SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How Monopoly Works

Since more than 1 billion people have played it, you're probably familiar with the board game Monopoly, but we bet you don't know its secret origins as a left-wing socialist teaching tool. Learn about the history, rules and cultural impact of Monopoly.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh boy, it's time for one of my favorite episodes,
How Monopoly Works. This one was way more interesting than
I ever understood. There's a lot more to Monopoly, and
just as a little aside, if you think that the
Monopoly man wore a monocle, you're wrong. You're thinking of
mister Peanut. Plus also it makes sense that he would
be warring a monocle. It's a bit of a crime

(00:22):
that he wasn't. At any rate, here's the episode Monopoly.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with
Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry Rowland, which makes the
Stuff you Should Know.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
It's right, got on the top, Pat and my cane monicle,
Monica to see it, Monica, I thought it was Now
it's mister Peanut.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Oh yeah, not mister Monopoly. And I think mister Pringle
has a monocle too, didn't it? Eh No, he just
says An Nustairs. Yeah, mister Monopoly doesn't have a monocle. Huh.

Speaker 4 (01:04):
I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
Huh. You'd think we'd know, we do not, But I
do know this, mister Monopoly is a nickname for that man.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
His born name is given name by his parents is
rich Uncle penny Bags. Three names, so uncle would be
his middle name.

Speaker 4 (01:24):
Yeah. Well he even has a regular name too.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Oh not that I saw.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah, it is Milbourne Pennybags.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
No.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
Yeah, there was a book published and this is one
of those after the fact deals called the Monopoly Companion,
and they named all the character characters on the board
Melbourne Penny Bags. And then the jail guy is Jake
the jail bird okay, and the police officer and go
to jail.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Is I'll bet a Tyris, isn't it, Officer Edgar Mallory.
I knew. Really you just.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Gets that, huh, Yeah, that's pretty bunny. We're talking about Monopoly,
by the way.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Oh yeah, yeah, this is not about anything else but Monopoly.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
No. And I was just remarking to you, sir, how
I've never seen one of our This had more supplemental
information than most shows that we research.

Speaker 3 (02:15):
Yeah. I can explain why because this was written. There
was a whole suite of game articles written, yeah, like
just how to play certain games. So it kind of
came out in this mentality of this is the game
and here's how we explain how to play it, and
this article is done. Whereas Monopoly, it's like this is

(02:39):
more like McDonald's or Twinkies or something like that. It's
like a cultural cog.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
Yeah. I mean there's so much extra junk history and
I mean you talk about the different versions, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Millburn penny bangs. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:58):
And like I said, that was a post that he
wasn't originally called that. This is I think Monopoly probably
wanted to sell a little little book or two. I'm
sure they did, because if one thing we've learned about
Parker Brothers and now Hasbro is they love selling different
versions of this game.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Yeah, they do. They like licensing it off a lot
of money. They like making some changes here or there,
releasing a brand new game, but it's all still the
same game. And all of it came from a left
wing Quaker intellectual at the turn of the last century,
the Finns Keel.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
Yeah it was.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
I'm saying that right, Yeah, sure, Okay, I.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
Think it sounds right. And it's interesting to me that
the game of Monopoly, which is all about capitalism and
bankrupting or neighbor, yeah, was stolen. The game was stolen.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
From a leftist intellectual Quaker.

Speaker 4 (03:56):
In the original version of the game, it was to
teach against the monopolies and how they're bad.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Right, so let's talk about this monopoly. Actually, if you
trace it back to about the like the literal beginning
of the twentieth century, it's what's considered a folk game.
There were a lot of people playing versions like this
in cities all over the country. But again, they all
shared some pretty common viewpoints. I guess you today you

(04:23):
would kind of call him socialist. But for the most
part they were followers of a guy named Henry George.

