you’d rather just sit in Jail; do nothing while your properties that have houses on them collect money for you. So this is…

Dan:

It’s like Martha Stewart.

John:

Exactly, just like Martha Stewart. And so that’s, I mean, it’s not a huge…that’s really all there is to it, is that you need to think about what you gain from walking around the board and what you lose from walking around the board, and it’s just going to transition; it’s just going to shift from early game to late game. So yeah, that’s Jail. Basically, Jail is an advantage when you have it late in the game.

Dan:

Yeah, so basically, in terms of wanting to get out of Jail — actually, this is just more of a rules question — if you’re in Jail, are you allowed to not try to roll and get out?

John:

I don’t believe that’s…I believe you have to roll.

Dan:

You have to roll. Okay, got it. Okay, so then early in the game you most likely want to just pay the $50 to get out instead of trying to roll doubles…

John:

You should, just play it safe.

Dan:

…Unless, so one of these sources brought this up — and I don’t know if I necessarily believe this based on what we’ve said about wanting to buy properties early in the game — but if you stay in Jail and you try to roll doubles to get out, you have, like, a one-third chance of landing on one of those orange properties.

John:

Right.

Dan:

So it’s early in the game and nobody else owns those, is it profitable to try and roll doubles, and if you don’t roll doubles on your first roll, then the next time you get to try again?

John:

Right so let’s just…easy way to do this is just to math it out.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

Say you get sent to Jail. First time, you decide you’re going to try to roll out, okay? You have a one-sixth chance of rolling doubles. That’s just because you have to roll the same number that you rolled, like say you roll one die, and then you roll the next die; you have to roll the same number as you rolled the first time.

Dan:

Yep.

John:

So you have a one-sixth chance. So after that one-sixth chance you have a one-third chance of getting one of the orange tiles.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

So that’s a one-eighteenth chance every one of the three turns.

Dan:

Right.

John:

Meanwhile, now — and like, so you know if you really want to find out your probability of not getting it at all, do seventeen over eighteen raised to the third, one minus…all this kind of stuff — basically you’re not, it’s not that likely…

Dan:

Right.

John:

…Even if you try to roll doubles, I would say you’re just way better off.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…By paying the fine and getting out, because you’re just, you’re way more likely to at least land on one property. Might not be an orange…

Dan:

Right, exactly, I mean you might get a pink or a railroad.

John:

…But the thing is that theoretically it makes sense, right? You really want those properties, but you’re already just not that likely to get them regardless.

Dan:

Yeah, I mean I feel like the cost of letting your opponents continue to run around and buy properties while you’re stuck trying to get this one or two is probably just not a good strategy.

John:

Right.

Dan:

Okay, cool.

John:

Now say, okay, say they’re the only two properties left on the board…

Dan:

Maybe…

John:

Of course.

Dan:

Yeah, yeah.

John:

That’s your best shot, but if there’s a ton of properties left, it’s not worth it.

Dan:

Yeah. Okay, yeah that makes sense. And then…“Get Out of Jail Free” cards: that would seem to be — so side note: you are allowed to sell your “Get Out of Jail Free” cards for any price to your opponents. If somebody is selling you a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, you would be stupid to pay more than $50 because…

John:

I’m not entirely sure…

Dan:

Okay yeah, we’ve got to check this…

John:

So if you hit a Go to Jail tile.

Dan:

Mmhm.

John:

And I believe you have a card, do you still move to Jail, or do you stay? Because that’s a difference-maker.

Dan:

It’s a great question. Let me see if I can find that out.

John:

Yeah, look real quick because I think it would be a little more complicated; granted, I would never pay more than a hundred, just as a general rule, because I don’t know that it’s worth it that much, and you don’t know, you can’t buy it once you get the tile; you know, you have to buy the card in advance. I would still say that it’s not a great idea to pick up “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. In general you’re…it’s just auxiliary; you don’t need a “Get Out of Jail Free” card to win. It’s like paying for a life insurance policy, except the payoffs are way less. You pay for like a $50,000 life insurance policy and your, you know, monthly fees are like $100, right?

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

You’re paying way more, you’d be paying all the money that you could use for a house or something…

Dan:

Yeah, that’s true.

John:

…For something that might not even happen.

