The Shortest Possible Game of Monopoly (2010)(scatter.wordpress.com) |
The Shortest Possible Game of Monopoly (2010)(scatter.wordpress.com) |
Player 1: Roll a 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 or 12. Don't purchase, so it goes to auction. In auction player 2 buys for 100% of their cash.
Player 2: Rolls a 4, lands on income tax. Game over.
This can happen after the first player rolled a double, so the first player’s turn doesn’t even have to be over for a player to go bankrupt.
At the very beginning of the game, offer your opponent $1,600 in return for a 50% stake in all the rents they collect for the rest of the game.
Your opponent accepts, and you can't pay. Game over.
Its surprising I haven't thought to read the rules for Monopoly yet
Could be an onion headline. Constitutional lawyer has never read the Monopoly(R) official rules.
How often would an opponent be willing to pay more than list price? I guess to secure like the 2nd blue property. Otherwise it seems like should always just decline to buy and hope for good auction outcome.
And if your opponent good to auction too. Though maybe mortgaging properties if you have a good opportunity is worth it.
What other rules make the game more interesting/complex that the 'young kid' version might not know?
Wait, Monopoly has rules?
Of course it ignores the auction rule, but it could be amended to say the loser buys each auctioned property for a dollar (or whatever amount.) The only decisions the loser makes in this case are their bid prices which are irrelevant. The outcome is the same.
Edit: Actually it's a bit more complicated than this, as buying all of the auctioned properties and mortgaging them would give Player 2 enough money to afford the rent on Boardwalk. Player 1 would have to bid close to the mortgage price for each property. That way if they win the auction they can mortgage it to get their money back to afford houses, and if they lose the auction it doesn't help Player 2 afford rent on Boardwalk.
[edit] Per the Monopoly Wikia the British edition was always a fixed amount and the US edition as well since 2008.
The probability for executing this strategy is: P(3)+P(5)+P(6)+P(8)+P(9)+P(11)+P(12) * P(4).
Plug in the numbers from https://statweb.stanford.edu/~susan/courses/s60/split/node65...
(0.0556+0.1111+0.1389+0.1389+0.1111+0.0556+0.278)*0.0833 = 0.07407036
So 7.4%.
It’s brutal and not at all kid friendly unless you like making children cry.
the fandom wikipedia page says "Interestingly, this is one of the most-often overlooked aspects of the game." ya don't say.
The second problem is young kids make dumb moves causing themselves to go bankrupt really quickly which causes crying/tantrums/etc so parents and older siblings do everything possible to make the game eat up as much time as possible (e.g. house rule - giving out cash on free parking)
It happens when the player doesn’t buy, whether by choice or lack of cash. Technically, “yet” isn’t right, though, it’s always “any more” since starting cash is (far) more than the most expensive property on the board.
It's very specific in that if it isn't bought, it HAS to be auctioned and it HAS to be sold and that any amount can be bid.
I hope that’s not the same for you
It sounds like the GP may have played with non-family members, but not retained the memories. The Monopoly games you don't remember are the ones you really need to worry about.
A game like this can even go fast paced where the next player is making their turn while you're still interacting with the bank from your turn, while someone else is calculating interest.
Doesn't sound fun typing it out but it was a blast.
A couple of people groaned about the late hour and how long the game would take.
So I suggested some simple rule changes that make for a faster game.
The pastor's daughter said "we can't do that." She pulled out the Monopoly rules, pointed to the relevant chapter and verse, and said "Look. It Is Written."
People drifted off to do other things or just call it a night.
In hindsight, maybe I should have gone along with her literal interpretation of the rules. After everyone else gave up, it would have been just her and me playing until the wee hours. That might have been nice!
1 - Double 1s or double 6s: steal any property from any player. 2 - you can build on any property you own. You’re not forced to build evenly and you’re not forced to own a monopoly on that color.
A 2 player game would last an hour, maybe 2 tops. 4 player still took some time but was still fun and exciting :P
Also, with these rules the balance of the game shifted. BW/PP are good, but not the best. Utilities and railroads are pretty lame. The winning properties seemed to me to be, from best to less best: Orange, Red, Pink, Yellow, Green. Orange and red because they’re properties most likely to be landed on after leaving jail. :)
Simply insert in the directions in the appropriate places "...put the property up for auction and everyone passes immediately."
The Shortest Possible Game of Monopoly: 21 Seconds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1408549 - June 2010 (26 comments)
The longest possible game is playing with family that don’t like or don’t know the rules and like to put money on free parking.
“Huh? I thought that’s what this game was about. Y’all started it with that Free Parking nonsense.”
Wait, doesn’t doubles prevent the default action?
The losing player had the option to bid a total of $4 and get Electric company, Illinois Avenue, Pennsylvania Rail Road, and Baltic Avenue.
Mortgaging those properties would give them enough money to afford rent, and having a mortgaged property is still better than not having the property at all.
It is irrational to not bid up to the mortgage price.
It's interesting that the last four digits of the denominator of the probability of the shortest game of Monopoly are 1776. I'm sure that has some kind of cosmic significance.
If you land on a high-value property you want to buy it outright mainly to deny the monopoly possibilities to others (high value being the orange, etc).