Speaker 4 (04:31):
Yeah, Georgis.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, he came up with this thing called Georgism, which
is based on some other philosophies. But the idea of
it is that if you produce something through through your
own labor, your own work, you own that that should
not be taxed. Right, what should be taxes things that
everybody owns. If somebody's taking something that belongs to everybody,
say a parcel of land, yeah, technically the land belongs

(04:55):
to everybody.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
Well, that was his notion was that you shouldn't even
be a landowner, Like all concept of a land to
him was ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
And that's based on this idea, the law of the commons,
which is around for centuries, if not millennia. And then
once people started taking land, he's like, okay, well, if
you're going to own land, it belongs to everybody, so
that should be taxed, yea, and then that tax will
be given back to the community for the greater good.

Speaker 4 (05:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
So that's Georgism, and that was kind of the philosophy
that formed the basis of monopoly what was originally called
the Landlord's Game, which was created by a lady named
Lizzie Maggie A G y M A g I E
M A g I E Yeah, almost Magpie without the
P right, Yeah. And she basically that was on her card.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
And she she came up with this, like you said,
to kind of teach, so you could go and be
a rich landowner and bankrupt other people and exploit the
poor who need your help, who need a decent place
to stay, and you could see yourself like the evils
of capitalism. But she actually came up with two sets

(06:07):
of rules for the same game. One was where you
got as rich as you could at the expense of
everybody else. Yeah. The other was a basically the community benefited,
and you can kind of see that today in like
these weird things like community chess, like why would I
want to, you know, pay into this pot. I don't
care about the community, like now it's a bad thing.

(06:30):
In her original version, it was a good thing, like
the community one, and that was the basis of the
whole thing.

Speaker 4 (06:35):
Yeah, which is really ironic, it is. Yeah, like you said,
she created two versions, and she said, one of the
quotes from her is it is a practical demonstration of
the present system of land grabbing, with all its usual
outcomes and consequences. So it, you know, it's kind of
to teach people lessons, and she had it stolen from

(06:56):
her she did.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Luckily, Lizzy was smart enough to patent this game. It
became just kind of a trendy thing. Again, like if
you were into socialism at the time and you were
on the East Coast, you probably hung out at a
friend's house and played this game at some point in
some incarnation or another.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
Yeah, it was really popular, like you said, like people
made up some of their own rules, but it was
I mean, if you look at the original Landlords game board,
it looks a lot like the current monopoly, I mean
similar at least.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Yeah, And apparently a lot of the rules that make
the game a lot more enjoyable today came from Lizzie's
Quaker friends. Like, for example, the original plots of land
were up for auction for a bid.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Yeah, Quakers preferred silence, so they just put a fixed
price on the piece of land so there wouldn't be
a loud, obnoxious bidding war. They also instituted tokens, fun
tokens before they're just boring pawns.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
Yeah, like household objects, which you know, that's why the
thimble is in there, and originally the iron. Yeah, we'll
get to those in a minute, but I know, it's
pretty exciting.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
And then so this thing's being played and Lizzie Maggie
holds the patent, but she's not exactly like cracking down
on any kind of infringement really.

Speaker 4 (08:23):
No, Well, she pitched it to Parker Brothers and they
said no.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, so she just kind of went on doing her
own thing.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
So there's another lady actually that figures into this, a
lady named Ruth Hoskins, and she was one of the
ones who caught on in the Philadelphia Atlantic City area
with her Quaker friends, two of them in particular, Jesse
and Eugene Rayford, and they are the ones who changed
some of the rules to make it look more like
the monopoly we know. They taught it to a friend

(08:52):
named Todd, and Todd brought it to his friend named
Charles Darrow. And that's where the story takes a kind
of a CD turn.

Speaker 3 (09:01):
Well, actually, that's where the Parker Brothers official version begins. Ironically, Yeah,
things turned CD. The Brothers is like, hey, this is
where our story begins.

Speaker 4 (09:12):
Yeah, the inventor of Monopoly, Charles.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
Darrow, right, so he was like a radiator salesman during
the depression.

Speaker 4 (09:17):
This is the thirties, right, Yeah, I mean it was ironically, again,
during the depression, this game really caught hold.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
Well, I supposedly that's what caught the Parker Brothers' attention
was that this guy came to him, came to them
to sell him this game which he had stolen. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Apparently he didn't innovate it at all. He kind of
just copied it and packaged it right, and said, hey,
what do you think of this?

