SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How Monopoly Works

28:01That I still enjoy today, I love Yahtzee. Sure. We also played this game called Bull, and it was like a stock trading game. Oh yeah? With cards, and it's just now occurring to me that all these games are just teaching you about life. Yeah. It's like Monopoly is nothing but real estate. The game of life is everything. Right. This game Bull was about the stock market. Yeah. Sorry was about sarcastic. Sorry. Yeah. Because you had to say it like a jerk. Right. Candyland, we know what that's all about. Yeah. Drugs, right? Probably. Chutes and ladders taught you to stay away from snakes. Yeah, Operation taught you how to be a doctor.

28:43Oh, yeah, that's right. That's where I got my MD. And then, of course, Battleship taught you how to be a warmonger. That's right. So did Risk. And take great pride. Risk taught you to be the Antichrist. Yeah, Risk, we should do. There is an article on Risk. I saw. I looked it over. It didn't seem as interesting as this one. Yeah, I don't know if the history is as interesting for sure. And I mean, isn't that what's interesting about any game? The history of it? Yeah, I think so. So let's talk about the rules, dude. Okay. Let's start at the beginning. We'll start at Go. Go is where you start, and that's where, like you said, you collect the 200 every time you land on it or pass it.

29:22Sometimes house rules, you get 400 for actually landing on it. and only 200 for passing it. We never play that way. Oh, that makes sense. That's a good rule. But free parking is where we had house rules. That is a space on the corner of the board where you supposedly, per the official rules, don't do anything. Yeah, there's nothing. It's just a space. But what we did was we donated all the collected taxes and fees and put it under free parking. And if you land on that, that was like a lottery win. Oh, yeah. And a lot of people play that way. I think I've heard of that one before. Yeah, it was, you know, we were a bunch of beep, nevermind.

30:01I liked it because it allowed you more money, which is my favorite thing. Cash. It's the lotto. Yeah, exactly. We got ahead of ourselves. Let's just start at the real beginning. Okay. So everybody sits down at the table. Yeah, you all get a drink. Yeah, somebody gets a drink. Maybe you have to wait because somebody has to go to the bathroom, so you're all sitting there quietly, and then when everybody's finally at the table, You guys select a banker, and the banker distributes the Monopoly money, $1 ,500 to each player. Two 500s, two 100s, two 50s, six 20s, and five 10s, five 5s, and five 1s. That's right.

30:38$1 ,500. And the goal of the game that you're getting to here at 30 Minutes In is to bankrupt all of your family and friends. That's the whole point. Pretty much. Some people put a time limit, because this game can go on forever, and other people say, no, you gotta finish it by bankrupting everyone or until the last person is like, I give, geez, I've got$8. I hate this game. Yeah, that's usually me. And Emily usually has her foot on my throat. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we play two-person Monopoly, which is just not fun. Yeah, because you know one of you's gonna lose. No, that's not why. It's a game that's more fun with more people, I think.

31:16Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah. So, okay, so everybody's got$1 ,500. bucks. You roll the dice to see who goes first. Whoever rolls the highest goes first. Classic move. Then you roll both die, and you start moving from the ghost square, and you go clockwise around the board. And when you land on a property, this I didn't know. Which is kind of a basic rule, I guess, but I never played it this way. When you land on a property, you have the option to buy it. I knew that part. But if you decline to buy it, then the property goes up for auction. Not only have I never played it the way I've I've never heard of anyone playing it that way.

31:51Okay, so it's not just me. Not just you. All right. So I guess during an auction, not only the person, not only everybody else, but the banker and the person who declined to buy it can bid on it. Which doesn't make sense unless you're trying to get it for lower. Yeah. Can't you start the bidding at wherever? Yes, you can start the bidding anywhere you want. So you could conceivably get it for lower. And if you're playing against somebody who declines to buy something and then starts bidding on it at a lower price, keep an eye on that person. That's a shark. Yeah, they're out to win. Yeah. Yeah, I hate that rule.

