The Best Monopoly Strategy, Tested on 300 Million Games
Perfect Play ran over 300 million games of Monopoly to determine the best strategy and the most common mistakes players make.
I turned eight classic Monopoly strategies into computer players and made them play 312,898,560 games against each other. At a table of four, the best one won 43% of its games. The worst one won 3%.
The gap doesn’t come from one clever trick. It comes from four common mistakes: being picky about what you buy, saving your cash, stopping at three houses, and refusing to trade. Then I let the computer tune every habit at once, to see how far a carefully tuned player can go and which color set is really worth fighting for.
P.S. I don’t actually play Monopoly anymore — it is the world’s most maddening game (along with Sorry) and I childishly refer to it as “Monotony” — and an aside about 3 minutes into the video is why: “roughly one game in six never ends”. Exactly! And you want me to haggle? For fun? No thank you. I imagine there are folks whose idea of a good time is visiting used car dealerships for funsies when they don’t need a car, but I am not one of them.
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I am one of those people that hates Monopoly, even though I played it when I was a kid. Like nuclear war, it is best not to start Monopoly.
"..you want me to haggle? For fun?"
That's how I feel about haggling too. I love to travel but pretty much abstain from buying ANYTHING when I visit countries/regions where you have to haggling to avoid being absolutely fleeced. I'm actually very hesitant to even go to those countries at all.
Also, I've never once played a version of Monopoly where you haggled or traded the properties so apparently it is so unenjoyable that nobody I know did it.
I never liked it much — but especially since I read about its original (stolen) design as an anti-capitalist illustration of structural inequality but only one set of rules got promoted and became the de-facto version!
That formatted wrong, stupid thumbs, but it’s been covered on NPR BBC etc
Came here to mention this! NPR Throughline audio: Lies, theft, and cover-up: the history of Monopoly you've never heard.
I love a good haggle!! You should see my mom and aunts shopping for saris in India. These women are skilled. Boy can my tiny mother close a deal. P.S. Somebody needs to throw Jason Kottke a used car lot themed b-day party.
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