Dan:

Right, yeah, that’s a really good way to look at it. You know, you could be throwing that money into a property, which is going to make you returns. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I’m looking at the rules, and all I’m seeing for now is if you land in Jail, you must exit on your next turn by, one, using a “Get Out of Jail Free” card if you have one.

John:

Okay.

Dan:

Yeah, I mean, because I feel like it doesn’t stop you from moving because inherently it’s a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, and you can’t get out of Jail if you’re not first in Jail.

John:

That makes sense.

Dan:

Yeah, so we’re just going to go with that interpretation, but if anyone has a different interpretation or can find something to prove us wrong, please, we would love to hear about it.

John:

Alright.

Dan:

Okay so I think that covers Jail. Okay, quantity of money in the game: so now we’re getting into more of the…

John:

This is purely theoretical.

Dan:

…Yeah, the theory.

John:

This is just an idea, and this was kind of something I thought of myself — well, not that I thought of it myself; it all stems from this article that I read that, you know, was based off the idea that if you want to play a fast game of Monopoly, all you do is double the money that you get when you pass Go. When you have more money in the game, it goes quicker. Now kind of similarly, my idea of keeping track of the quantity of money in the game is big because the only money that gets introduced to the game is the fifteen hundred that you get when you start, the $200 you get each time you pass Go, and any money you get from the Community Chest and Chance cards, and possibly Free Parking if you’re playing with that rule set.

Dan:

Right.

John:

And so, meanwhile, things that take money out of the game would be buying properties, paying for houses, any negative taxes or Community Chest/Chance, those take money away from the game, so there’s a finite amount of money in the game. You can kind of measure how far you are into the game by how much money there is, kind of, because of this. You know, generally the amount of money’s going to increase. And also, certain properties are going to be more valuable when there is less money total in the game versus when there’s more money total in the game. For example, the light blue monopoly, when there’s not a lot of money in the game, you know, hitting a light blue property with three houses is huge…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…Because you likely don’t have that much money, and it’s a huge swing, like, you know, if you get $600 — I don’t know what the rent is, $400? $600 rent — that’s a $1,200 swing.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

Because the other player gains it, but no money is technically added to the game; it’s just changing hands.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

So you’ve swung a huge amount of money in your favor that you can do other stuff with.

Dan:

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, so basically in this scenario we were talking about earlier, if there was a ton of money in the game — in that when we were thinking about trading the blue monopoly for the yellow monopoly — if there’s a ton of money in game…

John:

Like say it’s been gridlocked, no one’s trading a monopoly…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…So you’re just going around the board collecting money, and then there’s a lot of money in the game, and then take it, yeah.

Dan:

And then you have the blue and your opponent has the yellow. You know immediately that like your opponent has way more than, you know, $1,500 or whatever he needs to build three houses on this set of properties, and so you’re like, “I’m giving this person way more than I’m getting in this trade because they’re going to be able to develop, and they’re going to be able to see the returns…

John:

…and pull more out of it.

Dan:

…and pull more out of it, yeah. So yeah, again, timing of the game really matters when it comes to thinking about what deals are good for you, and you’ve kind of just got to know the game, know your opponents, have a nose for that sort of thing.

John:

Right.

Dan:

And you’ve got to be able to think on your feet.

John:

[chuckles] And this is also something that maybe we might have skipped over, but just…we haven’t really talked a ton about when to start building…

Dan:

Ah, okay.

John:

…And we can touch on that real quick, so what do you think?

Dan:

Well, so I would think you would want to start building — so, with a caveat — so I would think you’d want to start building as soon as you have a monopoly unless, you know, maybe you’re about to buy some other property and you want to use the money for that first before you start building, or you think you might be about to land on somebody’s square and get bankrupt and so you want to hold off on building until the next turn, but I feel like, barring certain tactical, cross-sectional considerations…

John:

Momentary, like, this is the game state exactly now…

Dan:

Yeah, I feel like, barring any of those considerations, you probably want to just start building right when you get a monopoly; is that correct, or what do you think?

John:

Well I would agree with you on that. I would say that really, yeah, the key is knowing what those situations are where you wouldn’t, and also knowing that sometimes it just comes down to you risking the game.

Dan:

Mmhm.

John:

Because, you know, one of my considerations that I’d say is don’t go putting all your money into houses if you’re right next to someone that’s already developed their properties, right?

