This question may sound a bit strange but I have to ask, are there any proven winning methods for Monopoly?
Obviously a lot of it depends on luck with the dice, but are there any good methods?
The strategy I was always go in with is to buy every property I land on, even if it means mortgaging one or two of my current properties.
For Mayfair and Park Lane (Sorry, Americans, “Boardwalk”!!) I will mortgage every thing I have to get it.
I also charge VERY high prices for selling property that I already own. I get so annoyed when someone wants to buy a yellow property off me, so that they can have all 3, and they say I’m playing unfailry when I don’t sell it for double the actual amount (let’s ignore the fact they are about to stack hotels on the 3rd most expensive properties).
So, I always ask for extravagant prices for properties that complete a “3”.
Any other tips, strategies or proven winning methods?
Your strategy seems right on target to me. The only thing I’ll add is, it makes a big difference whether you’re playing one-on-one or in a group. If you’ve got three or more players, it pays to ease off a bit and just strive for one or two monopolies and spend your money developing them, rather than buying new properties.
Know all the rules.
I never sell properties, I always want to complete a monopoly myself if I trade.
The Orange group is the most landed-on set.
If you have a set, get three houses on each as soon as possible, even if you have to mortgage other properties. In fact, mortgaging to build houses/hotels is almost always a good idea.
Create a housing shortage by staying at four houses per property, rather than building hotels.
The rules say a Hotel costs $X plus four houses, so without the houses, your opponents can’t build hotels either.
Swipe an extra $500 when the game starts (j/k).
rember to point out that mortgaged properties can’t be traded (IIRC), that unmortgaging costs an extra 10%, and that when someone goes bankrupt to someone else, that person has to pay 10% of the mortgage value for all mortgaged properties.
This probably belongs in IMHO.
The first person to develop a monolopy has the best chance of winning. In a championship game that I watched, the winner was able to develop the two cheapest properties on the board (the deep purples next to Go). While everyone bickered and refused to allow anyone else to develop a monolopy this guy patiently won by administering paper cuts to everyone who dropped by the neighborhood.
Different situations call for different approaches. If every player is cash poor you can wipe someone out with the four railroads.
Here’s something that doesn’t seem to be mentioned in the Monolopy books: In Real Life bargins are struck without each party knowing exactly what the other party has. This rule should apply to Monolopy, too(at least, that’s how I justify it). Someone may not sell you a property if they know you can develop it. So hide some of your money. There are many opportunities early in the game when you can palm a large bill and sit on it.
The rules provide that a mortgaged property may be traded or sold, but the acquiring buyer must either pay off the mortgage immediately, or pay the ten percent mortgage fee to the Bank to keep it mortgaged, paying the fee AGAIN when he actually pays off the mortgage.
I’ve always found it very effective to buy the whole corner around “Go”, i.e., the two cheapest properties and the two most expensive. Develop both sets to the hilt, especially
Baltic and Mediterranean so you can get some value out of them. Then instead of ‘Go’ being the square where everyone else collects, they think of it as the square where they get gouged by you yet again.
Also, by buying and developing Baltic and Mediterranean, you
compensate somewhat for the fact that Park Place and Broadway are only a twosome.
Almost certainly, muppetsoup. But I seem to recall that a lot of math has been done on Monopoly probabilities, so I’ll leave the thread here overnight to see if the nighttime mathies have a “certain” best strategy.
If it turns out my memory is failing me, I’ll shoot the thread over there tomorrow.
To win at Monopoly, you need cash flow to fund purchases, improving property, and paying the inevitable rent.
A very effective strategy for me has always been to acquire all four railroads as quickly as possible.
Think about it, instead of clustering your income around one small area of the board (and thus getting a somewhat large amount very rarely) - get people no matter where they are on the board. Instead of being 35 squares away from Boardwalk, they are no more than 10 squares from the next railroad.
I have always taken 1/2 of railroad income and socked it away, and used the other half specifically for buying property.
You must generate income to stay in the game. The only reliable way of doing this is getting the railroads to fund your empire
The railroads are not that great of an investment, although they are far from the worst. You will get the best returns on the Oranges and Reds, because they are landed on the most frequently.
Why?
Because the most commonly landed on space is JAIL. The oranges lay 6, 7, and 9 spaces away from JAIL. (I’m working from memory here). The reds, especially Illinois, are also easy to get to in 2 rolls from JAIL.
If you go after the oranges and reds hard and monopolize that corner, you will soon be rolling in dough.
Ideal strategy for three or more players, based on experience:
What Phouchg said: Get the cash-generators first (railroads and utilities).
After you’ve built up a decent hoard of cash, trade them for monopolies and use the cash hoard to develop the monopolies.
And never, ever let someone else get a cheap monopoly and put hotels on it early (the purples or the light blues). Make 'em wait, if you can, until you also have at least one monopoly yourself.
The best strategy for me has always been to create a house shortage. If you have the cheap properties ($50 & $100 houses) and have maybe two monopolies on them, just put as many houses as money permits. If it’s say the light blue and the purple, you now own 24 of the games 36 houses. This effectively allows you to control the housing market, unless there is only one other player that has a monopoly (who can then still build to his heart’s content). If you own 7 properties that you are allowed to build houses on, given cash, you are sitting pretty.
The major downside of this strategy, of course, is that you have to get your houses before others get hotels and that you have to avoid those street repair cards like the plague.
Definitely, however, the orange and red properties around Free Parking are the most valuable in the game due to their strategic placement of Jail. St. Charles’ Place and Boardwalk are probably next due to cards that land you directly on them (Illinois is also like this which makes it by far the most valuable red card).
Hands down the most assured way of winning Monopoly is the same as for winning Scrabble, Yatzee, Cribbage, Risk, and almost any other game I can think of. Play my next door neighbor. She loves to play, but couldn’t win to save her life! If you’re interested, I’ll set you up. Otherwise, you must find your own patsy. They are a great ego boost.
As for the “housing” shortage thing, I had absolutely NO IDEA that when house run out, that’s it. We just assumed that our Monopoly game had lost some of it’s pieces, so we break up some little bits of paper and count them as “houses”. I don’t think my friends will be too eager to scrap that from happening…
Okay, Doc, in that case let’s quickly cover a couple of other bases. Some Monopoly games have been known to go on for days because too many people play under the “assumed” rules we all grew up with rather than the real ones in the rule book
This is really basic, so please don’t feel insulted if you already know 'em.
When you land on an unowned property you either buy it or it goes up for auction among the other players(the auction is skipped by a lot of people). This may slow down the game at first, but it really helps speed it up later. The auction is also a strategy. If you really don’t want the property you landed on you might call an auction and cause others to overbid and get cash poor.
The Bank never runs out of money.
Free Parking is just that…Free Parking. It’s not necessarily a place where jail fines or anything else goes.
So what’s it’s purpose? If you just ran a gauntlet of developed oranges and almost hit some developed reds that Free Parking space is a Godsend!
There are also some strategies that can be employed that are not in the rules per se, but are legal. You can agree to not collect rents from certain players when they land on your properties as a consideration for them transferring them to you. However, enforcing this can lead to brawls if not properly spelled out.
Also, in the rules, you don’t miss out on collecting your rent until TWO players have rolled the dice, not one.