Does anyone actually like Monopoly? It is the worst board game in existence.
To me, it’s not even a game, because players don’t make any decisions. You roll a die and go a number of steps, no player agency so far. After that you technically have a decision to buy or not to buy the property. But it is not really a decision, you need to buy it, if you can afford it.
I believe the main reason people say that they don’t like board games is because the only board game they played is Monopoly.
My wife had dominated rolls. Buying multiple properties. Other players got some, but more of our rolls were railroads, and chance spots. Everyone was bleeding dry. So I finally got the peasants to unite. We had 3 other players basically form a company and rallied to take down the empire. By that time though, it was too late.
If she had one or two rolls into our meager hotels, maybe things could have turned but never happened. We hit one or two of her properties and that was the final nail. We couldn’t recover.
The game is pure RNG and don’t let anyone tell you it isnt. You can maybe talk and deal your way to victory if someone doesn’t understand the game, but if everyone is seasoned. It’s who lands on the most properties to chain.
Yeah almost pure RNG as you said. Last time I played with 3 others I played as cut throat and by the rules as possible any I still lost because literally nobody ever landed on my maxee out mid tier properties. Like in 10 or so rounds (full board rotations) after maxing it out nobody of the other 3 landed on any of those properties once. And then I went bankrupt by landing on the most expensive tile 3 rounds in a row.
There is some strategy you’re not thinking of. Too much to go into in one comment. I just played a full 6 hour game with a 9 year old and a 6 year old, both with ADHD, and they didn’t wander off once. The game has its charms.
100% agree. My family always played strict rules, and the game was always a painful slog. Constant mortgaging properties to afford rent somewhere else, a whole game hanging on $11 here and there. The game I played in a mobile home during power outages was about living paycheck to paycheck.
The first time I saw people do the free parking tax money thing, I thought they were joking. The fuck kind of soft baby game is this? Two times around the board first? Why? Just give $600 more to start, idiots. Why not let the car roll 3 dice or some shit because a car goes faster than an iron?
I’ve heard one time around the board, but not two. The idea though was so the first player to go doesn’t have an advantage (which is kind of irrelevant after the first couple rolls unless they keep rolling high, but it FEELS like it matters I’m sure).
The idea though was so the first player to go doesn’t have an advantage
I… the player that goes first has the EXACT SAME statistical advantage, regardless how many round trips you do before allowing purchases. No matter how many times you roll the dice, each player will, on average, be ≈7 places in front of the person that rolls after them (not exactly 7, because there are rules for rolling again on matching dice etc.). This is true for the first roll of the dice, and it is true for the millionth roll. The distance between two consecutive players is on average equal to the mean number of places you move on a turn.
But who took the first roll was already chosen randomly. My argument is that who gets to the first square where they can buy something doesn’t become any more random by going more laps. The probability of any given player getting to the first purchasable square is 100% determined by the random process that decides who gets to go first in the “warmup round”.
That’s not how standard deviations work though. The point is that if you are n players, the probability of any given player starting is 1/n. After an arbitrary number of dice throws, the probability that a given player is ahead remains 1/n, when you account for the throw that decided who would go first.
Let’s put it this way: Would it be “more random” who goes first if you throw ten dice to decide instead of one? Of course not. But that’s essentially what you’re doing when you go “warm up” rounds. You’re just throwing the dice more times, and letting whoever has the highest total go first. Clearly, the probability that any given player gets the highest total remains 1/n, regardless how many dice are thrown.
I didn’t mean dice rolls for who starts, but moving around the board.
If you go around the board 0 times, there’s a 100% chance the player who started will be ahead.
If you go around the board 1 times, there’s a less-than-100% chance the player who started will be ahead.
Every added round around the board increases the.standard deviation of spaces moved. While the expected amount of spaces moved will still be higher for the first mover after their turn, the significance of this difference goes down as the standard deviation goes up.
Therefore, running 100 rounds around the board before starting the game will change the first-mover advantage from being ahead 100% of the time to, likely slightly more than 25% of the time but very close to 25%.