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

If you’re about to pay huge rent, don’t waste, don’t put your money into houses. However, if you look at that scenario further, you notice that you’re already behind because they have developed properties and you don’t. Now, even if you were to save your money and pay the huge rent, you’re probably still going to lose, or you going to be in a bad spot.

Dan:

Sure.

John:

Whereas it might be worth it to just risk, just say, you know, “I’ll risk the game on this one-third chance; I have a one-third chance of landing on it, but I have a two-thirds chance of not. I’m going to risk it and see what happens.”

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

Sometimes that’s what it comes down to; when you’re in a losing position, you’re forced to make decisions like that.

Dan:

Yeah, you know, “Don’t back your opponent into a corner.”

John:

Yeah.

Dan:

Yeah, so I think it brings up the same question you asked before of, “What Monopoly is going to win me the game?” You have to be thinking about winning. You know, it’s not just about staying alive, staying in the black until the next turn; it’s about, “Am I going to…if I don’t do this right now, I’m either going to lose one turn from now or lose two turns from now; if I do this right now, I might lose this turn, but I also might come back, but I have a chance, at least, of coming back.”

John:

Right. Sometimes that’s just what it comes down to. Otherwise, yeah, if you’re ahead, if you’re the first one to get a monopoly, you should definitely buy…

Dan:

Build, build, build.

John::

…As much as you can because you’re not going to be paying out that much…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…In rent across the board, like, you can mortgage something else to pay your rent for a round, so…

Dan:

Yeah. Sure, and now I’m seeing like why people might be more willing to trade because if one person gets the first Monopoly and, “Well, hey, unless we do something, we’re all screwed.”

John:

Exactly, it’s huge, everyone’s afraid.

Dan:

Even if this is uneven, I might go ahead and do it because otherwise it’s over quickly. I guess that’s what some people want, but…

John:

Like, everyone’s looking at their position and they’re saying, “Okay, given the properties that I have, if I make this move I’ll have a less — you know, say you’re playing with four people — if I make this move, I’ll have a less than twenty-five percent chance of winning. However, it’s still my best move. Like, I’ll still be behind, but I’ll be less behind if I make this trade. You can kind of play on that with people; you can take advantage of knowing that people sometimes have to make subpar moves because it’s still their best move available.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

It’s still benefits them in some way, but it’s not the best, like it’s not an ideal move.

Dan:

Yeah. Okay, so we wanted to talk about the housing shortage tactic, and then we also wanted to talk about some other non-one-for-one trading scenarios, like a railroad for a monopoly or two monopolies for one monopoly, et cetera. So I think those frameworks can generally be summed up in what we’ve already said in that it depends on the state of the game, it depends on how much money is in the game, it depends on the immediate position of pieces, the monetary position of your opponents who are not the ones that are part of this trade that might go down…

John:

Right.

Dan:

…As well, so I think we don’t really need to go through those any further, but let’s talk about housing shortage because it’s just a fun one to talk about.

John:

Right, so housing storage is a tactic that uses the fact that, I believe, there is exactly twenty eight houses, and twelve hotels — the hotels aren’t as relevant — but there are exactly twenty-eight houses included with every Monopoly set, and, you’d think, you know, in other parts of Monopoly — for money, for example — there is a rule saying, you know, if you run out of money, the banker can write you little slips that say how much money you have. However, for houses, there’s an explicit…

Dan:

Yeah, you know, the Fed can print money.

John:

Yeah, exactly [chuckles]. For houses, though, that’s explicitly not allowed; there are only twenty-eight houses available to all players, so you can take advantage of this fact. The idea of the housing shortage strategy is that you want to buy when you get a monopoly or two — you ideally want to have two — and you want to buy four houses on each of those properties, and that way you’re taking up…what would that be?

Dan:

Yes, what is that…

John:

Twenty-four. That’d be twenty-four houses gone so that anyone else can only build four houses, right?

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

So yeah, at that point you’ve basically won.

Dan:

Right.

John:

And so, Dan, what are kind of the ins and outs of this strategy, like what are your opinions on it?

Dan:

I think having two monopolies before anyone else has one, or, I mean, yeah, before anyone else has more than one, is probably unrealistic, and also it has to…you need a lot of capital to build those houses up, so, I don’t know, maybe if you had two really cheap monopolies you might be able to do it. But…

John:

Yeah, I think that mostly you’re trying to do with Baltic and the light blue, or possibly light blue and pink.

