# Interesting Monopoly Probabilities (To Defeat your Relatives For the Holidays!)

Posted on December 29, 2018

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## Holiday Break = Monopoly (Logically) 😂

Ahhh, it's that :snowflake: time :snowflake: of year again - a break from work with lots of time with the family.

(In other words - do you have that specific in-law you just can't wait to see defeated?)

well this is the post for YOU my friend!

For my family at least, we'll play Monopoly at least once during the Christmas - New Year's week (What other time of year do you have 4+ hours to spend duking it out with one of the world's most loved1 games?)

## Motivation and Backstory

So, in a recent bout (like, last Wednesday 😂), my brother had snagged both the brown / dark purple properties (Mediterranean and Baltic) as well as the light blues (Oriental, Vermont, and Connecticut). If a player owns both of these adjacent monopolies, we cherishingly call them the 'slum lord').

### Simple Ranking

To make it really simple, let's categorize the 8 monopolies into 'best', 'better', 'good', and 'bad', with 2 monopolies each:

1. Best Tier: Orange, Light Blue
2. Better Tier: Magenta, Yellow
3. Good Tier: Red, Blue

Of course, in the end, Monopoly is a game highly based on chance, so after all this analysis, actual game outcomes and mileage explained here will always vary.

However, by subscribing to these general concepts, I've had great success playing Monopoly (and this holiday season) 😉. Have fun, and good luck if you're playing any time over the holidays!

Cheers! 🍺

-Chris

## Sources

Jim Slater, the famous English bank businessman, provides a breakdown of the expected returns of some of the monopolies (and independently matches what was found by me, I'll be proud to admit! (though the ROIs he mentions are different - perhaps he is calculating them without considering hotels/houses? 😊) in the fourth episode of "The Mayfair Set" documentaries by Adam Curtis, (though in the video he is referring to the English names of the properties, it's helpful that he still mentions the colors 😂).

## Footnotes

2. Mermaid is a markdown-based diagram and flowchart generator.

3. 'Early game' is another one of my made up terms from my childhood monopoly-nerd days. I would generally describe it as the point of the game before any one player has a monopoly. Generally, this is until the first player goes out, all properties have been bought, or two or more players make trades to acquire monopolies. In this 'early game' period, the only thing you have to worry about is paying basic, un-doubled rents to other players. Easy money.

4. See footnote 4 above. 'Late game' begins the moment 'early game' ends 😂