Friendships have ended during rounds of Monopoly. The iconic board game usually begins in a civil manner but ends up descending into all-out war as players try to scheme and bribe their way to victory. But there are ways to boost your chances of winning at Monopoly — you just need to emulate these tips from a world champion.
Monopoly picture from Shutterstock
Recently, Bjørn Halvard Knappskog, a Monopoly world champion (yes, that is a thing) spoke to VICE and divulged his top 10 tips for success at the game. A lot of it has to do with behavioural tactics such as remaining completely silent so to not give anything away. Here three of Knappskog’s more practical pieces of advice:
- Doing a few stints in jail isn’t such a bad idea.
Towards the start of the game, it’s best to pay the bail to get out of jail so you don’t miss out on buying up as much real estate as possible. As the game progresses and the number of available properties dwindle, staying in jail is an attractive option. It’s essentially free accommodation as it prevents you from landing on a competitor’s property and forking out rent for three rounds. Unless you roll a double, then you’re screwed. - Build three houses on each street ASAP.
Obviously the more houses you have the more rent you’ll collect, but there is added benefit to this move because you’ll be preventing your opponents from buying more houses for themselves. Monopoly only has 32 houses. Also, only develop to a fourth house or hotel if all your streets have three houses. - Utility or railway companies are rubbish. Don’t buy them.
This is a surprising one as, from personal experience, the utilities and railways are usually snapped up quite quickly. But here’s what Knappskog had to say about it:“During the World Championship, we played according to the classic rules, including rounds in which you can swap properties. Now some jerks will try to offload utility or railway companies rather than realty. But don’t fall for it; they’re not worth the paper they’re printed on. Consider this: throughout the whole game you have a measly three percent chance of earning money from them.”
Do you use any special techniques to ensure your win in Monopoly? Let us know in the comments.
[Via VICE]
Comments
4 responses to “Three Practical Monopoly Tips From A World Champion”
Buy orange. Especially with the tip about jail not being a bad place to be, once you get out, chances are you’ll land on orange. Also get red if you can for the same reason. To me, they’re more important than the dark blues.
Actually, that was one of the other tips the Monopoly champ provided. I had never even thought of it.
Now I can’t wait for my next game of Monopoly! 😀
Completely agree. Oranges and then reds are the best spots on the board. Dark blues and greens are just too expensive to build on even though the pay-off rent is massive – just a lot less likely.
I disagree about railroads being worthless – $200 rent if you can get all 4. And because there is four of them, they have the highest odds of being landed on.
their rent is capped at $200 tho. $200*4 = $800 of ‘rent space’ on the board maximum.
this can easily be equalled by a 3 group with a few houses and then surpassed with a few more houses
The other thing about owning the railroads and utilities though, is that they give you “safe spots”.
Once you get far enough into the game where rent is in the high hundreds then any spot you land on where you don’t need to pay rent it great.