What you say is true. What you’re neglecting is that you need a random process to choose who will go first. Let’s use your own example: If four players go around the board 100 times, there’s a near 25% chance that a given player gets around first. As you correctly say (indirectly), you will asymptotically approach a 25% chance as you increase the number of rounds towards infinity.
What you seem to be forgetting is that there’s a very easy way to skip the infinite number of rounds, and get directly to the 25% chance: By choosing randomly who goes first. Of course, you need to do that anyway in order to start the warm-up rounds at all, so what you are effectively doing is
First: Give every player a 25 % chance to start. Then: Spend an arbitrary amount of “warm-up” rounds to randomly choose a different player that gets to start the real game.
Of course, these are not independent random processes, so the player that wins the first selection has an advantage in the second selection. The overall probability that a given player starts the “real” game first then becomes identical to the probability that they start the “warm-up” first. An infinite number of warmup rounds is literally identical to a single dice roll in terms of the probability that a given player goes first. So what you’re doing is one quick random selection, which you immediately throw out in favour of an infinitely time consuming random selection with the same distribution.
They prevent purchase for 1 lap just so it will truly randomise who get to make the purchase first, instead of just giving it to the people who goes first.
Technically you do that as well, but the no-purchase first round make sure it is as random as possible because you roll multiples time and the dice change hand. Kinda like a warm up round as you’re now racing to get to the end of first round and get to draw chance and chest.
You can also don’t do that, it’s up to you. It’s a very versatile game that don’t have to stick to the rule 100% for it to work, kinda like Uno.
I commented this elsewhere, but feel obliged to copy it in here as well:
The player that goes first has the EXACT SAME statistical advantage, regardless how many round trips you do before allowing purchases. No matter how many times you roll the dice, each player will, on average, be ≈7 places in front of the person that rolls after them (not exactly 7, because there are rules for rolling again on matching dice etc.). This is true for the first roll of the dice, and it is true for the millionth roll. The distance between two consecutive players is on average equal to the mean number of places you move on a turn.
Statistically yeah, who rolled first get the advantage, when you played like 100 round of it, then add up all the data and get the average, the first one to roll will on average ahead of everyone, but…we’re playing one game, the first one to roll will sometime roll low and the last to roll might roll double and get ahead, this is why i don’t think statistic really matter here because the amount of roll one game have is statistically insignificant to get the desired result. “The house always win” did not mean the house win every round, it just mean if the game goes for 100 round the house will come out on top statistically, and that applies here.
Let’s say you and a friend are playing: You can roll a dice or flip a coin to decide who goes first, and both of you have a 50/50 chance of going first, then you start playing. After the first throw, the player that starts will on average be ≈ 7 squares ahead of the second player, and can buy a property before the second player. Let’s call this a “7 square advantage”.
Alternatively, you play one or more “warm up” rounds. When you get around the first round, the player that started will on average still have a 7 square advantage, and can still buy the same property before the second player. In fact, you can do as many “warmup rounds” as you like, and the player that started will retain their 7 square advantage whenever the first “real round” starts.
The point is, this doesn’t become “more random” by playing “warmup rounds” the probability that any of the two players reaches a given square first is determined the instant the coin flip that decided who would go first landed.
Its actually a pretty good metaphor. Imagine playing the game and never buying any assets, just passing Go and collecting a paycheck. That’s how most people live their lives. If you live in a capitalist country, you either aquire assets, or accept you will be exploited by those with all the assets. Its a simple and horrible system, and its all right there in a 100 year old kids game.
The main difference being that most people never have an opportunity to buy assets because they are too busy paying rent on other people’s assets. The game assumes you are a capitalist already, and you are playing against other capitalists.
Which actually is an even better metaphor, regular people don’t even get to play the game.
Lol we actually used to play this way with my cousins. We had two younger cousins that weren’t too bright at the time, but really wanted to play. So they played as “peons” and got a pawn from a chess set as their marker. They got an extra $100 for passing go, but that’s it. They couldn’t buy or anything, only pay. They actually seemed to have fun in a little competition between themselves as to who could weather the capitalist hell hole the best.
That was a different game, the original by Liz Magie. Darrow pretended he never heard of it, plagiarised it, but made it worse, then claimed it was his own idea. It all got settled later on.