To quote Terry Pratchett:
> Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
There are plenty of lists of "board games for children" etc, but I recommend ignoring any list that promotes games with dated mechanics, like Monopoly, Battleship, Ludo. (Monopoly has a very long losing phase, when it's clear who will win but the other players must wait to be made bankrupt. Battleship is almost entirely luck-based, Ludo even more so.)
I won't assume I can give a recommendation myself, as I don't have children.
(Except I see original Azul recommended, and I like that myself. And Indian Summer. And Copenhagen. And Kingdomino. And Santorini. I'm not sure about a 5 year old playing these though.)
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/childrens-products/board-ga... maybe, though I haven't heard of any of them (and they stick in Monopoly at the very end).
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2337832/game-where-5-year-o... / https://boardgamegeek.com/forum/34/bgg/gaming-kids
"I got 6 hotels and half your properties are mortgaged. Let's play for another 15 turns until you happen to land on my hotel, then I will win."
If we don’t care about players conspiring to shorten the game, player 2 can go bankrupt before making a move.
Player 1 lands on any property, and puts it up for auction.
Player 2 immediately bids $2000.
Player 2 wins the auction and bankrupts themselves.
The rules are beyond convoluted, likely encouraging second derivative cheating.
As a kid I would get knocked out super quick by my uncle, who would then typically have a 6 hour non-stop Monopoly throwdown with my mother after they eliminate the casuals.
Everyone else who played would get their feelings hurt but those two were absolutely brutal with each other and loved it.
Monopoly is, by design, brutal, mean, and not fun.
That it somehow became popular entertainment anyway is...well, I’m not sure what it is. But something.
The view that the game is tedious is directly caused by not reading the rules.
Monopoly is in an odd position where everyone is convinced they know what it's like, and yet nobody knows how to play it. Turns out, if you play it according to the rules, it is not at all similar to the version with rules you made up.
- For people uncomfortable with cut throat competition, this game is winner take all.
- For competitive people, victory is 90% luck and therefore unsatisfying.
- The game is decided halfway through the game time, the rest is the inevitable victory of the leading player.
Auctions are complicated, and a child with little money is angered when their sibling gets the property they landed on for a discount.
Income tax is tough, but there's a chance of getting it back, so please pay Billy.
Wwwhat I need to see experienced people playing this game by the official rules or whatever the consensus is, since official seems to change over time too
After reading the rules you can use the time they save arguing rules and why some wants to use house rules ...
With these rules you will quickly establish that some properties are not worth buying. These rules also have the benefit of making games ~30 minutes long because people run out of money extremely fast.
You obviously have to balance that though, can't just buy nothing.
If you do not wish to buy the property, the Bank sells it at through an auction to the highest bidder. The high bidder pays the Bank the amount of the bid in cash and receives the Title Deed card for that property. Any player, including the one who declined the option to buy it at the printed price, may bid. Bidding may start at any price
So in this case the highest bidder is no one. As a result, no one will get the property.
EDIT: Actually, a better answer for how to interpret it -- all players passing is impossible, because if all but the last player passes, then the last player has won the auction (for $0) by virtue of everyone else having passed; they don't get to a chance to pass, because they win the auction before it'd ever be their turn to pass! This is actually a pretty natural intepretation and I think how some of the video game adaptations handle it.
May bid. No player is required to bid.
Assuming that, while the rules don't say so explicitly, what they really mean is that the last player in the circle is forced to take the property is unreasonable. That's a fairly complicated rules. If that's what they meant, they'd have said it, not left it up to the players to work out.
Sine they didn't say it, it's much more reasonable to think that they just assumed everyone knows how an auction works in real life. No one is forced to bid on a Picasso when it goes on the block. It doesn't get foisted on the last person on the bidding bench who makes no bid.
Besides, you can always immediately mortgage a property so it's always worth buying it for less than the mortgage price. The only situation I could imagine where everyone would pass is if everyone has exactly zero dollars, no houses and no unmortgaged properties, so nobody can afford to buy it for a dollar. In that extremely rare event, triggering bankruptcy of whoever landed on the property seems more reasonable to me than "nothing happens" because at least it advances the game.
That's what I'm saying. If the rules don't say what happens if everyone passes, assuming that no one gets the property is a very reasonable assumption. Assuming that we're requiring people to make $1 bids, or that the landing player has a "penalty," is an unreasonable assumption if the rules don't say that explicitly.
> MISCELLANEOUS… No player may borrow from or lend money to another player. [1]
I could see two arguments: First, board games rules generally do not need to contain a list of everything not allowed. In Risk you are not allowed to gift your tanks to another power in exchange for them not attacking you. By this logic, you're right, such deals are not allowed.
On the other hand, most players I've met treat Monopoly as "anything goes" in terms of between-player business deals, so long as they are not restricted by the rules. The fact that the rules explicitly disallow lending, but not any other deals, could point to other deals being allowed.
...I expect you're right, making deals is not allowed in the rules. But disallowing them would certainly turn a dull game into an even duller game.
The rules explicitly allow particular kinds of deals and not others:
Unimproved properties, railroads and
utilities (but not buildings) may be sold to any player as a private
transaction for any amount the owner can get; however, no property
can be sold to another player if buildings are standing on any
properties of that color-group.* Eight players setup as four joint ventures.
* Joint ventures share cash and properties, but have two separate tokens on the board.
* No rent collection while in jail to dissuade camping out.
The end game becomes tense as your team has back to back rolls.