32:29Because to me, it's just like, what's the point in rolling and landing on something? I guess right of first refusal, but I don't know. I don't like it. No, and plus the Quakers were like, we specifically put a price on these things, so there wouldn't be a lot of yelling. Yeah. We don't like yelling. They had another game to follow called, the quiet roof raising ceremony. Those are not Quakers. It was fun. That was the Amish. They're different. Oh, don't you think Quakers raise some roofs? Yeah, they do. Ain't no party like a Quaker party. That's right. All right, so let's say you buy all of the properties.

33:06They're divided into different colors. There's three green, green ones, orange ones, blue ones, light blue. If you buy all of the properties that are tied together by a single color, then you have what's called a monopoly. And that means you can then charge double rent, although we never do that. We just keep it single rent, and you now have the option to buy houses. And then once you have enough houses, I think three, you can then buy a hotel. Right, and that's called improvements. You're improving your land. Supposedly. Once you start to do improvements, things change a little bit. Not only can you start making more money, but it's actually harder to mortgage your properties if you find yourself in debt.

33:49Right. Because this is how crazy complicated it is. I don't think I was ever paying that much attention to Monopoly that I ever mortgaged a piece of land. Oh, really? I think it was like it started to get into debt or whatever. I was just like, oh, I'm done. But apparently, so if you find yourself indebted, and let's say you have a Monopoly, and you want to mortgage, you can mortgage just one of the spots, right? Yes. But to do so, let's say you have a hotel on that piece of land that you're mortgaging. You first have to sell the hotel back to the bank at half price. Yeah. And then you can mortgage the land.

34:31You're still, I think, are you collecting rent on that land or does it go right to the bank? No, that's where you just turn the card over and it's just, you still technically own it. Right. But you can't collect any rents on it. But you can collect rent and everything on the other two pieces of property, or the other one, depending on which one you own. I don't know, really? No, you can't. I looked it up. So that doesn't bust up the monopoly? No, it doesn't. Okay. So you still own the monopoly. It's just that one is mortgaged. And then to get it back, you have to pay the bank the mortgage plus 10%.

35:01Right. And this is where you can get silly with your house rules if you want. Yeah. You know, like as far as mortgaging and stuff like that. because supposedly it's a rule two where you can't, the only thing that is not allowed is a personal loan. Right. And I did all kinds of personal loaning because I was Mr. Cash. What were your interest rates? I don't remember. Did you break any usury laws? No. I was a kid, so it was probably just like. Just pay me back whenever. 10 % or something. I got you. I'm not the right, I'm not enough of a. You're not the shark. Diehard capital, no. You're not the one who like declines to buy something so you can bid on it at a lower price.

35:38I'm playing Candyland. I loved Candyland. Actually, I never played that. It was a great game. Was it? Because of the art. Was it just crazy? It was beautiful stuff. And then nowadays you look at the Candyland board and you're like, poor kids. Yeah. They don't know what they were missing. I just got a ticket to ride game that I haven't played yet. Have you heard of that one? No. It was a German game that's like one game of the year. It's a train game. Like you establish train routes between cities. Uh-huh. But it's supposedly like, it sounds like really? that's fun but it's supposedly great I just bled a tear did you at the thought of it yeah it does sound pretty bad yeah but no it's one game of the year oh hey those Germans and watch people ticket to ride enthusiasts will be like dude it's the best ever oh I'm sure I've heard like German game night is like a thing now yeah I think they're a little more heady is that what it is I think so this seems like I read over the rules the other night just so I would know what to do and cause you gotta like the purchaser of the game has to be the game explainer as well.

36:40Right. You have to listen to Kraftwerk while you play it? Yeah. Well, you don't have to, but it helps. House rules. Yeah. So I guess we, oh, and we said you can do anything but give personal loans, right? That's what the official rule states. So like you can, I can buy from you on the side or something like that, or you can hold something up for auction, whatever anybody's doing. Yeah, and we always played where you had to do that when it was your turn. That makes sense. And that would take your turn as well. Right. Yeah. But, again, the whole point is to be the person who owns the most stuff so that you can bankrupt all of your family and friends.

