Some Thoughts on Monopoly

It’s unfair that no one ever goes directly to jail for antitrust violations.

The only way to win is to gentrify. Won’t that put your renters out on the street? Yeah, but there are perfectly good shelters and soup kitchens on St. Charles Place.

It’s best, if your Filipino friend buys Oriental Avenue, not to make a big deal out of it…

Does Monopoly tell us that capitalism is an unfair system? Well, property tax on a house on Mediterranean Avenue is the same as the expensive ones on Park Place.

The Free Parking square is the strongest example of laziness in a game design ever. It does nothing, whereas EVERY OTHER SQUARE has an action… although visiting a picture of a jail seems pretty close to nothing. But you have to understand that, at that point, the designer had run out of ideas because all he had to choose from was ALL OF REALITY. Might I recommend “Community Chance”, the opportunity to pick one card from the Chance pile and one from Community Chest?

The little guy with the hat and mustache is dead. His body was found in a cheap hotel on Illinois avenue just after he won second prize in a very suspect beauty contest.

Buying all of the railroads is a good strategy at the beginning; but, eventually, the other properties produce more and you’ve got union problems to deal with besides.

Most of the time that you go directly to jail, you can plea bargain down to involuntary manslaughter. BTW, the recidivism rate for Monopoly jail is nearly seventy percent.

In some variations of the game, if you own the Waterworks or the Electric Company, you are allowed to shut off service to the other players until they meet your demands.

If you are banker, remember, don’t be greedy. The other players expect you to take a little off the top, for your time, see? Just don’t try to take the whole wad, see?

Rule variations can be dangerous. My family let me build houses on my railroads; then, they were all destroyed by trains. There was green plastic everywhere.

They no longer have the thimble token in the Monopoly game. Now, seamstresses with tiny doll-like hands will have to look elsewhere…

Resist the urge to form a protection racket as in, “Nice hotel youse got there. Be a shame if like someone was to step on it, see?”. If you get caught, it’s off to Monopoly jail for you!