Very good presentation here. I only played Monopoly decades ago using house rules and only recently played again as an adult. I realized then that not only are the real rules much better but there are logical strategies and techniques for winning! Your spreadsheet is very impressive too. Nice video!
I've been playing monopoly plus online for ages and I feel comfortable enough to share my strategy whenever I play vs others. My new most favourite strategy is not to actually buy everything anymore as both the true value and perceived value of an item can change depending on situations. I like to auction everything except railroads at the early stages of the game once I obtained 1 color card (preferably light blue or orange). The only exception to this rule is buying browns which I will always do as ignoring them is just silly IMO. Auctioning everything early can bait players into paying much more for property sets that they do not actually need therefore lowering their net value even more. I guess you can profit from them with trade but better people are more willing to pay the bank than a player. Once money supplies are becoming low that's when you can either win at auctions for cheap during mid game or buy properties your opponents need to sell at a premium. If a player refuses to trade you the final piece to a monopoly for a considerable amount of money or counter offers you with something you're not happy with: flip the trade deal over. Chances are if they took part in these crazy auctions they wont have enough capital in order for them to develop this newly obtained monopoly. This puts a lot of pressure on the opponent as their only options is to mortgage or trade to not put items on auction thus weakening their position on the board and further decreases their net worth. Every penny can count in a game. Railroads almost always keep their value and minimum base rent of 25 for -100 net is great and the 3 chance cards that take you to 3/4 stations help regain your money. The buy 1 card then auction strategy has worked so well and has let me sweep games. Only exceptions to this is when a player gets ridiculously lucky either by claiming a cheap monopoly fast or rolling onto 3/4 railroads within the first 3 moves or something. Would recommend this strat in your games
20:09 In the 1935 edition of Monopoly there was a Go Back to Baltic Avenue card in Community Chest. Imagine if that card still existed today lol (Would've actually made CC more interesting too.).
When making a deal with someone, I think no player who has at least some experience would allow you to complete a set if you don't have anything to give it to him so that he completes a set in return.
@Nic777 I’ve learned it the hard way. There have been times I slept on the greens, and eventually the only player who had a monopoly had it on the green!
19:58 Statistics is important. Otherwise one might conclude that always playing the lottery is great because of the return investment... But if you never win, it is just a loss.
Thanks so much for the video: Over investing, the focus on the sniping, the deeper info about the sides of the board, the worse station on the east side. And so on.. - I didn't expect to learn so many new things about this legendary game! I was also happy to notice that you gave the dark green the value it deserves: The statistical chance of hitting orange or red a tiny bit more, wont matter if U can build enough on dark blue. It will kill the other players one by one even if it takes a bit more time. A couple of points: Mortgage everything and build?: I don't usually do that. Why - because you have to have at least some assets left to pay rents and other payments. You don't want to sell your houses - it is very bad business. So, you have to choose if you mortgage all and have cash, or you don't mortgage and keep (some of) the other properties as a security. Properties are better, because they will bring at least a little bit income when landed on - in the early game east side spaces give actually quite a nice extra income, and so do the stations. But probably you meant mortgaging only when there is a good sniping opportunity? Brown return rates are excellent. However the problem, and the reason why it is so unpopular set, is that - as U said - often it is bought rather late in the game, and then it already tends to be too cheap to have any major impact on the game. It really can't win a game for you. However, yes - if U get it early, it does slow down other players' property development. And finally: Maybe I wouldn't be quite that strict about the choice between green and light blue. Green does suck, but if you have the set, it gives a considerable rent even with no buildings. And quite often light blue is good enough for the silver medal, but not to win a game for you. Yet, I admit that building on the green set takes more than the "second prize in a beauty contest"..
re: mortgage everything and build, i didn't get into a whole lot of nuance. my intent was to explain that, one should weigh the value of unbuilt, incomplete set rent vs the amount you can earn by using the money you'd get from mortgaging the property to build more houses on your finished sets (especially 3-house thresholds). i agree that in most situations you shouldn't invest ALL your cash at once- having cash for small rents is important. i never recommend selling houses unless you have to- as stated, any money you put into the board has a 50% loss, and that includes houses. re: green vs light blue, like i said the set you can finish is the best set, but i can't justify $920 for $52-56 in rent (6% of your investment) with green unbuilt, when the exact same amount put into light blue gets you 3 houses on all of them for $400-$450 in rent (43-49% of investment cost). to get that same amount of rent out of green, you need to spend, at minimum, $1720 to get two houses on Green3 (or $2120 to have 2 houses on all 3). yes, green has a higher ceiling, but it costs so much more to get there no matter how you look at it.
@Nic777 overpaying for properties is fine if it will grease the wheels in your favor but i've never seen a non-southside property go for more than double its board value. your argument is the reason- the property is meaningless if you aren't building and you need the cash to do it. making deals is all about risk management and that's a skill that's harder to teach in a presentation. every gamestate is different and what might be an amazing deal in one game could be the pits in another depending on everyone's finances, prospects, upward mobility, etc.
Yeah i play with my mom and she always complains about monopoly taking forever but then she also buys one of each color and refuses to trade. The only times I have the patience to win is if I get a monopoly just by getting lucky to land on all 3 of a set
Unfortunately some people don't understand that even allowing an opponent to complete a set during a trade doesn't necessarily imply giving that player an advantage.
won twice in a row already, well its only an AI which is easier to predict but still the tips here are super effective at making the game end fast and win.
