Monopoly: A Roll to Financial Profit

            Top hat. Thimble. Flat iron. Racecar. Battleship. The board game of Monopoly is one of my favourite hour stretching games to play. From the token each player chooses, the outcome of each dice roll, and of course the various properties available to be acquired, Monopoly can surely rewire the simple idea behind this board game and turn it into a vicious competition to become the most well-off player as you financially deplete your competition.
            The Internet is filled with an array of strategies from players who believe they have the best insight on how to reign control of the board through their own developed philosophy. While the face value of a given property and their corresponding levels of rent may appear more financially rewarding than other spaces around the board, it is indeed important to remember even the least suspecting properties hold value in the game and may even wreak serious havoc as the game progresses.
            Based on the cards from a standard version of modern day Monopoly, I have derived three data tables which pertain to:

• number of times each property must be visited to either breakeven or earn back the money put forth to purchase and/or develop
• net cost to enhance or maintain a property
• final evaluation based on the development status of a property for the net amount to be earned as the game continues

            “Visits to Property to Reearn Money Invested” contains the data just as the title suggests: the number of times a player must land on this property for the cardholder to make back their level of investment. This data shows the initial value of the property and advances up to a single hotel. Officially, there are no double hotels permitted in Monopoly. For example, Mediterranean Avenue costs $60 to purchase the property. Based on the base rent for this particular card, $2, this property must be landed on 30 times in order to earn back the initial cost used to acquire the property. When Baltic Avenue is acquired by the same player, the base rent for Mediterranean Avenue doubles to $4, thereby reducing the number of visits to the property to only 15 times to earn back the purchase value of the property. In this scenario, the rent increases due to the entire colour set being complete- in the possession of one player. 
            As the game advances, hopefully, so does the property. The number of visits when the property is developed with one to four houses or a hotel is shown as well. Remember, you can’t roll a fraction of a dice (0.92, 1.23, 8.30 et ceteria), therefore all numerical values for the number of dice rolls are rounded up to the next whole number.
            The next data set, “Cost to Improve Property,” incorporates the base cost to acquire the property and the monetary investments required to further build and revise the property. Each property has a base price which is paid upfront when acquiring said property or “deed.” As the cardholder enhances the construction on the property, additional costs are tacked onto the initial value of the property thereby showing how “expensive” it is to build up from its original form. Take for example Tennessee Avenue. The deed to the property cost $180, which is a non-negotiable cost to acquire the property. In order to build houses on Tennessee Avenue, each house must be purchased for $100. Increasing the number of houses on this avenue piles an additional $100 onto the base cost of the property. Therefore, when four houses have been erected, the total cost to invest in Tennessee Avenue will be $680.

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            The final data set shows the reduction of debt and advancement towards financial profit up to the first twenty times an opponent lands on the given property. The column marked “0” will always show a loss because the property has either only been established or built upon- no rent has yet been collected. Likewise, numerical values in red indicate a negative number and black numbers indicate a profit. Numbers highlighted in light green represent the number of visits to the property with its particular card/building status to have earned enough money the property is no longer a debt hole. For example, once a competitor has landed twice on Ventnor Avenue that has three houses, the cardholder will have the sum of the money invested into the property earned back in addition to have incurred a profit. Any colour highlighting a zero ($0) indicates an otherwise perfect case of breaking evening. In terms of the twenty-two individual properties, fifteen of them (~68%) will feature an exact breakeven, only in certain situations depending on how the property is used. To take this further, with seven options on how to either maintain your property as is, or enhance it through construction, there are 24 cases out of the 154 options (~16%) where the perfect breakeven specifically occurs. Monetary gains from landing on "GO" are not included in any of the above calculations.

In nearly all properties, excluding Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues, erecting precisely three houses will bring a rapid return on your investment including a bit of profit, all within a competitor landing on the developed property once. Four houses are also a well investment to develop and only need one visitor to satisfy the debt accrued- apart from Mediterranean Avenue. Taking a step further and electing a hotel on your property also shows a speedy monetary return within one rival visiting the property, with the exception of two visits required for: Mediterranean, Pacific, and North Carolina Avenues.

An overall rule of thumb in Monopoly entails the property further to the clockwise left of “Go” in a colour set will generally be more valuable than the previous property. Eighteen of the properties (~82%) belong in a card set where there are three properties. Two properties per set will actually be identical in face value, through all levels of rent, with construction fees, and even in their mortgage value. For instance: Oriental Avenue = Vermont Avenue, St. Charles Place = States Avenue, St. James Place = Tennessee Avenue, Kentucky Avenue = Indiana Avenue, and so forth. This leave the remaining third property to be essentially the most valuable deed of the entire set. The two property sets with only two deeds don’t feature this pattern. Instead, they follow the general rule where the latter or last property in the set is the most valuable: Baltic Avenue and Boardwalk.

Each and every property in Monopoly has its benefits and tradeoffs. Not everything is as black and white as it may appear on the deed card. In fact, some properties must be manipulated or even mortgaged by the cardholder to reveal their true hidden agenda whether it may be to act as a dumping ground, as a pawn, a tease toward other players, among other tactics. When it is played by its rules (you neither receive nor earn anything when landing on Free Parking), Monopoly can actually be an insightful game. It serves as a well application to demonstrate the workings on real estate when you’re surrounded by competition, in addition to the toxic reality of actual monopolies. Let’s roll the dice and see where it takes us!