37:18That's right. And, I mean, those are the rules, but there's actually strategy to it. And people pay a lot of attention to this. You know there's a Monopoly World Championship roughly every four years, although it's been the last one was in 2009. So we're due. An American lawyer won, right? In 2009? No, I think it was a Swede or a Norwegian man. Okay. Maybe he was the North American. That's what he was. The North American champ. Yeah, and he represented the U.S. in the world championships. It sounds so silly. Weird. Yeah. Huh. Well, he used the iron. The piece that was retired, yeah. Yeah, I think the American used the thimble.

37:58Gotcha. Let's talk more. Terry just laughed. She was like, really? That's a fact that people need? Well, we're trying to really appeal to the purists here, too. We want everybody to be engaged. All right, so let's do one more message break, and then we'll come back and talk strategy.

38:25Okay,

38:30Chugger, so again, the point, bankrupt everybody. But there's techniques that you can use to more efficiently bankrupt people. Like the overall, the best strategy, the basic strategy, is to buy everything, every chance you have. Yeah, I mean, I looked up, there's a lot of different people's strategies and opinions online. I did find this one from a guy, and that was his strategy, is buy everything. It doesn't matter what it is. Even the sucker's bet, the electric company in the water works. Yeah, which don't pay off, really. He said buy it all and never have more than$100 in cash is his rule. Wow.

39:08He says the number one mistake people make is hoarding cash like I did. Yeah, you're making the number one mistake. That's right. And he says that buy everything and do whatever it takes to get a monopoly, even a bad one. Like he will trade to get a bad monopoly and give someone a good monopoly even as long as he gets the monopoly. Oh, gotcha. And he says, it's fine, because then you two will probably take out everyone else. The point is just to get a monopoly and improve it as fast as you can. So supposedly though, a general rule of thumb among hardcore monopoly players is that while you're improving your monopoly, your properties, by adding houses or whatever, you wanna stop at three houses.

39:50Yes. Because the jump from the third house to the hotel is financially, it doesn't pay off usually. It's over improvement. Yeah. Just like in your home. Don't build that$80 ,000 kitchen because you're not going to get your money back on that. Right. So three houses. This guy doesn't subscribe to that. He buys everything. And puts hotels on it? Yeah, he says as soon as he gets his first monopoly, he mortgages everything else to get cash back and then uses that cash to improve. Wow. Which I thought was a little risky. Yeah. A couple of bad rolls. I mean, it's a game of strategy, but at the end of the day, you're rolling dice, and so it is very much a game of chance.

40:31I'll bet that guy feels like he's on the back of a Pegasus, though, the whole game. Like, he's just thrilled. He claims to have beaten, He's out there on the edge. He claims to have won a game in 12 minutes one time, which I thought was tooting his own horn a bit. Yeah, sure. But regular strategy, you're right. They say three houses is the max you should go. And then there's also some that you should avoid, even though they seem like very tempting. We already said the electric company and the water company, the utilities, the most you can get for rent from landing on them is 10 times the roll of the dice, which is$120.

41:08But it also means it could be as low as$20. I mean, this guy would probably say, well, hey, it was worth it. I still own them, and I'm still making money if somebody lands on them. But a lot of, again, the monopoly purists say, just stay away from them. And you also may want to stay away from the most expensive ones, Boardwalk and Park Place. Yeah, there are only two of them, and they just don't get landed on very much. Yeah, so think about it. Right out of the gate, when you're thinking of probabilities, the fact that there's two of these properties rather than three means that another player is less likely to land on your Monopoly because there's three or two instead of three.