@@BluehearT_RedsouL You can always beat AI opponents in monoply video games. In most monopoly video games the AI is stupid when you make deals lol. I think in the here and now edition the AI is bit more smart if you play at the hardest difficulty level.
This was super awesome and interesting!!! Thank you so much for putting your thoughts together!!! Mmm and complete with a yummy spreadsheet at the end :D
Sets ranked imo: 1. Orange: Easily the most desirable set, all else equal. Most landed on color group by a wide margin (go back 3 to NY Ave., 1-roll proximity to jail), relatively cheap to build on, and a terrific mix of affordability and damaging rents. 2. Red: Inefficient, yes, but also the second most landed on set (due to proximity to jail of ~2 rolls + advance to Illinois Ave.) and a lethal set of kill spaces if you can build up to 3 houses. 3. Light Blue: Possibly #2 if we're being honest. Consistently undervalued by others, decently landed on due to proximity to GO, stupid cheap to build to hotels on. Only downside is that their highest rents can't compete with sets orange and beyond. 4. Magenta: Suffers somewhat from its proximity to jail (in that you can only roll to there from jail with low numbers) but you can build on them relatively quickly, and their 3-house rent of $450/500 is what I'd consider the first legitimately damaging 3-house rent in the game (cf. $270/300 on LBs). Advance to St. Charles Place card, too. 5. Yellow: They're landed on a fair amount (though they can't quite boast the same stats as orange and red) but the initial cost of purchase and development is so expensive that it can take a while for them to become powerful. Once they are, though, they can hang with almost any set on the board. Possibly could be swapped with the magentas. 6. Green: I do not like these properties but I do not hate them either. They're crazy inefficient and Go To Jail does catch a percentage of people that might otherwise land on them but if you can pair them with a cheaper set that can earn you some cash early (the RRs or LBs, ideally) or can convince your opponents to throw in some cash with them in a trade, they can be very powerful. Also has the advantage over DBs of having 3 spaces vs. 2. 7. Dark Blues: Possibly the set with the highest risk-reward ratio in the game. Depending on the game these could be better than the greens but in my games they're worse on average. Reason? They're *never* landed on. Yes, there's an Advance to Boardwalk card, but sometimes that card is drawn so early that it's either the reason the property is bought in the first place or that its owner hasn't had time to build on it yet. Also, 2 properties vs. 3. However, they are quicker to build on than the greens and if you can somehow get them to 3 or 4 houses a single rent can be game-ending. 8. Railroads: Unpopular opinion but these are overrated. Agree that the set is a terrific bootstrap because they consistently rake in $200 (they're also the most landed on set-not color group, which would be orange-in the game due to having 4 spaces vs. 3 or 2) but...well, you're just not going to bankrupt anyone with them unless they're already low on cash. Also, the flip side of not having to develop them is that you *can't* develop them, i.e. the income you get from them can never be increased. 9. Purple/Brown: I kind of disagree with [ninjaxcad] here. I take his point that the return on these properties is insane but I think a set's potential to actually bankrupt opponents is ultimately a better indicator of value. And only Baltic reaches a legitimately damaging rent ($450); Med. Ave.'s top rent of $250 is barely a scratch after passing GO. The only real use for these imo is if they're the very first completed set in the game or if you want to put eight houses on them (rather than hotels) to create a housing shortage. 10. Utilities: Pretty much garbage but can be a modest source of income if you own both + easy to snag at a discount if playing with good players (who probably also hate them).
I love railroads just because even if you pay double face value for all four your are almost guaranteed to recoup all of your investment. ROI is crazy on these
@@gorb3893 the brown set ( if that's the only set you have ) would help you more if you play against many opponents ( from 4 to 6 ). Try to strike with the browns when there are two or more opponents about 10 to 6 squares away. Put houses when they are at the ideal distance when the odds of landing in your browns is better. Did you know you can build houses even if it's not your turn? If a player who is approaching to your browns has the next turn, let him know not to throw the dice yet. Buy the houses and put them there. That player would likely land on them if he's from 6 to 10 squares away.
Another reason it's nearly impossible to bankrupt anyone with the Browns is they've just received $200 from "Passing Go" which is almost half of the maximum Brown rent. They're only useful if you're trying to pull off the "tie up all the Houses" gambit and that's tough against human players.
I'm aware that the UK version has a card that takes you back to the first brown property on the board. That makes the brown color group a little more useful.
A rare like has been given from me. I learned something: my strategy of dumping money into greens, dark blues, and browns (to totally kill/scare everyone on the board) should be edited to: my strategy of dumping money into dark blues and browns (to totally kill/scare everyone on the board).