Dan:

Yeah, right, so either two fifties, or a fifty and a one hundred in terms of the price of houses. Yeah, so I feel like, I guess even having one Monopoly with four houses on each square is going to sap the housing market pretty heavily; I’m trying to think of if there’s four players and you have these twelve houses, that means there are sixteen houses to go around. That means, you know, between your…

John:

Another couple people could put up three houses on a monopoly.

Dan:

Yeah, so I mean, that sounds pretty solid, but how much different would that be from having, say, three houses on each of those?

John:

Right, yeah, I don’t know. And obviously, you’re taking out three to five or, you know, three to six houses from the market by having only three as opposed to having four.

Dan:

Right.

John:

And I think that could be a deal-breaker. It can be big. And also, I think that you get to a point where, if you have those two monopolies, what else are you going to put your money into, right? So if you…

Dan:

Well, I’m talking about if you have one monopoly.

John:

Oh, okay.

Dan:

If you have one monopoly, is it worth it to put four if you could just do three? Because again, I said that probably if you have two monopolies, you’re probably going to win anyway…

John:

Right yeah, that’s the thing.

Dan:

…Just by building houses in general.

John:

Right so that’s why we’ve had, Dan and I have talked about this and consider this strategy to be “win more.” It’s really for the fact that if you’re in a position to work to cause a housing shortage, you’re probably also just in a position to win the game by playing soundly, you know, buying your three houses and being smart, right? So yeah, I think that in the case of having just one monopoly, the thing is, though, that if you have nothing else to invest your money into, and you have extra money, you might as well.

Dan:

Yeah, especially with the cheaper properties.

John:

But it shouldn’t be something that you aim to do.

Dan:

Right.

John:

I guess my conclusion is that this is a strategy where, we’re talking it about as a strategy, but it’s a specific tactic. But it should just be a general thing that you consider. It’s something that you factor in when you’re making your game state observations, when you’re saying, “Should I make this trade?” You’re also looking at how many houses there are left, because you look at how able you and the other player are to develop your monopolies. Something like that. So to me it’s just something to keep in mind; this housing shortage rule is huge in specific scenarios.

Dan:

Right, right.

John:

It won’t be huge every game.

Dan:

And you should definitely keep an eye out for it if one of your opponents is just trying to like, build up all these houses.

John:

Right, because imagine…

Dan:

…keep that in mind, and maybe build earlier than otherwise.

John:

Right, and if you’re able to pull off this strategy once…

Dan:

You are freaking legendary for life…

John:

YES.

Dan:

And we’re making this podcast so you can maybe impress people with your knowledge of gaming, so if you pull this strategy, this housing shortage victory, one time, you are, like, the bee’s knees forever, even if you suck the rest of the time.

Jonh:

[chuckles] Right. And…But I will tell you, it won’t work the second time…

Dan:

Yep, yeah.

John:

…playing the same people.

Dan:

Probably also true, yeah, oh definitely playing the same people, for sure.

John:

It’s a tactic that can easily be outmaneuvered…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…Because it relies on you trading or somehow achieving multiple monopolies.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

That’s where the strategy shines: you’re playing with people that are really into their big monopolies, right? You can take advantage of this and, early on, trade for the Baltic, the purple monopoly, and then somehow get your hands on another one, another small one, which is possible because you can make trades that look awful for you on the surface; your trading a light blue for a red…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…And completing monopolies on either side, but, you know, you have the means to develop yours faster, or something like that.

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

You can play off of people’s inability to judge what your strategy is…

Dan:

Yeah.

John:

…But that’s why it won’t work twice.

Dan:

Right, exactly.

John:

Something to keep in mind.

Dan:

Yeah. Alright, well I think we are out of time; actually, I think we’re pretty over time…

John:

Pretty past time, yeah.

Dan:

…But this has been fun. I hope you learned something; we sure did.

John:

Yeah.

Dan:

So yeah. We are…yeah, by the time you are listening to this podcast, it will probably have a title and, you know, maybe sponsors someday, but bottom line is, we hope you learned something, we hope it’s helpful, and we can’t wait to see you next time…

John:

When we talk about another game; we’re going to take another game and dissect it similarly.

Dan:

Yep.

John:

We got a few things on the list, right?

Dan:

Yep.

John:

Risk, Parcheesi, a few things…

Dan:

Some Backgammon…

John:

Right, so if you are interested in board games of all kinds, then we’re your guys.

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