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One of the best-selling board games in the world is MONOPOLY. It is sold in 80 countries and produced in 26 languages, including Croatian and Braille. Ironically, when Charles B. Darrow introduced his game to the executives at Parker Brothers in 1934, during the Great Depression, the executives rejected it due to "52 design errors"! Mr. Darrow went on to sell 5000 handmade sets to a Philadelphia department store. After the game's tremendous success, he revisited Parker Brothers, and the rest is history.
The object of MONOPOLY is to become the wealthiest player through buying, renting, and selling property, and to bankrupt all your opponents. To win, you need a lot of luck, but you can also improve your chances by learning some key strategies.
First, keep track of the cards that have been played. There are 16 CHANCE cards and 16 COMMUNITY CHEST cards. Since the decks are not shuffled, you can figure out which cards haven't come up. If you have a great memory, you'll know which cards to expect when they recycle.
Next, know what to expect when you roll the number cubes. Your chances of rolling certain numbers are much higher than others. Which numbers get rolled the most, along with which properties you are sent to most often, determines which colors get landed on the most. Knowing this information can help you decide which properties to buy. For example, the railroads and orange properties get landed on the most, while the dark purple and dark blue properties get landed on the least. The three orange properties make up an excellent MONOPOLY to own, since the common rolls of 6 or 8 from Jail land you on an orange. Overall, not including Jail, the three most landed-on properties are Illinois Avenue, GO, and the B & O Railroad.
Do you think that when Mr. Darrow sketched out some Atlantic City street names on a piece of oilcloth on his kitchen table, he was thinking about how probability theory could be used to win the game? Perhaps. Regardless, the next time you sit down for a MONOPOLY marathon, you'll have a few tricks up your sleeve to take you all the way to Park Place!
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