41:56So that's one problem. Yeah. The other problem is placement, where they are. They're right after go. Yeah, right before. Right before go. Yeah, so it's at the end of the board, essentially. No, I'm sorry. They're right before jail? No, they're right before go. They're right before go. Okay. So that means that most players are going to, well, they're going to pass them for sure whenever they hit that. Go directly to go. Exactly. Yeah. So that means that your Monopoly's gonna be passed over. The likelihood of making your money back, recouping it, especially if they're improved to the hilt, like a really fancy hotel, means that you've probably sunk a lot of money unwisely into those.

42:38You wanna go for some other ones. Yeah, supposedly, and there are people that have done, there was this one guy, if you really wanna get into Monopoly, this dude, I don't even know his name, but just look up probabilities in the game of Monopoly. And Scientific American in the mid-'90s did an article that talked about probabilities of landing on different spaces. But they excluded community chess and chance and being sent to jail. So this guy said, I took all of that and included everything. And he has statistical charts, long-term probabilities for ending up on each square, expected income per opponent role, average income per role, expected number of opponent roll, to recoup incremental costs, to recoup mortgages.

43:25The name of his website, by the way, is monopolywasfun.com. It totally should be. But if you just want to do some basic probabilities, the orange properties are landed on more than anyone else. Yes, and why, Chuck? Because they are after jail. Yeah, six, eight, and nine spaces after jail? Yeah, so if you get sent to jail, which is going to happen at some point, and actually we didn't talk about jail, we'll talk about that, then you, yeah, chances are you're going to hit one of those orange squares on your way out of jail. Yeah, because you're rolling with two dice, so you're much more likely to roll like a six, eight, or a nine than you are like a two, or a three, or a one.

44:07Yeah. It's not even possible to roll a one. Try it, you can't. You can't, unless you eat one of the dice. Right, and in which case, unless it's a house rule, everybody's gonna yell at you and have to wait around until you poop it out to keep playing. Actually, our rule was you had to roll the child in. The what? The child who ate the dice. Oh, yeah. Shake him up, yeah. Yep. All right, so jail is in the corner of the board and you can, there are a few different ways you can go there. You can draw a go to jail card. Right. You can throw three doubles in a row and go to jail. Yeah. Which I never understood because that's a good thing.

44:46I guess, but it's also the sign of the devil, so that's why you have to go to jail for a little while to be cleansed. That's right. Or there's a square mark to go to jail, and you can land on that and go to jail. You can also get out in three ways. You can have that get-out-of-jail-free card. If you draw that, you can hold on to it. We could sell it, although I think that's a house rule. You could sell it to a friend or enemy. Whoever had the most cash, right? Exactly. And then you basically, the other way is to roll, to either pay your way out with 50 bucks or to roll your way out. And the way we played it was each turn you had one chance to roll your way out of jail by rolling doubles.

45:26Rolling doubles, right. Yeah. And then if you, under official rules, if you don't roll doubles for three consecutive turns, like you get three consecutive chances to roll doubles, and if you don't on any of those turns, then you have to pay 50 bucks to get out of jail. We just played where you just got out and you didn't have to pay. Well, then you guys weren't following the rules. I told you the house rules, the Bryant house rules. So there's actually a strategy to jail. Yeah. If you go to jail early on in the game, you want to pay your 50 bucks to get out immediately. Yeah. Just pay the 50 bucks because then you can keep going around the board and there's more stuff available to buy.

46:05Yeah. But later in the game, you want to just kind of hang out in jail. Yeah, like Josh has bought all the orange spaces. Yeah. And you've got hotels on each one. Yeah. So I'm thinking, that might be good to sit in jail for a few rounds. Yeah, because you can still collect rent on your properties, but the fact that you're in jail keeps you off of my properties. Yeah, and another Bryant rule we played where when you were in jail, you could not collect any rents. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, but according to official rules, you just make as much money as you want there. And apparently in jail, you can, officially, you can also buy and sell properties and improve your, and collect rent and build hotels and houses, which I thought, I don't know.