And, really, the winner will almost certainly be determined by who owns the middle-priced properties. I’m too lazy to look them up, but it’s the ones that are essentially opposite the Go space on the board. It’s a fascinating commentary.
It’s the red ones, they’re about 14 spaces away from jail, which is the most common space to end up on. In the long run people will land on them most often.
There’s one really popular red spot, but the three orange ones are also frequently hit, according to this analysis.
Basically, to survive, you need to make sure no one gets a monopoly of the orange or red ones. Which really brings us back to the point of the original game…lol
No, those are the two most expensive properties, right by the Go. Everyone wants to buy them because they see the huge rent price, but it turns out that people seem to land on those spaces only rarely.
I remember my friend told me the rule of purchasing property is that once you landed in a property no one owned, you either buy it or be auction off to other player, and then the game end when every property are being purchased, so each player objective is basically get as much property as possible, negotiating with other players for their property so you can own a row of land for upgrading. The game become a slog when people just don’t get property, don’t negotiate, and playing it safe.
It’s like when playing DOTA and two team decided to just farm critter for gold instead of attempting to reach the objective respectively. It’s called Monopoly, not Money Hoardy
Does anyone actually like Monopoly? It is the worst board game in existence.
To me, it’s not even a game, because players don’t make any decisions. You roll a die and go a number of steps, no player agency so far. After that you technically have a decision to buy or not to buy the property. But it is not really a decision, you need to buy it, if you can afford it.
I believe the main reason people say that they don’t like board games is because the only board game they played is Monopoly.
Its an RNG fest.
My wife had dominated rolls. Buying multiple properties. Other players got some, but more of our rolls were railroads, and chance spots. Everyone was bleeding dry. So I finally got the peasants to unite. We had 3 other players basically form a company and rallied to take down the empire. By that time though, it was too late.
If she had one or two rolls into our meager hotels, maybe things could have turned but never happened. We hit one or two of her properties and that was the final nail. We couldn’t recover.
The game is pure RNG and don’t let anyone tell you it isnt. You can maybe talk and deal your way to victory if someone doesn’t understand the game, but if everyone is seasoned. It’s who lands on the most properties to chain.
Yeah almost pure RNG as you said. Last time I played with 3 others I played as cut throat and by the rules as possible any I still lost because literally nobody ever landed on my maxee out mid tier properties. Like in 10 or so rounds (full board rotations) after maxing it out nobody of the other 3 landed on any of those properties once. And then I went bankrupt by landing on the most expensive tile 3 rounds in a row.
It’s not the worst game in existence, I own a much worse game called War on Terror. Here it is.
There is some strategy you’re not thinking of. Too much to go into in one comment. I just played a full 6 hour game with a 9 year old and a 6 year old, both with ADHD, and they didn’t wander off once. The game has its charms.
The reason people hate it is because they don’t follow the rules.
They put tax money in the center and pretend “free parking” means “payday”.
They prevent purchases until a lap or two around the board.
They allow landed-on properties to go unpurchased.
They allow no-rent agreements between players.
And then they have the audacity to bitch that the game takes too fucking long. After removing every god damn mechanism the game has to end.
There is strategy in knowing what to purchase, what to bid at auctions, what properties to develop and when and how much, and what to trade.
One of the canon rules is you can’t skip a property sale.
If a player lands on a property, they earn the right to buy it at cost, or start an auction.
If they don’t have the money to buy it, they can only auction.
Other players can buy the property you landed on
100% agree. My family always played strict rules, and the game was always a painful slog. Constant mortgaging properties to afford rent somewhere else, a whole game hanging on $11 here and there. The game I played in a mobile home during power outages was about living paycheck to paycheck.
The first time I saw people do the free parking tax money thing, I thought they were joking. The fuck kind of soft baby game is this? Two times around the board first? Why? Just give $600 more to start, idiots. Why not let the car roll 3 dice or some shit because a car goes faster than an iron?
I’ve heard one time around the board, but not two. The idea though was so the first player to go doesn’t have an advantage (which is kind of irrelevant after the first couple rolls unless they keep rolling high, but it FEELS like it matters I’m sure).