Speaker 3 (09:41):
And the Parker Brothers said, we don't think too much
of it. Like, how does the game end? We don't
know what's going on here, so it's just you just
go your own way. So Charles Darrow went off and
started selling it at this Wannamaker's department store in Philadelphia.

Speaker 4 (09:58):
Yeah, without pattenting it, right.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
And the Parker brothers said, you know what, it's the depression.
Can you believe it. We're not going to have any
kind of economic woes like this for another seventy eighty years.
And this guy's selling these things like hotcakes. You know what, sir,
We will buy your idea from you. And Charles Darrow

(10:21):
apparently said, well that's great. Yeah, give me the money
first and then I'll tell you the second part of
the story. Yeah, And they gave him a bag of
money with a dollar sign on it, much like the
ones that rich uncle Pennybags likes, and he said, okay,
we also need to buy the patent off from this

(10:41):
lady named Lizzie Maggie.

Speaker 4 (10:43):
Yeah, which they did. The game was still stolen, I say,
even though they eventually did pay her money. But part
of the deal was they said they agreed to buy
her patent and said, you know what, we're gonna We'll
sell a few of your other game ideas too. None
of those ever went anywhere, and he was sort of
lost to history except for people who do a little
bit of digging.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Yeah, and we actually have a guy named Ralph to
thank for doing that digging initially, and we'll talk about
him later.

Speaker 4 (11:11):
Oh yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
Yeah, because he's the one who came up with the
unofficial history and like really tracked it down.

Speaker 4 (11:17):
Well, there's a lot of teases in this one far.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
So the Parker brothers now in the game and it
becomes a huge hit virtually off the bat. In the
thirties is when they bought it and started really printing it.

Speaker 4 (11:30):
Yeah, and the game is based on Atlantic City. Those
are the properties, and that's because that was the area
where it became popular. But this excellent New York Times
article you sent what was the name of it, Monopoly
Goes Corporate.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, it was written by what's what's the lady's name,
Mary Pillan. She is a monopoly expert.

Speaker 4 (11:51):
There's a lot of those out there, I've learned.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
She well, she wrote a lot of the articles you'll find.
Oh really, yeah, she's good.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
Well, she pointed out that it's interesting that it mirrored
sort of the uh. The cartography of the day in
Atlantic City, like Boardwalk, was clearly like a rich area
the Baltic and Mediterranean. The cheapest properties were in African
American neighborhoods. There was a reading railroad that transferred people
between Philly and Atlantic City. And little known fact for

(12:20):
our friends in the gay community, New York Avenue was
one of the earliest gay scenes in the country. Yeah,
so buy that one up and support support the LBGT community.
That's if you're playing monopoly. Yeah, that's what I would do.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
And maybe just you know, don't charge anybody in the Alanta. Yeah,
just be like this is the party place.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
That's exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
And Marvin Gardens apparently is misspelled.

Speaker 4 (12:45):
Yeah, the E instead of an eye or E instead
of an E.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Yeah, on the board it's an I, right, it's supposed
to be an E.

Speaker 4 (12:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
There's a lot of Monopoly facts dropping all around us right.

Speaker 4 (12:55):
Now, I know it's raining thimbles.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
Before we go any further, though, you want to do
a message break, Yes, okay, we'll be right pack everyone.

Speaker 4 (13:16):
All right, So we were just talking about Atlantic City.
I guess it's we can go ahead and point out
now that there are hundreds of versions of Monopoly out
there now, one for your hometown, probably one for your
favorite sports team. I have. Personally, my version is a
Star Wars Monopoly nice, which is pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Nice. Yeah, I guess has Bro's like, you got some money,
sure you can license this, make your own Monopoly game.
Go ahead.

Speaker 4 (13:43):
There's a Simpsons Monopoly. I haven't played it though.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
And now, in addition to the licensed versions that you
can find like everywhere, yeah, they also have like official
versions too, Like there's a US version. Yeah, there's a
UK version, there's a there's a new version that's called
Monopoly here and now what does that even mean? Super corporate? Oh?