46:47If you're in jail, you're gonna lose that right. It seems like it. In real jail, that's the way it is. No, it's not. You can own a house and be in jail. I guess that's true. And technically, you could probably charge rent to someone, you could sublet it, like I'm gonna be gone for three to six. No, it's true, but what happens when the dishwasher breaks? Try to get let out of jail to go fix it. they're not gonna let you do that. That's very funny. But it's true too. Probability experts also say you get a good return on buying all the railroads because they're pretty cheap. There's one on each side.

47:21And once you own all of them, they're$200 in rent. So that's not too bad. Not too shabby. But to me, the reason monopolies are valuable is because they're in a row. whereas the railroads are spaced out. Right. And our friend, the strategist, who thinks he invented the game, says, but what you have to remember is none of these strategies matter because you're playing, it's a game of people and personalities. So he said you gotta sit back and watch the different personalities emerge and then manipulate that. Gotcha. Like the cash hoarder versus the shark. And he's like, you're really playing against people.

48:06Man, that's interesting. I thought so. Okay. So let's talk about another friend, an economist friend. His name is Ralph Ansbach. Yes. And he, back in the 70s, had a game called Anti-Monopoly. Yeah, he was an econ professor at San Francisco State. That's right. And made his own real game. He didn't just draw it up on paper. He started a little small business and manufactured it. Apparently sold about 200 ,000 copies of it right out of the gate. It just hit a nerve. Again, it was called Anti-Monopoly and the whole point of it was to break up monopolies rather than build monopolies. Yeah, the beginning of the game is essentially the end of a regular game.

48:55Everyone starts off with monopolies and instead of real estate and utilities and anti-monopoly, they had their individual businesses that have been brought under a single ownership and you take the role of federal caseworker and bring indictments against monopolized businesses in order to return the board to a free market system. You have to wear sensible shoes. It sounds awesome. Yeah, well, and he came up with this because he was trying to apparently explain to his son what was wrong and bad about monopolies. Right. And I suspect capitalism to a certain extent and he came up with this game instead.

49:35Like I said, sold a substantial amount, 200 ,000 copies of a game, especially back in the 70s. That was pretty good. As a startup? Yeah. And it caught Parker Brothers' attention enough that they sent him a cease and desist letter, took him to court, got a court order for him to hand over his 37 ,000 copies that he had in his warehouse and Parker Brothers went and unceremoniously buried him in a landfill in Minnesota. So Ralph didn't cotton to this very much. He didn't like that. He doesn't like to be pushed around, I get the impression. No, I mean a guy who makes anti-monopoly is not gonna cave in to the courts initially.

50:18And he did so very much at his own financial detriment. He had a very expensive team of lawyers at first and spent quite a bit of money fighting Parker for the right to use anti-monopoly. And it wasn't really going anywhere, and he was losing a lot of money, so he started to do legwork himself. Found a lawyer friend who worked on the cheap forum, and that's when things started taking off. Yeah, I mean, he basically uncovered the lie that it was invented by Charles Darrow. Yeah. He found out that the game was essentially in the public domain, or should have been, and went all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

51:05Yeah, he won at the Supreme Court. This econ professor who came up with a game called Anti-Monopoly won in the Supreme Court, won the right to name his game Anti-Monopoly. Yeah, I mean, he deposed the two Quakers that were friends of Hoskins. They were old at that point. They took the stand. he deposed the CEO of Parker Brothers and he took the stand and had to admit under oath like yeah we did kind of steal it the idea from that lady after all and so as Ralph says the whole point to him was for this true story the true origins of Monopoly and how it came about the whole point of it originally could still be told openly what he said couldn't be bought at any price, in his opinion.

51:55That's right. So way to go, Ralph. Yeah, he wrote a book awkwardly titled The Billion Dollar Monopoly in Swindle, colon. During a David and Goliath battle, Anti-Monopoly uncovers the secret history of Monopoly. That's a little clunky. A little clunky, but it's still around. In 1984, there was a new version called Anti-Monopoly II where you could actually be a monopolist or a competitor. So you got to choose, which I thought was interesting. And if you chose the competitor, you charge lower rents and you can improve property at any time. But if you're a monopolist, you have to own at least two properties in a group before building houses and charge a lot higher rent.

