If you've ever sat through a multi-hour play-through of Monopoly, you know how quickly everyone can turn against each other. Avoid the rage-quits and outbursts by ending your game early with some monopoly strategies that are made to help you dominate your competition with ease.
Why Strategize Before You Start a Game?
Since so many people play Monopoly from a very young age, it's hard for people as adolescents and adults to recognize the game beyond a childhood pastime and as the true strategic juggernaut that it can be. As a child, you're much more focused on buying every property that you land on and on avoiding jail than you are with developing your spaces and calculating which spaces to purchase. Figuring out a clear thesis for your gameplay before you roll the dice can give you a game plan that your opponents will find hard to beat.
Buy Smarter, Not Harder
If you ever played Monopoly with a lot of friends or siblings, you probably have an attachment to a specific property color or a certain utility/railroad on the board. While it's nice to feel the nostalgia of playing like you did as a kid, it won't help you dominate your competition. When you're purchasing your properties, there are a few key strategic points to employ to keep the other players under your control.
Race to Illinois Avenue
Statistically, Illinois Avenue is the property that player's land on the most. Therefore, having Illinois Avenue puts you at a mathematic advantage over the other players. Don't forget that once you have Illinois Avenue, develop it up to get the highest amounts of money for every turn someone lands on it.
Collect the Entire Orange Set
According to a few million simulations and mathematic probabilities, the orange spaces are by-far the most valuable spaces to collect. You're more likely to land on one of the orange spaces than you are any of the other spaces in the game. This debunks many people's assumptions that the bigger ticket spaces like Boardwalk have the highest potential values. Second to orange are the red spaces, located on the other side of Free Parking.
Hoard Properties Like a Dragon
Don't ever sell your properties to another player; not only are you giving up some of your own revenue, but you're allowing them the possible chance to develop on that property and force you to pay back more than their investment to you for that place. Therefore, think like a dragon and keep all of your properties close at hand.
Develop in Lieu of Buying
Although you should absolutely maintain a strong purchasing presence across the board, you don't need to solely focus on buying properties. Developing properties is the quickest and most assured way for you to get a return investment on the amount you paid for the property, as well as more money from players as they land on your spaces. If you have the option of developing between a few different properties, develop those in your collection that have the highest payouts first as you'll make the biggest profits.
Keep in mind that you don't have to wait for your turn to buy hotels or houses on the properties that you own. So, once you've bought all of the properties in one color group, feel free to start your complete takeover by adding housing and hotels at a breakneck pace.
Jail Can Be a Useful Tool
Landing yourself in jail normally elicits a couple of loud shouts and defeated faces, as you have to lock yourself away from a few rounds. However, jail isn't merely a prop to keep the game exciting; you can actually use jail to your advantage. Inevitably, you're going to end up in jail at least once over the course of your game and, depending on how far into the game you are, will determine how you should approach imprisonment.
- Early in the game - If you're early in the game, you'll want to pay the $50 fee to get out quickly. This way, there are still a lot of properties available for you to grab before your competitors do.
- Late in the game - If the game is winding down and most of the properties have been sold, it's a great idea to use jail to keep off the board for three rounds. This means that you save three rounds worth of potential payments to other players, while you might receive extra capital from their rolls.
Win Monopoly in Under a Minute
If you're feeling particularly lucky, you can manifest a specific course of actions which will let you win a game of Monopoly in under a minute. Granted, this happens only once every 253,899,891,671,040 games, according to Assistant Professor of Sociology, Josh Whitford. Yet, if Lady Luck is on your side, you may just be able to roll enough doubles to land on Community Chest and make your way around the board to purchase both Park Place and Boardwalk. From here, you should purchase three houses for Boardwalk and two for Park Place, and if you're opponent is unlucky enough to land on a Chance square and select the card that makes them advance to Boardwalk, you'll have bankrupted them in under a minute.
Get Ready to Monopolize the Market
Monopoly isn't for the soft hearted, and you should absolutely devise a cutthroat winning strategy before entering any Monopoly match. However, even the best laid plans can go awry, and in a board game that does incorporate luck and chance into its construction, you can't only rely on your strategy to help you come out on top. Yet, if you plan on accumulating the most valuable, highest-frequented locations and developing them into veritable powerhouses, you've got a pretty great chance of beating whatever curve-balls luck throws your way.