I… the player that goes first has the EXACT SAME statistical advantage, regardless how many round trips you do before allowing purchases. No matter how many times you roll the dice, each player will, on average, be ≈7 places in front of the person that rolls after them (not exactly 7, because there are rules for rolling again on matching dice etc.). This is true for the first roll of the dice, and it is true for the millionth roll. The distance between two consecutive players is on average equal to the mean number of places you move on a turn.
It’s definitely possible to fail further than 7 places behind, very quickly. It only takes two turns.
But the problem is that the first roll gets to buy the first property of the game, in most instances. A lap randomizes that advantage.
But who took the first roll was already chosen randomly. My argument is that who gets to the first square where they can buy something doesn’t become any more random by going more laps. The probability of any given player getting to the first purchasable square is 100% determined by the random process that decides who gets to go first in the “warmup round”.
Well, if you do infinite die rolls, your standard deviation becomes so high the “7” spaces bias will be relatively less significant
However, replacing first-mover advantage by RNGesus advantage is not significantly better
That’s not how standard deviations work though. The point is that if you are n players, the probability of any given player starting is 1/n. After an arbitrary number of dice throws, the probability that a given player is ahead remains 1/n, when you account for the throw that decided who would go first.
Let’s put it this way: Would it be “more random” who goes first if you throw ten dice to decide instead of one? Of course not. But that’s essentially what you’re doing when you go “warm up” rounds. You’re just throwing the dice more times, and letting whoever has the highest total go first. Clearly, the probability that any given player gets the highest total remains 1/n, regardless how many dice are thrown.
I didn’t mean dice rolls for who starts, but moving around the board.
If you go around the board 0 times, there’s a 100% chance the player who started will be ahead.
If you go around the board 1 times, there’s a less-than-100% chance the player who started will be ahead.
Every added round around the board increases the.standard deviation of spaces moved. While the expected amount of spaces moved will still be higher for the first mover after their turn, the significance of this difference goes down as the standard deviation goes up.
Therefore, running 100 rounds around the board before starting the game will change the first-mover advantage from being ahead 100% of the time to, likely slightly more than 25% of the time but very close to 25%.
What you say is true. What you’re neglecting is that you need a random process to choose who will go first. Let’s use your own example: If four players go around the board 100 times, there’s a near 25% chance that a given player gets around first. As you correctly say (indirectly), you will asymptotically approach a 25% chance as you increase the number of rounds towards infinity.
What you seem to be forgetting is that there’s a very easy way to skip the infinite number of rounds, and get directly to the 25% chance: By choosing randomly who goes first. Of course, you need to do that anyway in order to start the warm-up rounds at all, so what you are effectively doing is
First: Give every player a 25 % chance to start. Then: Spend an arbitrary amount of “warm-up” rounds to randomly choose a different player that gets to start the real game.
Of course, these are not independent random processes, so the player that wins the first selection has an advantage in the second selection. The overall probability that a given player starts the “real” game first then becomes identical to the probability that they start the “warm-up” first. An infinite number of warmup rounds is literally identical to a single dice roll in terms of the probability that a given player goes first. So what you’re doing is one quick random selection, which you immediately throw out in favour of an infinitely time consuming random selection with the same distribution.
Life ain’t fair. Neither is Monopoly. That’s the point!
Which is basically just a die cast, but extended for no reason 😅
They prevent purchase for 1 lap just so it will truly randomise who get to make the purchase first, instead of just giving it to the people who goes first.
You can do the same thing by just rolling to see who goes first…
Technically you do that as well, but the no-purchase first round make sure it is as random as possible because you roll multiples time and the dice change hand. Kinda like a warm up round as you’re now racing to get to the end of first round and get to draw chance and chest.
You can also don’t do that, it’s up to you. It’s a very versatile game that don’t have to stick to the rule 100% for it to work, kinda like Uno.
I commented this elsewhere, but feel obliged to copy it in here as well:
The player that goes first has the EXACT SAME statistical advantage, regardless how many round trips you do before allowing purchases. No matter how many times you roll the dice, each player will, on average, be ≈7 places in front of the person that rolls after them (not exactly 7, because there are rules for rolling again on matching dice etc.). This is true for the first roll of the dice, and it is true for the millionth roll. The distance between two consecutive players is on average equal to the mean number of places you move on a turn.
