Written by Joseph Holevinski, Converge multimedia journalism intern and Senior at Gwinnett School of Math, Science & Technology (GSMST)
We have already discussed how to beat the most recent popular game, Wordle, but what about the ultimate winning strategy for a game that is not so recent? One of the oldest and most iconic board games has got to be Monopoly. Most people are quite familiar with this game, but also familiar with how long the game can end up taking.
Through hours of research (by that I mean playing countless games of Monopoly), I have devised a strategy that has allowed me to win almost every time I play. I’m here to walk you through the steps to become the best capitalist and make a quite lengthy game go by much faster.
The most critical period in the game is actually the first couple rounds. However, these are mostly left up to chance from the dice roll. The goal in the early game is just collecting as many properties as possible. If you land on an unowned property, buy it no matter what. Even if you only end up having one in a set, these will prove to be very useful in trading. Also, if there is an auction for a property, make sure you win, or if someone else is bidding aggressively for it, keep bidding to increase the price.
Once a majority of the properties are owned, it is time to begin trading. The properties that you should focus on are actually the ones on the first row (the light blue and purple/brown properties). While these are the cheapest properties, they have the highest tactical advantage because you can upgrade them faster. Getting all 5 of the properties (the railroad is unnecessary for this strategy) on that side should be your number one priority. If that means trading a higher value set for the light blue set, you should do it. One other set of properties I would keep and not trade if you have are the dark blue properties, but those are more important late game.
Once you have your row of properties, upgrade them as fast as possible, which should be easier because they are the cheapest properties, even if it means substantially depleting your money supply. This is because the sooner in the game you get it done, the more likely you will be able to get players before they can upgrade their own properties. This kills two birds with one stone because you are able to collect a relatively large amount of money from your properties early on, and you deplete all the other players’ money supply before they can get money from their properties.
Then for the rest of the game work on slowly upgrading the dark blue properties while you eliminate the other players, and when one unfortunate player lands on your fully upgraded Boardwalk, they get immediately bankrupt.
With these tips in mind the game should go by much faster and you should stand victorious over all of your opponents. Never underestimate investing in cheaper properties. Now, go forth and become the greatest capitalist!