Here is a strategy that worked for me against the AI: My first line of defense is this: two railroads, one utility, and one street in every neighborhood. This does not get me much money, but it blocks my opponents from gaining power and the more property I have, the more I can mortgage when I need money fast. Once I have completed this line of defense, I begin my line of offense with the brown properties because they are easier to buy from the AI opponents than those expensive dark blue properties. If an AI opponent refuses to trade property for money, I throw in some extra money for the property and they are more likely to give in if they own cheap property on the south side of the board. They are also more likely to give in if they know that the property that I am seeking does not complete a set. If somehow, I have completed a monopoly, I will rush my first house onto my completed set because once you have a house developed, they cannot trade for any street inside the vicinity of your house. The areas where I will rush more houses are located on the south side and the west side of the board because they are cheaper to build over there. The guy in this video emphasizes on developing to three houses, but I do not settle for that. What I will settle for is four houses, instead of a hotel and that hotel moment will wait until I have more houses on other property. This will cause a house shortage and the others will not be able to do anything about that. Note that if you have houses on brown, light blue, and magenta, you can buy out all the houses in stock really fast. For the rest of the board, I can initially settle for one house to block my opponents from trading money for my property. At this rate, I can afford to upgrade to a hotel and build more houses inside the immediate, slightly more expensive neighborhood, likely on the jail side of the board, where I have often delivered the final blow to the other players, since it's super rare for me to have green properties very well developed like I can easily do with some of the other colors. The green neighborhood takes an astronomically high amount of resources for fast development and by the time I acquire that much expendable wealth, I have already won the game in most cases. Green is not a color group that I would target except to block my opponents from developing.
Hi i watched the video and liked the detailed explanations. Would you be interested to look at the rules of a variation of monopoly with slightly different rules and analyze how to increase the chances of winning at it? I haven't seen anyone do a detailed guide about it so might as well try asking haha
Railroad 2 is arguably in a better position than railroad 1 due to being 1 roll away from jail, while railroad 3 is 2 rolls from jail. Railroad 1 is a few spaces before jail.
Good video but i think youll need to make a follow up with more situational strategies. For example you did not mention how once the Advance to Xx property card gets pulled, the value of that set goes way down. So if those cards pull early you may want to collect and turn those around as trade material. So like this but 20-30 examples. Thx
In monopoly or at least on my board the chance card to a railroad warp if it’s owned by another person you pay double money and I have banked 400 from then a lot of times 💵
Put 4 houses on the browns if there are 4 players. You create a housing shortage. Assuming you have another set and the other three players also have, you are all chasing three houses on each of your sets. You can control the game. Also, you stop them from jumping up to hotels, as there physically had to be 4 houses present/available before you can upgrade. The tactic doesn't work if only 2 or 3 players.
Orange > Rails > LBlue > Magenta > DBlue > Brown > Red > Yellow > Green > Utilities. Orange, rails, light blue are for sure the top tier IMO, and green and utilities are pretty bad, but my thoughts on the middle shuffle around. At the time of this video I was pretty high on Brown but the longer the game goes on the less value it has. Red and yellow are about the same but red is a common two-roll destination after jail, where yellow is an awkward distance of 16-19 which while possible is rarer than the 11-14 of red. ranking into tiers only means so much because any finished set is better than not-a-finished set and one should always play the board, not laser-focus on one set before the first roll. but it can be useful for forming a strategy in auctions-only which is a lot of fun too.
What do you think about "defensive trades"? For example if you still cannot get to complete a monopoly ( And neither any of your opponents ), you might prevent other players from completing one. Let's imagine there is an opponent that we'll call "Player A". And another one "Player B". Player "A" has one orange property. And player "B" has two oranges. You get to convince player "A" to give you his orange. If you make several "defensive trades", could that make the game get stuck? One more thing: I think in certain cases you should even overpay for a property either to complete a set or to prevent a player from completing it. Let's suppose player "A" has one dark blue. And player "B" lands on the dark blue the other player needs to complete that set. He decides to put that property into auction because either he's not interested or he is too low on cash. Would you try to win that auction? Or does it depend on the case or situation? Or let's imagine you are the player who lands on the dark blue that player "A" needs but you are low on cash. Would you spend all or almost all what you have just for avoiding that player to complete that set ( you don't want to give him the chance of getting that property by auction )
personally speaking, i don't waste money on the kinds of defensive trades you describe in the first part. if i know i can get a really good deal on the property, then i may value owning it to have more agency in orange completing their set, especially if i see they have something i'd like to finish. i would never trade in such a way to freeze the gamestate, i'd rather forfeit than play a game where we're just trading base rent and passing go. locking when i have something built, sure, but if there's nothing built, there's no reason to do this other than general dickishness or inability to accept risk. overpaying to complete a set you own happens more often than not, however i wouldn't do it for a set i'm preventing others from winning. HOWEVER, i if i see someone has an easy way to get the property in an auction i will bid up to make them pay more for it (with no intention of winning myself). you can generally get a sense for how much different players are willing to overpay for a property in an auction and push them to their spending limit if they really want to finish their set. i'd rather do this than overpay + acquire for it myself and then try to negotiate trades, as all money spent on the board is lost but all money in trades is just part of the player-to-player flow of resources. all strategies depend on the situation and cash on hand for all players, there's really no "always do this" strategy in monopoly... except maybe auction instead of buy when you know you can get a property for less than board value due to nobody else having the money to bid on it. *that* is always wise.
@@NinjaxCad Thanks for the answer. Then overpaying for a property should be done only wisely ( Generally for you to complete a set ). Not just for the mere sake of trying to block a player from completing a set.
@@NinjaxCad I think one of the reasons why some people are fearful of making trades is because they don't understand that letting an opponent complete a set as well during a trade doesn't necessarily imply a big risk or giving that opponent an advantage.
