Monopoly

Last night, I had the privelege of playing Monopoly with my cousins. I gotta tell ya, I thought I knew what I was doing. It turns out that it REALLY is all about wise business moves and trades and deals to get the best deal. I figured that by having at least oner property from each color group and all 4 railroads, I'd be straight. WRONG. There was the green color group that I couldn't get to in time, and my little cousin bought and bargained her way to all of them. THEN, the houses came. 3 on each. I tell ya, every trip around for the other 3 players (including myself) ended up being a payday for her. Here's a look at the gameboard towards the end of the game:



This is what my cousin had that he THOUGHT would be a superior payday for him:



He was wrong. He had the right idea, but so many people skipped over Boardwalk, it wasn't the cash cow he thought. He DID get some cake from the purple properties, though.

I, in the meantime, was focusing on what people were actually landing on, and putting my money on that. Towards the end, this was me:



This was before I got Pennsylvania from my cousin in a trade for States Ave., giving her all the properties in THAT color group, too, but by then, I didn't care. I did screw up by investing in properties that I couldn't improve on (and paying BIG money for them, too), and the ones I DID have, I didn't improve on.

All in all, it was a blast. We were playing from like 10pm to about 2am. I gotta tell ya, though. Losing in Monopoly hurts your pride. Puttin' money down on property, THINKING you're about to get paid, only to get REAMED by landing on other people's property and mortgaging your property (which I had to do when I landed on Pennsylvania with 3 houses on it) hurts you. By the end of the game, ALL my precious railroads had been mortgaged off (damn houses). I'm gonna call them up to see if they wanna play again tonight!!

-B