Hidden away in people's cupboards somewhere, is often a copy of the board game Monopoly. People also often give away different themed versions of Monopoly; wherein they are played once at Christmas and then possibly never again, once people remember that even a themed version of Monopoly is still in fact Monopoly.
The game of Monopoly was originally designed as a teaching tool to teach people that an unrestricted rentier class ends up ruining the world for everyone and that unfettered Monopolies of property are horrible things.
It is an almost universally acknowledged truth, that everyone who has played Monopoly ends up hating it. This is mostly due to the fact that practically everyone plays the game incorrectly and has made up house rules which make the game not function properly.
For instance:
1) There are no rules that say that taxes and penalties from Chance and Community Chest go in the middle of the board.
2) Nowhere in the rules does it say that you get any reward for landing on Free Parking whatsoever. As far as I can make out Free Parking serves no function at all in the game, other than being the corner square.
3) Nowhere in the rules does it say that you have to go on a tour of the board before you can buy property.
4) Moreover, if a property is turned in without being bought, the rules actually say that an auction must be held immediately.
If you have been playing with any of these rules, stop. The game of Monopoly is actually designed so that there's not enough money in the game to keep everyone solvent. Any additional injections of cash, merely prolong the pain.
I implore you, in the name of Uncle Rich Pennybags to play the game of Monopoly properly; that way you might find that it isn't deserving of all the hatred that is heaped upon it. That's your fault for not ever reading or following the rules properly, you little monsters.
On that fourth point, when someone does land on a property and doesn't immediately buy it at the listed price, then you should hold an auction. In fact, deliberately turning down a property and then buying it at the following auction might save you a pretty penny.
Conducting auctions in Monopoly is actually ludicrously easy and provided you actually play the game properly, an entire game of Monopoly can actually be over in about 25 minutes. One of the best ways to conduct a lot of auctions in a game of Monopoly is to run them all as silent auctions.
Have everyone participating in the auction write down their bid on a piece of paper and turn them in to the banker. Whoever wins the auction, at whatever price they have written down, including if it is £1 or £10,000 is the price which they will be held to; including if it bankrupts them in the process - Especially if it bankrupts them in the process.
If in the event that someone wins an auction with a ludicrously stupidly high bid and they are bankrupted in the process, those properties need not be landed upon again and may be reauctioned immediately.
The reason why Monopoly is actually not a terrible game but why it ends up being terrible is because people fundamentally misunderstand what the game is. To be honest, a game where you roll dice and move tokens around the board is pretty boring and that is why Candyland which is a zero player game, is only really of interest to children under the age of seven. The Monopoly board while being iconic is not actually the game but only the apparatus to help play the game. The actual game, which is even stated on the box, is that it is a property trading game.
If you conduct auctions right after the first roll of the dice, then not only does the game begin immediately but the psychological battle also begins.
The game is actually pretty well designed. Under the absolute best set of conditions, the value of money coming into the economy is just a shade over 13% but as money is sunk into property. What that means is that as the amount paid as 'salary' for passing Go remains fixed, then this has the effect of making real wages growth go backwards. As cash is sunk into property improvements (houses, hotels, or bonuses for owning monopolies) then the value of return on that property begins to vastly exceed the rate of new cash being generated, then there is a tipping point where those people who have postioned themselves the best, are the most likely to win. If the game is played properly and auctions are held right from the start, then the rate of return on property very quickly rises to more than 10% as real wages growth falls below that number.
If everyone knows all of this from the outset, then the game becomes far more interesting than the usual boring phase at the beginning where everyone sits around semi-patiently and waits for everyone else to faff about. If played properly and actually according to the rules as printed, then Monopoly is actually quite a fast game of nastiness.
I have been in a game where someone bought Mayfair for £201 in the auction and then immediately mortgaged it. Pay $201, get back £200; which means that they actually effectively bought the thing for £1 net and took the power of the "Advance token to Mayfair" card out of the game; plus they had an almost useless thing to give away in lieu of cash when the bankruptcy man comes knocking at the door.
The other thing about holding auctions which you're probably not doing, is that they can be held for literally any asset at any time in the game. There is nothing to prevent you from auctioning off a property at any time, nor is there anything in the rules to prevent you from auctioning off a Get Out Of Gaol Free Card. Truth be told, an auction is actually the most effective way to determine what the actual value of a thing is at any given point in time. The other thing about a private auction as opposed to one being conducted by the bank is that even in a silent auction, you can set a silent reserve price; which means that if the bids aren't high enough, you can turn all of them down.
The next time that anyone thinks about playing Monopoly, don't dismiss it out of hand because it's 'boring'. The reason why it is boring is almost certainly on your head; if you played by the rules instead of making up nonsensical house rules which break the game, you might find that Monopoly unmortgages itself.
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