What is the best decision in this situation? Let's imagine an opponent has a developed set. You also have a developed set. And you also have another complete set but still undeveloped ( You were planning to develope that set as well soon because you have the necessary capital for that ). You are 6 to 10 squares away from your opponent's developed set. In that scenario, is it better to save your capital in case you land in your opponent's developed set? Or should you take the risk of investing in your another set?
save capital for my next roll until i'm safe. if two+ opponents were 6-10 away from the set i'd be developing i might take the risk, but generally i invest under the assumption that i will roll the worst possible and my opponents will roll the best in the next move
@@NinjaxCad I think the offficial rules allows you to build houses even if it's not your turn. But I think it has to be before a player rolls the dice. That implies you should let a player know you want to buy houses before he rolls the dice.
Would you trade the orange set for the light blue set? Let's suppose you have one orange property and two light blues. And an opponent has two oranges and one light blue. Would you accept the deal only if you have the capacity for immediately developing the light blue set?
if i could full develop light blue, they could do < 2 houses on orange, and my opponents weren't significantly developed, i'd take that yeah. the game would resolve fairly quickly and i believe i'd be advantaged, though it would be somewhat risky.
Do you think either the brown set or the dark blue set would be more useful (in terms of a bigger odds that your opponents land on any of those sets ) in case you are in a 6-player game and specially if you are the first player in getting to complete a set?
all things being equal, d blue is more common since brown has no chance warps, other than "travel to go" which leaves only a marginal chance of rolling a 3 to land on brown 2. i'd take dblue over brown just about every game state if it was a choice, but they're both great
I think you make a huge error ignoring the probabilities of landing on each space. If each piece in one set is 1% and another set is 2%, that's double the value. You mention warping back 3 spaces on a Chance to Orange 3, but what is the probability of that? Does that probability influence the decision to put a house there over O1 and O2, despitr them being more landed on out of jail?
TL;DR: yes there's a difference in land rates but it's a very small number and due to the compounding uncertainty and interdependence of dice rolls every game of monopoly will break from these so-called probabilities. this guide is focused on strategic implications of each set which are applicable in all games regardless of rolls. 2% is, in fact, larger than 1%, and by twice as much. double sounds like a lot until you factor in how small of a probability difference it is. when "twice as common" is only a 1/100 difference, other factors begin to matter more on a per-game basis such as exactly where the tokens are on the board and who owns what properties. the landing probabilities i've seen always evaluate over the course of an entire game, not *when* in a game they were landed on, who owned what, when it was built up, and other factors that are much more consequential when it comes to building/trading. ultimately when you play a game of monopoly you are making some kind of lemonade out of what the initial dice rolls and property distributions dished out. this guide to the color sets is focused on the value that each set provides strategically. why would you want LBlue? because there's 3 of them, they're cheap to build on, the set is usually in play very early, and you see quick ROI. these are big, meaningful attributes to consider when making decisions that can be meaningfully assessed regardless of the current game state. individual land rates from any given sample size are never going to perfectly match any given game of monopoly. they could be similar, but games can also end before someone ever lands on a given space despite it making up 2.7% of the board. if you narrow your focus to only the numbers, every game starts to look like an outlier, and the so-called averages are just a trend line between them. the Orange3 chance back-3 argument doesn't weigh too heavily into the reasons you'd want to build on Orange3 over the others, but it IS a correlation that is universal and worth considering if there are no other, more immediately consequential things to consider (i.e. sniping someone 7 spaces away). perhaps i appeared to over-emphasize its importance in the presentation (it was not particularly organized in advance, as should be evident) but i thought it was worth mentioning
@@NinjaxCad Thank you for your lengthy and well written reply. I am very interested in the numbers and gave watched a few maths videos on Monopoly. Which in turn led me here. After reading your reply I am now curious about the mathematically expected deviations from the statistical norm in the bulk of games of Monopoly because that is something that would accurately tell to what degree one should consider landing rates of particular properties.
That was really good! Just a question, if you get a card that says go to ..., does that mean if you pass the GO place you get 200 money or do you like teleport there?
![[ninjaxcad]](http://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_lXMO3DoFqWUD32iYITQ9VysDunrOr21PtKDsV2SRjmBA=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj)
This felt like a college lecture where you actually care about what the professor is teaching. This guide is EXTREMELY interesting! :)
Very good presentation here. I only played Monopoly decades ago using house rules and only recently played again as an adult. I realized then that not only are the real rules much better but there are logical strategies and techniques for winning! Your spreadsheet is very impressive too. Nice video!
I've been playing monopoly plus online for ages and I feel comfortable enough to share my strategy whenever I play vs others. My new most favourite strategy is not to actually buy everything anymore as both the true value and perceived value of an item can change depending on situations.
I like to auction everything except railroads at the early stages of the game once I obtained 1 color card (preferably light blue or orange). The only exception to this rule is buying browns which I will always do as ignoring them is just silly IMO. Auctioning everything early can bait players into paying much more for property sets that they do not actually need therefore lowering their net value even more. I guess you can profit from them with trade but better people are more willing to pay the bank than a player. Once money supplies are becoming low that's when you can either win at auctions for cheap during mid game or buy properties your opponents need to sell at a premium.
If a player refuses to trade you the final piece to a monopoly for a considerable amount of money or counter offers you with something you're not happy with: flip the trade deal over. Chances are if they took part in these crazy auctions they wont have enough capital in order for them to develop this newly obtained monopoly. This puts a lot of pressure on the opponent as their only options is to mortgage or trade to not put items on auction thus weakening their position on the board and further decreases their net worth. Every penny can count in a game.
