Monopoly

Monopoly is a classic game, everyone must of played this at some point in their lives!

The idea, as with all games, is to win. You do this by completely cleaning out your opponents of all money, property, houses etc.

At the start of the game everyone has the same amount of money and no property, you are supposed to go around the board once before you start buying property, whether everyone sticks to these rules or not is another thing. Every time you reach go you get £200, this classes as wages! If I got two hundred quid every time I ran around the block I would be very happy.

To buy a property you have to land on it first. When you own a property everyone who lands on it gets charged rent. The more expensive the property, the more the rent is. For example if you land on Old Kent Road, which is a bargain property you only have to pay thrupnehapney whereas if you land on Mayfair you have to sell your left leg.

When you have collected a whole set of properties (all the ones of the same colour) you can start putting houses and hotels on the land which puts rent up even more. This would mean to stay in Petersons shed (Old Kent Road), you may have to cough up a quid and yell at the top of your voice, “this season, I are mostly been having, Geoff”. Or if you stayed in the Hilton (Mayfair) you would have to breed small badgers for their coats.

Monopoly definitely peaks in the middle of the game. At the beginning it’s all a bit slow while people are buying property and building up their land, (get off my land!!!!). Then all of the arguments start about paying, borrowing, lending money and selling back houses. When you start to run out of money it all gets a bit boring when you realise you haven’t a chance of winning and you are just there until the one person gets all of the money, and they’ll never let you forget that either!

To put a bit of variety in the game you get Chance and Community Chest cards which make you either spend money or win money. There’s also the jail space where you have to wait until you roll a double to get out. Then you have free parking. We always play so that all of the Chance and Community Chest payments go in the middle of the board. If you land on free parking you get all of the money. I don’t know if this is in the rules or not!!

Monopoly is not a game you can play in your dinner hour, it lasts agggggggesssssssss. If you have a few of you playing it will last hours. A good game to play over Christmas when the repeat of the Sound of Music is on for the five thousandth time.

Apart from your standard boring Monopoly board you can get several ‘fun’ versions. I have just bought the Simpsons Monopoly and instead of arguing over who is going to be the Car you get to choose Krusty, Bart, Homer or even Jebediah Springfield. The places are also different, instead of places in London you have the Kwik E Mart and Mo’s Tavern. Nice to have a different variety. I’ve also seen Star Trek, Star Wars, Scooby Doo, Disney Coca Cola and loads of other Monopoly’s although I’m not sure it’s really necessary to own them all!!