Speaker 4 (14:06):
Is this the corporate one?

Speaker 3 (14:07):
Yeah? Okay, it's like everything is multiplied by I think
a thousand, so the dollar amounts are way higher.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
Is this one where they replaced the the railroads are
replaced by airports? Yeah, it's this one where they replaced
corporations for all the properties. So yes, like McDonald's and
Sony and yeah, god, who would want to play that?

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Some people? Do?

Speaker 4 (14:33):
You know?

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (14:36):
I mean I'm not a purist because I had the
Star Wars version, but I just it's no fun to me.
To play as Paramount Pictures and to buy the McDonald's property.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
Yeah, it's just me. So there are a bunch of
different versions, but the one we're going to talk about,
we'll just talk about the normal version with the two
thousand and eight rules.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
Yeah, and there's actually coming soon later this year. There
you can go online at my Monopoly and you can
design your own board, is that right, and do like
your own neighborhood. Wow, And then they will make it
for you. And I think it's like one hundred and
fifty bucks or something.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
Wow. Money bags you can get.

Speaker 4 (15:13):
Oh, I'm not gonna do it. You can't do the
East Lake.

Speaker 3 (15:16):
I was talking to whoever went and got it?

Speaker 4 (15:18):
Oh sure, yeah, rich uncle, rich penny bags.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
That's what you should have said, rich uncle penny bag.
Penny bags just sounds not that wealthy. Well, actually, I
have a bag of pennies on me right now.

Speaker 4 (15:31):
He Forbes has their silly fictional fifteen list of fictional
characters wealth, and he in twenty thirteen was number thirteen.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Jeez is Stars declined, some.

Speaker 4 (15:45):
Huh, guess who the first.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
The richest fictional character is the Incredible Hulk.

Speaker 4 (15:50):
No, he was not rich. Scrooge McDuck.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Oh yeah, well dude, he had that gold.

Speaker 4 (15:56):
Vault apparently sixty five billion. Number two was Smaug, which
I thought was kind of silly.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
Smaug from like.

Speaker 4 (16:05):
One of the rings. It's a dragon, I think I had,
like it was a bunch of gold. Carlisle Cullen number three,
Tony Stark four, Charles Foster Kane number five.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Who is number three?

Speaker 4 (16:16):
Carlile Cullen from Twilight?

Speaker 3 (16:19):
Who is that?

Speaker 4 (16:20):
He was the dad vampire dad of the Vampire family
and he's been alive forever, so I guess he just
keeps accumulating. Well yeah, Bruce Wayne, Richie Rich, Christian.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
Gray, Richie Rich. I forgot about him.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
He's number seven.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
He had a robot made and a crazy like a
weird scientist friend, didn't.

Speaker 4 (16:40):
He Sure like a Richie Rich robot of himself.

Speaker 3 (16:47):
I think he had that too, But no, it was made.
Was a robot, wasn't it?

Speaker 4 (16:50):
That was the Jetsons.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
No, he had a too.

Speaker 4 (16:56):
I thought Monty Burns at number ten was pretty good.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Oh yeah, that's going, although I would guess mister Monopoly
would be wealthier than Monty Burns.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
But yeah, thirteen and they put it out each year
and it's dumb. Can we just admit that.

Speaker 3 (17:10):
I was thrilled by it? Okay, we just spent three
minutes on it.

Speaker 4 (17:14):
Yeah, well that's true.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Okay, so Chuckers, Yeah, you want to talk about the
rules of the game again, two thousand and eight rules
if you are a Monopoly purist, and like, I'm sorry,
that's just what we're going with.