Railroads almost always keep their value and minimum base rent of 25 for -100 net is great and the 3 chance cards that take you to 3/4 stations help regain your money.
The buy 1 card then auction strategy has worked so well and has let me sweep games. Only exceptions to this is when a player gets ridiculously lucky either by claiming a cheap monopoly fast or rolling onto 3/4 railroads within the first 3 moves or something. Would recommend this strat in your games
Monopoly plus like the game? ima try this.
I'll try it
20:09 In the 1935 edition of Monopoly there was a Go Back to Baltic Avenue card in Community Chest. Imagine if that card still existed today lol (Would've actually made CC more interesting too.).
It still exists in the German version.
That was a very informative guide, thanks! Really helped me reevaluate just how good the north and west side properties actually are.
When making a deal with someone, I think no player who has at least some experience would allow you to complete a set if you don't have anything to give it to him so that he completes a set in return.
Easily the best guide to winning Monopoly that I have ever seen!
@Nic777 I’ve learned it the hard way. There have been times I slept on the greens, and eventually the only player who had a monopoly had it on the green!
19:58 Statistics is important. Otherwise one might conclude that always playing the lottery is great because of the return investment... But if you never win, it is just a loss.
Thanks man, I normally win monopoly off of intuition but knowing all this I'm sure will be invaluable, great presentation!
the most valuable and useful monopoly video on all internet platforms. but 800 views (4 months) sad.. thank you so much.
Fuck off
@@rattlesnakemusic9450 sad
This is one of my most favourite videos. Incredibly insightful. Thank you for making this
I just wanted to say this is an amazing video. great job
Thanks so much for the video: Over investing, the focus on the sniping, the deeper info about the sides of the board, the worse station on the east side. And so on.. - I didn't expect to learn so many new things about this legendary game!
I was also happy to notice that you gave the dark green the value it deserves: The statistical chance of hitting orange or red a tiny bit more, wont matter if U can build enough on dark blue. It will kill the other players one by one even if it takes a bit more time.
A couple of points:
Mortgage everything and build?: I don't usually do that. Why - because you have to have at least some assets left to pay rents and other payments. You don't want to sell your houses - it is very bad business. So, you have to choose if you mortgage all and have cash, or you don't mortgage and keep (some of) the other properties as a security. Properties are better, because they will bring at least a little bit income when landed on - in the early game east side spaces give actually quite a nice extra income, and so do the stations. But probably you meant mortgaging only when there is a good sniping opportunity?
Brown return rates are excellent. However the problem, and the reason why it is so unpopular set, is that - as U said - often it is bought rather late in the game, and then it already tends to be too cheap to have any major impact on the game. It really can't win a game for you. However, yes - if U get it early, it does slow down other players' property development.
And finally: Maybe I wouldn't be quite that strict about the choice between green and light blue. Green does suck, but if you have the set, it gives a considerable rent even with no buildings. And quite often light blue is good enough for the silver medal, but not to win a game for you. Yet, I admit that building on the green set takes more than the "second prize in a beauty contest"..
re: mortgage everything and build, i didn't get into a whole lot of nuance. my intent was to explain that, one should weigh the value of unbuilt, incomplete set rent vs the amount you can earn by using the money you'd get from mortgaging the property to build more houses on your finished sets (especially 3-house thresholds). i agree that in most situations you shouldn't invest ALL your cash at once- having cash for small rents is important. i never recommend selling houses unless you have to- as stated, any money you put into the board has a 50% loss, and that includes houses.
re: green vs light blue, like i said the set you can finish is the best set, but i can't justify $920 for $52-56 in rent (6% of your investment) with green unbuilt, when the exact same amount put into light blue gets you 3 houses on all of them for $400-$450 in rent (43-49% of investment cost). to get that same amount of rent out of green, you need to spend, at minimum, $1720 to get two houses on Green3 (or $2120 to have 2 houses on all 3). yes, green has a higher ceiling, but it costs so much more to get there no matter how you look at it.
@Nic777 overpaying for properties is fine if it will grease the wheels in your favor but i've never seen a non-southside property go for more than double its board value. your argument is the reason- the property is meaningless if you aren't building and you need the cash to do it. making deals is all about risk management and that's a skill that's harder to teach in a presentation. every gamestate is different and what might be an amazing deal in one game could be the pits in another depending on everyone's finances, prospects, upward mobility, etc.
you are sooooo smart I LOVE how you break things down and the way you explain
Yeah i play with my mom and she always complains about monopoly taking forever but then she also buys one of each color and refuses to trade. The only times I have the patience to win is if I get a monopoly just by getting lucky to land on all 3 of a set
Unfortunately some people don't understand that even allowing an opponent to complete a set during a trade doesn't necessarily imply giving that player an advantage.
Lol playing a monopoly app on my android vs 6 AI opponents, I easily won the game under 1 hour when I used these tips.
won twice in a row already, well its only an AI which is easier to predict but still the tips here are super effective at making the game end fast and win.
@@BluehearT_RedsouL You can always beat AI opponents in monoply video games. In most monopoly video games the AI is stupid when you make deals lol. I think in the here and now edition the AI is bit more smart if you play at the hardest difficulty level.
How to play monopoly on app?
