by Justin Bell

A few weeks ago, my wife sent me a link to an article on Slate titled “Have We Been Playing Monopoly Wrong All Along?” written by Luke Winkie. It was a great read, in part because there are references not only to BGG but also some of the legend behind what makes Monopoly the devil for so many players and why the game’s house rules have set in so deeply since the dawn of time (or 1935, whichever you think is older in board game terms).

The article also serves as a great read for anyone who has defended Monopoly for years. A bit like Catan, Scotland Yard, and The Game of Life, Monopoly is a game I am almost always willing to play in a landscape where most friends and family members swear that some games aren’t nearly as good as their legacy suggests they should be. I will happily play any of those games—as a point of reference, I will play any game once—but, whenever I tell someone that, they swear that there are millions and billions of games better than those archaic reminders of yesteryear.

Got it. The difference for me hits at home, because my nine-year-old really will play anything.

“Daddy, do you want to play Monopoly?”

“Sure, buddy” I said. “I’ll play Monopoly.”

My son is the main pusher of family games in the Bell compound, and he will play both brand new titles as well as the oldest games we have in the house. He is also the purveyor of almost everything “old” that we do regularly: he listens to clean versions of rap songs from the 80s and 90s, he has a Nintendo Entertainment System (yes, an NES, albeit the NES Mini) set up in our kitchen, and he likes the 1981 adventure flick Raiders of the Lost Ark almost as much as I do.

His normal go-to game is Pay Day, another game that BGG enthusiasts regularly murder because of its archaic “roll to move” mechanics and randomness tied to event cards, here represented by pieces of mail. (This is the beauty of games from the 1970s: if you never went to your physical mailbox, you never got any bills. Ahh, the good ol’ days!)

My wife is usually the person who gets tapped on the shoulder for Monopoly, and I’m the one who gets tapped for Pay Day. However, I hadn’t played Monopoly since we bought a new copy of the game earlier this year. (We have Monopoly Deal, and we have Monopoly on a couple of our video game systems, but the physical copy of Monopoly was a welcome addition.)

We placed the Monopoly board in the center of our basement gaming table and got to work on the setup. Laid out all the property cards; he selected the Battleship token, while I went with my standard, the Racecar. While every player has a backup choice—mine in the Thimble, although I can be talked into the Wheelbarrow for the right price—the Racecar is the piece I always chose growing up, so it brings all the memories back in a rush.

Although I am typically adamant that I will only use poker chips to substitute for cardboard chits or paper money with modern games, I almost always use the paper money for Monopoly. Yes, I know: the paper money slows games down immensely. But I like the rush of childhood memories that come with my plays of both Monopoly and The Game of Life as a kid, particularly the moment when I used the main board to serve as a tuckbox for each flavor of bill along my side of the table.

You remember this, right? Your $1 bills tucked under the far left edge of your side of the board, then your $5 bills, then the $10s, $20s, $50s, $100s (“hundos”), and $500s.

I always insisted on being the banker as a kid…so, it’s been a thrill to pass along that responsibility to my son, who now insists on being the banker for this and every other game where someone is responsible for handing out cash. He’ll even serve in this capacity if he is not playing the game, because he loves fanning out those bills to every player in sight.

After we each took $1,500 in starting capital, he rolled the dice and we were off.

The article on Slate highlighted a lot of the things that players hate about Monopoly. The thing that has always struck me about these complaints is the fact that most people do not play Monopoly correctly.

When it is played the right way, Monopoly is almost comically fast, and it’s a lot better than a 4.4 average rating would suggest. (I’ve played a half-dozen new releases this year alone that are leagues worse than Monopoly.)

A sidebar: one of my favorite tabletop videos ever went up only a year or so ago. It was the Watch It Played video Rodney Smith and Rich Sommer put up regarding the game UNO. No, UNO is not a new game that really requires a teach video…but it IS a game that people almost always play incorrectly.

I’m shocked at how many times I have played UNO with friends and had to correct them about the rules. Yes, the first discard established during setup affects the game’s first player. Yes, a player only has to draw one card if they can’t play something from their hand. No, a player doesn’t get to play a card after getting hit with a Draw Four card.

Most people just assume that UNO is over when a player wins a hand. I can’t ever get people to play UNO like a game of Rummikub—officially, UNO winners score points based on what everyone else still has in their hands, then play to a predetermined scoring threshold—so I don’t ever fight that one, but that’s how the game was drawn up.

I’m a rules guy, so it was fun to be able to find someone that took the time to emphasize how UNO should be played. The same should be true for Monopoly…so when we taught our nine-year-old how to play Monopoly, we taught him how to play the right way.

No, there’s no money from Community Chest fee cards going into the center of the board. No, you don’t move on your third doubles roll in a row…you go directly to jail. The big one: whether you choose to buy a property or not is important, because if you don’t buy it, it gets auctioned to the highest bidder right then and there. And that’s an important, game-changing element of Monopoly that I was taught incorrectly during my first few plays as a kid. Auctioning off every property makes the game so much shorter and so much more interesting, strategically.

That also means deals, baby. And my son likes to deal.

“So, I see that you have Virginia Avenue and I have St. Charles Place…when someone gets States Avenue, we are gonna have to make a deal, Daddy.”

At one point, I was low on cash. My son, seeing blood in the water, made an offer. “Can I make a donation to you?” [No; donations are not allowed in Monopoly, even as you watch a family member burning.] “If not, how about we make a deal where you can buy $100 from me for a dollar and one of your other properties?”

“I see that you only have about $60 right now, so I’m going to auction Pennsylvania Avenue for $61. I want to see if you will mortgage another property!!”

My son found himself in jail four times in the game’s first 30 minutes. I got a monopoly of the red properties, so between that and a deal I had made earlier to acquire both of the cheap brown locations had me feeling good about my chances. Sure, he already had two of the four railroads, but his other holdings were crap and he was low on funds…I liked my chances.

Then, on back-to-back turns following his release from prison jail, he was able to buy B&O Railroad and Short Line thanks to the good fortune of doubles and an exact landing…giving him all four railroad properties. I didn’t like this development, in part because I remember how the Chance and Community Chest decks have cards which move players directly to railroad spaces. And there was trouble on every edge of the board now…a couple wrong moves might lead to immediate disaster.

My son kept dodging my properties, and save for the occasional $6 rent I was collecting from him when he landed on Oriental Avenue, my funds were on life support. Then, the killshot: one of those dreaded Community Chest cards bit me in the rear, moving me past Go and onto Reading Railroad. It also required the active player to pay double rent if the property was already owned. That meant I was suddenly out $400, when I had zero cash and a portfolio of properties that had a half-dozen mortgaged properties.

I mortgaged more properties; good night, New York Avenue, and good luck, Atlantic Avenue. I was down to the red properties, the brown properties, and Electric Company…all my other holdings were mortgaged.

My son continued to find ways to dance safely through my real estate, and I kept finding disaster. Luxury Tax? Obviously. Landing there on my run to reach Go unscathed ended badly. I passed Go only to land on Reading Railroad again, handing my income directly to the waiting paws of a nine-year-old terrorist. As I considered my options, I knew I was out of options…meaning I was forced to admit defeat, as my son already had north of $1600 and I had no cash and no hope.

Total playtime: 55 minutes. There was action, there was drama, there was romance (I felt the love when I landed on Indiana Avenue, allowing me the chance to lock up the red properties), there was horror, there was tragedy.

My son and I shook hands; every game, win or lose, must end with a handshake. Despite the loss, I reveled in the high that was getting Monopoly to the table.

I’ll play Monopoly any time. When you play it correctly, there’s a lot to like.