52:40So I think you're playing against the two systems within the same game. That's really interesting. Yeah. I might grab one of these and see what it's like. Yeah. Maybe. Tell everybody it's German. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I do. The longest Monopoly game of all time, 70 days. I played a game of Risk that seemed like it lasted that long once. It may have. It didn't last that long, but it lasted a weekend. Oh, okay. And Monopoly, I don't have the patience for that. I'll just give up. I'll take my fake cash and go home. Right. Yeah. Your hoard of it. Yeah. You're like, oh, I saved all this money.

53:21That's right. And I own the utilities. If you want to learn more about Monopoly, including how to play, if you don't like house rules, but you also don't feel like looking at the official rule book, you can just go on to HowStuffWorks. Yeah. And check out the rules that is in this article. Just type Monopoly in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for what? Listener mail? Yes. Okay. I'm going to call this help for a fan in need. Oh, that's nice. Hey guys, I want some help, please. My wife and I are expecting our first kid this summer, and 13 days ago we also found out that my wife has stage 4 breast cancer.

53:58So we are spending our third trimester getting chemo. My goodness. I know. We're going to kick cancer in the butt, we have no doubt, but we're scared and overwhelmed, obviously. We're doing chemo now, then we'll have the baby get more chemo, then bilateral mastectomy, then radiation. We have great doctors and great friends and family, so even in the face of this, we feel very lucky. And by the way, I got a follow-up more recently that says there is no gestational diabetes and the cancer is already shrinking. Oh, that's great. So things are going great so far. Thanks for not keeping us in suspense.

54:32I know. I was going to wait until the end. And he asked for a couple of favors. He said, first of all, if you want to follow and promote my Tumblr, to keep people updated. It is http colon slash slash gallafreakideki g-a-l-l-i f-r-e-e-k-y d-e-e-k-y dot tumblr dot com. Okay. He says we're huge nerds and Doctor Who fans. So that was lost on me. Some Doctor Who reference, I guess. Apparently so. Does it have to do with the phone booth, maybe? That's the only thing you know about Doctor Who. Same here. Secondly, I'm biking 150 miles to raise money. Could you plug that? You can go to goo.gl slash

55:172WJZXQ These people don't like normal words. Well, that's one of those shortened URLs. Oh, I see. It's a goo. Gotcha. And then third, how about a shout out? I think that's what we're doing here. My wife is a little shy, so just use her nickname, The Mayor. Oh, that's hilarious. She wears a sash during chemo and childbirth. I guess so. I mean, I call Emily the boss, so I guess it's the same. The mayor. Yeah. But the mayor is like the boss of several bosses, I would guess. Yeah, we used to call my friend Justin, who you know, the mayor of Atlanta, because everywhere you went, nobody knew him. He's a sociable fella.

55:51But now we just call him the manager of Atlanta, because everywhere you go, he has some improvement to that place. Oh, okay. Like the lighting's not quite right, or the door should be over there. That's hilarious. The kitchen is not located properly. Those Brits. Yeah. And then fourth, my wife works in public policy, specifically helping women and families get themselves out of poverty and advocating for low-income workers. So, there you have it. An awesome and incredible woman who dedicates her considerable talents to helping others is pregnant and has breast cancer. Kind of hard to say no, right?

56:20I'm not above guilt tripping. So, Bob from Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. There you go. People should go and check out that stuff and support your bike ride. and I hope things have continued to progress well for your wife and child and keep us updated. Yeah, and you keep me updated at the very least, if not everybody listening. I will. Okay. Thanks a lot, Bob and the mayor. Good luck to you both. And let's see, if you want to get in touch with us, whether you're a mayor, a provincial governor, who knows? Yeah. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at SYSKpodcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow.

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