Ai is stupid
This was super awesome and interesting!!! Thank you so much for putting your thoughts together!!! Mmm and complete with a yummy spreadsheet at the end :D
Sets ranked imo:
1. Orange: Easily the most desirable set, all else equal. Most landed on color group by a wide margin (go back 3 to NY Ave., 1-roll proximity to jail), relatively cheap to build on, and a terrific mix of affordability and damaging rents.
2. Red: Inefficient, yes, but also the second most landed on set (due to proximity to jail of ~2 rolls + advance to Illinois Ave.) and a lethal set of kill spaces if you can build up to 3 houses.
3. Light Blue: Possibly #2 if we're being honest. Consistently undervalued by others, decently landed on due to proximity to GO, stupid cheap to build to hotels on. Only downside is that their highest rents can't compete with sets orange and beyond.
4. Magenta: Suffers somewhat from its proximity to jail (in that you can only roll to there from jail with low numbers) but you can build on them relatively quickly, and their 3-house rent of $450/500 is what I'd consider the first legitimately damaging 3-house rent in the game (cf. $270/300 on LBs). Advance to St. Charles Place card, too.
5. Yellow: They're landed on a fair amount (though they can't quite boast the same stats as orange and red) but the initial cost of purchase and development is so expensive that it can take a while for them to become powerful. Once they are, though, they can hang with almost any set on the board. Possibly could be swapped with the magentas.
6. Green: I do not like these properties but I do not hate them either. They're crazy inefficient and Go To Jail does catch a percentage of people that might otherwise land on them but if you can pair them with a cheaper set that can earn you some cash early (the RRs or LBs, ideally) or can convince your opponents to throw in some cash with them in a trade, they can be very powerful. Also has the advantage over DBs of having 3 spaces vs. 2.
7. Dark Blues: Possibly the set with the highest risk-reward ratio in the game. Depending on the game these could be better than the greens but in my games they're worse on average. Reason? They're *never* landed on. Yes, there's an Advance to Boardwalk card, but sometimes that card is drawn so early that it's either the reason the property is bought in the first place or that its owner hasn't had time to build on it yet. Also, 2 properties vs. 3. However, they are quicker to build on than the greens and if you can somehow get them to 3 or 4 houses a single rent can be game-ending.
8. Railroads: Unpopular opinion but these are overrated. Agree that the set is a terrific bootstrap because they consistently rake in $200 (they're also the most landed on set-not color group, which would be orange-in the game due to having 4 spaces vs. 3 or 2) but...well, you're just not going to bankrupt anyone with them unless they're already low on cash. Also, the flip side of not having to develop them is that you *can't* develop them, i.e. the income you get from them can never be increased.
9. Purple/Brown: I kind of disagree with [ninjaxcad] here. I take his point that the return on these properties is insane but I think a set's potential to actually bankrupt opponents is ultimately a better indicator of value. And only Baltic reaches a legitimately damaging rent ($450); Med. Ave.'s top rent of $250 is barely a scratch after passing GO. The only real use for these imo is if they're the very first completed set in the game or if you want to put eight houses on them (rather than hotels) to create a housing shortage.
10. Utilities: Pretty much garbage but can be a modest source of income if you own both + easy to snag at a discount if playing with good players (who probably also hate them).
I love railroads just because even if you pay double face value for all four your are almost guaranteed to recoup all of your investment. ROI is crazy on these
I like the brown properties just so I can buy houses on them and reduce the amount of houses that can be bought
@@gorb3893 the brown set ( if that's the only set you have ) would help you more if you play against many opponents ( from 4 to 6 ). Try to strike with the browns when there are two or more opponents about 10 to 6 squares away. Put houses when they are at the ideal distance when the odds of landing in your browns is better. Did you know you can build houses even if it's not your turn? If a player who is approaching to your browns has the next turn, let him know not to throw the dice yet. Buy the houses and put them there. That player would likely land on them if he's from 6 to 10 squares away.
Another reason it's nearly impossible to bankrupt anyone with the Browns is they've just received $200 from "Passing Go" which is almost half of the maximum Brown rent. They're only useful if you're trying to pull off the "tie up all the Houses" gambit and that's tough against human players.
I've noticed a few differences in the chance cards here in the UK. Our warp is Railroad 2, and we don't have the nearest Railroad either.
I'm aware that the UK version has a card that takes you back to the first brown property on the board. That makes the brown color group a little more useful.
“Think of money like a health bar in a traditional game”
Monopoly is THE traditional game that preceded health bars hahah
A rare like has been given from me. I learned something: my strategy of dumping money into greens, dark blues, and browns (to totally kill/scare everyone on the board) should be edited to: my strategy of dumping money into dark blues and browns (to totally kill/scare everyone on the board).