Statistically yeah, who rolled first get the advantage, when you played like 100 round of it, then add up all the data and get the average, the first one to roll will on average ahead of everyone, but…we’re playing one game, the first one to roll will sometime roll low and the last to roll might roll double and get ahead, this is why i don’t think statistic really matter here because the amount of roll one game have is statistically insignificant to get the desired result. “The house always win” did not mean the house win every round, it just mean if the game goes for 100 round the house will come out on top statistically, and that applies here.
I think you’re misunderstanding something here?
Let’s say you and a friend are playing: You can roll a dice or flip a coin to decide who goes first, and both of you have a 50/50 chance of going first, then you start playing. After the first throw, the player that starts will on average be ≈ 7 squares ahead of the second player, and can buy a property before the second player. Let’s call this a “7 square advantage”.
Alternatively, you play one or more “warm up” rounds. When you get around the first round, the player that started will on average still have a 7 square advantage, and can still buy the same property before the second player. In fact, you can do as many “warmup rounds” as you like, and the player that started will retain their 7 square advantage whenever the first “real round” starts.
The point is, this doesn’t become “more random” by playing “warmup rounds” the probability that any of the two players reaches a given square first is determined the instant the coin flip that decided who would go first landed.
The person downvoting you doesn’t understand probability or statistics lmao
It was literally designed to be a metaphor for capitalism. You’re not supposed to enjoy playing unless you are lucky enough to be the one winning.
Its actually a pretty good metaphor. Imagine playing the game and never buying any assets, just passing Go and collecting a paycheck. That’s how most people live their lives. If you live in a capitalist country, you either aquire assets, or accept you will be exploited by those with all the assets. Its a simple and horrible system, and its all right there in a 100 year old kids game.
The main difference being that most people never have an opportunity to buy assets because they are too busy paying rent on other people’s assets. The game assumes you are a capitalist already, and you are playing against other capitalists.
Which actually is an even better metaphor, regular people don’t even get to play the game.
Lol we actually used to play this way with my cousins. We had two younger cousins that weren’t too bright at the time, but really wanted to play. So they played as “peons” and got a pawn from a chess set as their marker. They got an extra $100 for passing go, but that’s it. They couldn’t buy or anything, only pay. They actually seemed to have fun in a little competition between themselves as to who could weather the capitalist hell hole the best.
I had almost exactly the same exact comment written out before I saw yours. Its original title was “The Landlord’s Game”.
That was a different game, the original by Liz Magie. Darrow pretended he never heard of it, plagiarised it, but made it worse, then claimed it was his own idea. It all got settled later on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Landlord's_Game
And, really, the winner will almost certainly be determined by who owns the middle-priced properties. I’m too lazy to look them up, but it’s the ones that are essentially opposite the Go space on the board. It’s a fascinating commentary.
It’s the red ones, they’re about 14 spaces away from jail, which is the most common space to end up on. In the long run people will land on them most often.
There’s one really popular red spot, but the three orange ones are also frequently hit, according to this analysis.
Basically, to survive, you need to make sure no one gets a monopoly of the orange or red ones. Which really brings us back to the point of the original game…lol
Yeah. that’s the analysis I was thinking of, I just misremembered the conclusion.
Boardwalk and Park Place, and yes it eventually comes down to whoever lands on one of those first that doesn’t own it. They probably lose first.
No, those are the two most expensive properties, right by the Go. Everyone wants to buy them because they see the huge rent price, but it turns out that people seem to land on those spaces only rarely.
Sorry for the reddit link.
Ah you’re right, I totally just misread the comment derp
I remember my friend told me the rule of purchasing property is that once you landed in a property no one owned, you either buy it or be auction off to other player, and then the game end when every property are being purchased, so each player objective is basically get as much property as possible, negotiating with other players for their property so you can own a row of land for upgrading. The game become a slog when people just don’t get property, don’t negotiate, and playing it safe.
It’s like when playing DOTA and two team decided to just farm critter for gold instead of attempting to reach the objective respectively. It’s called Monopoly, not Money Hoardy