1.orange
2.red
3.yellow
4.pink
5.light blue
6.dark blue
7.green
8.brown
Here is a strategy that worked for me against the AI:
My first line of defense is this: two railroads, one utility, and one street in every neighborhood. This does not get me much money, but it blocks my opponents from gaining power and the more property I have, the more I can mortgage when I need money fast. Once I have completed this line of defense, I begin my line of offense with the brown properties because they are easier to buy from the AI opponents than those expensive dark blue properties. If an AI opponent refuses to trade property for money, I throw in some extra money for the property and they are more likely to give in if they own cheap property on the south side of the board. They are also more likely to give in if they know that the property that I am seeking does not complete a set. If somehow, I have completed a monopoly, I will rush my first house onto my completed set because once you have a house developed, they cannot trade for any street inside the vicinity of your house. The areas where I will rush more houses are located on the south side and the west side of the board because they are cheaper to build over there. The guy in this video emphasizes on developing to three houses, but I do not settle for that. What I will settle for is four houses, instead of a hotel and that hotel moment will wait until I have more houses on other property. This will cause a house shortage and the others will not be able to do anything about that. Note that if you have houses on brown, light blue, and magenta, you can buy out all the houses in stock really fast. For the rest of the board, I can initially settle for one house to block my opponents from trading money for my property. At this rate, I can afford to upgrade to a hotel and build more houses inside the immediate, slightly more expensive neighborhood, likely on the jail side of the board, where I have often delivered the final blow to the other players, since it's super rare for me to have green properties very well developed like I can easily do with some of the other colors. The green neighborhood takes an astronomically high amount of resources for fast development and by the time I acquire that much expendable wealth, I have already won the game in most cases. Green is not a color group that I would target except to block my opponents from developing.
great useful video!!
Is it possible for you to link the spreadsheet at the end of video via email or a response here? I would really appreciate it, great video by the way.
sure thing! I've added it to the description.
@@NinjaxCad thank you so so much! :D
commenting so i get more videos like this
A long time ago I used to play monopoly every Christmas
So nice man!!!! Thanks alot!!!!!
Hi i watched the video and liked the detailed explanations. Would you be interested to look at the rules of a variation of monopoly with slightly different rules and analyze how to increase the chances of winning at it? I haven't seen anyone do a detailed guide about it so might as well try asking haha
Railroad 2 is arguably in a better position than railroad 1 due to being 1 roll away from jail, while railroad 3 is 2 rolls from jail. Railroad 1 is a few spaces before jail.
This is an awesome video. Thanks.
Good video but i think youll need to make a follow up with more situational strategies. For example you did not mention how once the Advance to Xx property card gets pulled, the value of that set goes way down. So if those cards pull early you may want to collect and turn those around as trade material. So like this but 20-30 examples. Thx
I beat the A.I. tonight because of this video
In monopoly or at least on my board the chance card to a railroad warp if it’s owned by another person you pay double money and I have banked 400 from then a lot of times 💵
I always thought it was Reading Railroad (pronounced "Redding" like the actual rail company in PA)
you are correct and i am extremely dumb, haha
I know 3 houses is best but I always try to hotel the south side because say 90 on brown seems worthless. Thoughts?
you're absolutely correct. hotels on all south side properties, always. they're too cheap not to for the massive return.
@@NinjaxCad thanks
I like four houses on the south side so there are less available to the other players.
@@stevenroshni1228 Because they're cheap to buy, right? That's a good point.
Put 4 houses on the browns if there are 4 players. You create a housing shortage. Assuming you have another set and the other three players also have, you are all chasing three houses on each of your sets. You can control the game. Also, you stop them from jumping up to hotels, as there physically had to be 4 houses present/available before you can upgrade. The tactic doesn't work if only 2 or 3 players.
how would you rank each set?
I assune like: Orange, LBlue, Brown, Railroads, Yellow, Red, DBlue, Magenta, Green, Utilities?
Orange > Rails > LBlue > Magenta > DBlue > Brown > Red > Yellow > Green > Utilities. Orange, rails, light blue are for sure the top tier IMO, and green and utilities are pretty bad, but my thoughts on the middle shuffle around. At the time of this video I was pretty high on Brown but the longer the game goes on the less value it has. Red and yellow are about the same but red is a common two-roll destination after jail, where yellow is an awkward distance of 16-19 which while possible is rarer than the 11-14 of red.
ranking into tiers only means so much because any finished set is better than not-a-finished set and one should always play the board, not laser-focus on one set before the first roll. but it can be useful for forming a strategy in auctions-only which is a lot of fun too.
Great video
What do you think about "defensive trades"? For example if you still cannot get to complete a monopoly ( And neither any of your opponents ), you might prevent other players from completing one. Let's imagine there is an opponent that we'll call "Player A". And another one "Player B". Player "A" has one orange property. And player "B" has two oranges. You get to convince player "A" to give you his orange.
If you make several "defensive trades", could that make the game get stuck?
One more thing:
I think in certain cases you should even overpay for a property either to complete a set or to prevent a player from completing it. Let's suppose player "A" has one dark blue. And player "B" lands on the dark blue the other player needs to complete that set. He decides to put that property into auction because either he's not interested or he is too low on cash. Would you try to win that auction? Or does it depend on the case or situation?
Or let's imagine you are the player who lands on the dark blue that player "A" needs but you are low on cash. Would you spend all or almost all what you have just for avoiding that player to complete that set ( you don't want to give him the chance of getting that property by auction )
personally speaking, i don't waste money on the kinds of defensive trades you describe in the first part. if i know i can get a really good deal on the property, then i may value owning it to have more agency in orange completing their set, especially if i see they have something i'd like to finish.
i would never trade in such a way to freeze the gamestate, i'd rather forfeit than play a game where we're just trading base rent and passing go. locking when i have something built, sure, but if there's nothing built, there's no reason to do this other than general dickishness or inability to accept risk.
overpaying to complete a set you own happens more often than not, however i wouldn't do it for a set i'm preventing others from winning. HOWEVER, i if i see someone has an easy way to get the property in an auction i will bid up to make them pay more for it (with no intention of winning myself). you can generally get a sense for how much different players are willing to overpay for a property in an auction and push them to their spending limit if they really want to finish their set. i'd rather do this than overpay + acquire for it myself and then try to negotiate trades, as all money spent on the board is lost but all money in trades is just part of the player-to-player flow of resources.
all strategies depend on the situation and cash on hand for all players, there's really no "always do this" strategy in monopoly... except maybe auction instead of buy when you know you can get a property for less than board value due to nobody else having the money to bid on it. *that* is always wise.
@@NinjaxCad Thanks for the answer. Then overpaying for a property should be done only wisely ( Generally for you to complete a set ). Not just for the mere sake of trying to block a player from completing a set.
@@NinjaxCad I think one of the reasons why some people are fearful of making trades is because they don't understand that letting an opponent complete a set as well during a trade doesn't necessarily imply a big risk or giving that opponent an advantage.
What is the best decision in this situation?
Let's imagine an opponent has a developed set. You also have a developed set. And you also have another complete set but still undeveloped ( You were planning to develope that set as well soon because you have the necessary capital for that ). You are 6 to 10 squares away from your opponent's developed set.
In that scenario, is it better to save your capital in case you land in your opponent's developed set? Or should you take the risk of investing in your another set?
save capital for my next roll until i'm safe. if two+ opponents were 6-10 away from the set i'd be developing i might take the risk, but generally i invest under the assumption that i will roll the worst possible and my opponents will roll the best in the next move
@@NinjaxCad I think the offficial rules allows you to build houses even if it's not your turn. But I think it has to be before a player rolls the dice. That implies you should let a player know you want to buy houses before he rolls the dice.
Great guide!
Would you trade the orange set for the light blue set? Let's suppose you have one orange property and two light blues. And an opponent has two oranges and one light blue. Would you accept the deal only if you have the capacity for immediately developing the light blue set?
if i could full develop light blue, they could do < 2 houses on orange, and my opponents weren't significantly developed, i'd take that yeah. the game would resolve fairly quickly and i believe i'd be advantaged, though it would be somewhat risky.
@@NinjaxCad If you are going to accept an offer like that, maybe the best time is in the early phase of the game.
Do you think either the brown set or the dark blue set would be more useful (in terms of a bigger odds that your opponents land on any of those sets ) in case you are in a 6-player game and specially if you are the first player in getting to complete a set?
all things being equal, d blue is more common since brown has no chance warps, other than "travel to go" which leaves only a marginal chance of rolling a 3 to land on brown 2.
i'd take dblue over brown just about every game state if it was a choice, but they're both great
Good video!
great vid
Wowwwww thank you!!!!
I think you make a huge error ignoring the probabilities of landing on each space. If each piece in one set is 1% and another set is 2%, that's double the value. You mention warping back 3 spaces on a Chance to Orange 3, but what is the probability of that? Does that probability influence the decision to put a house there over O1 and O2, despitr them being more landed on out of jail?
TL;DR: yes there's a difference in land rates but it's a very small number and due to the compounding uncertainty and interdependence of dice rolls every game of monopoly will break from these so-called probabilities. this guide is focused on strategic implications of each set which are applicable in all games regardless of rolls.
2% is, in fact, larger than 1%, and by twice as much. double sounds like a lot until you factor in how small of a probability difference it is. when "twice as common" is only a 1/100 difference, other factors begin to matter more on a per-game basis such as exactly where the tokens are on the board and who owns what properties. the landing probabilities i've seen always evaluate over the course of an entire game, not *when* in a game they were landed on, who owned what, when it was built up, and other factors that are much more consequential when it comes to building/trading.
ultimately when you play a game of monopoly you are making some kind of lemonade out of what the initial dice rolls and property distributions dished out. this guide to the color sets is focused on the value that each set provides strategically. why would you want LBlue? because there's 3 of them, they're cheap to build on, the set is usually in play very early, and you see quick ROI. these are big, meaningful attributes to consider when making decisions that can be meaningfully assessed regardless of the current game state. individual land rates from any given sample size are never going to perfectly match any given game of monopoly. they could be similar, but games can also end before someone ever lands on a given space despite it making up 2.7% of the board. if you narrow your focus to only the numbers, every game starts to look like an outlier, and the so-called averages are just a trend line between them.
the Orange3 chance back-3 argument doesn't weigh too heavily into the reasons you'd want to build on Orange3 over the others, but it IS a correlation that is universal and worth considering if there are no other, more immediately consequential things to consider (i.e. sniping someone 7 spaces away). perhaps i appeared to over-emphasize its importance in the presentation (it was not particularly organized in advance, as should be evident) but i thought it was worth mentioning
@@NinjaxCad Thank you for your lengthy and well written reply. I am very interested in the numbers and gave watched a few maths videos on Monopoly. Which in turn led me here.
After reading your reply I am now curious about the mathematically expected deviations from the statistical norm in the bulk of games of Monopoly because that is something that would accurately tell to what degree one should consider landing rates of particular properties.
Really parsed the mechanism. Cool
The 4 dislikes just suck at monopoly
Thank you so much
That was really good!
Just a question, if you get a card that says go to ..., does that mean if you pass the GO place you get 200 money or do you like teleport there?
unless it's jail, you advance until you get there (which can pass go, and collect you 200)
But they’re gone now
And my mom got a monopoly from Korea so it’s in Korean
20:56 1+2 and 2+1
Like and follow, algorithm bring me more
great video