Speaker 4 (17:27):
Yeah, well, let's talk about the game board itself. Just
so if you haven't played it, I'm surprised because I
think like a billion people have played the game. But
if you haven't, when you get your Monopoly game, you're
going to open it up and you're going to have
a board with all these different properties and a square.
You have two dice twelve they call them tokens. That's

(17:49):
not the right amount either, is it.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
No, there's eight. Yeah. I don't understand where they got
twelve from unless they're counting ones that maybe were retired
or something like that. But when you open the bottom,
there's only eight there. Yeah, there's a can we go over, Sure,
there's a wheelbarrow, a Scottie dog, Yeah, top hat, a
cat which replaced the iron in twenty thirteen. Yeah, there

(18:12):
was a big two do because Parker Bros. Has Bros. Like,
we haven't made a lot of money off of this
for a couple months, so let's just do something.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
Well, they let people vote at least, which is kind
of cool, right.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
But it was also did you see the other ones
that they were voting for, like a robot? Yeah, Richie
Rich's made a guitar, a guitar. They didn't make the
cut though, No, they got voted out and the cat
got voted in. Yeah, the iron got booted.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yeah, I only got eight percent of the vote. There's
the classic shoe of course, or boot, which is modeled
after a nineteen thirties working shoe, and I think they've
kept it the same.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yeah, that's one of the original ones. The Scottie Dog
was not one of the originals that came in the fifties.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
Yeah, and I think that was supposed to be the
companion of Millbourn money pinny.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Is that right?

Speaker 4 (19:04):
Benny bags, Penny bags should be cash bags, fat stacks,
hatstacks bag. There was a cannon which has since been retired. Yeah,
and the military, well, the cannon and the battleship. Yeah,
they were from a failed game called Conflict and they
were like, well, we got all these pieces. Oh yeah,

(19:25):
let's just throw them a monopoly for now.

Speaker 3 (19:26):
Right.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
It's pretty smart.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
But they faced the cannon out because it's just too
overtly violent.

Speaker 4 (19:32):
It just says with any without any fanfare or vote
or campaign. So probably, yeah, that'd be my guess. If
it's hush hush, yeah, it's probably because of violence.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
There's a conspiracy afoot. There's the race car. Yeah, every
little kid's favorite, which apparently had a number three on
the side for a little while.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, they Earnhardt.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
I guess so.

Speaker 4 (19:53):
Uh or purse has been retired. Yeah, the rocking horse
was retired. Yep, the lantern was retired.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
Oh yeah, I'm doing my best Ben Bull in pressing.
Did you do did you get wheelbarrow in there yet?
I think I know, yes I did. It was the
first one I said, could we say top hat?

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Yeah? That was always my favorite.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Actually I don't remember what my favorite was.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
It fit on my pinky and I used to draw
faces of oh yeah, the horse and rider, which is retired,
which I didn't know. That's one of the best pieces
to me.

Speaker 3 (20:27):
What you didn't know was retired?

Speaker 4 (20:28):
Now yeah, it's kind of sad. Yeah, and now they're
and the sack of money was retired as well.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
The sack of money and a purse, those are a
little similar.

Speaker 4 (20:37):
Yeah, I'm the cat. Come on, yeah, cat people.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
I'm sure they're like, yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. I
guarantee that's why they got cat voted in.

Speaker 4 (20:47):
And I am a cat person, you know.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
And even you think it's stupid exactly. So those are
the tokens. Some of those tokens that we mentioned you're
going to find in the two thousand and eight set.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
Yeah, and that is your piece, that is what represents
you in the game. Yes, again for the three people
who have never played Monopoly.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Right, yeah, because supposedly, at least as far as Hasbro calculates,
over one billion people have played Monopoly, and frankly, I'm
surprised is that low?

Speaker 4 (21:17):
It sounds like an old number.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Yeah. Okay, So you've got the box open, you got
the board, you got two dice, you got the tokens,
thirty two houses, yeah, in twelve hotels, yeah, sixteen chance cards,
sixteen community Chess cards, Yeah, a title D card for
each property. It's got the information on it, like how
much it cost to purchase, sure, how much rent is

(21:40):
depending on how many houses or hotels you have on it. Yeah,
what the mortgage value's worth, that's right. And then you've
got your play money, your monopoly money. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
Man, I think that's where it grabs kids because and
they even pointed out in this article that's it's kind
of the first time a lot of kids have money
to play with.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yeah, especially the the five hundred dollars bill ones.

Speaker 4 (22:02):
Oh man, that gold bill.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
I always thought it was orange. Is it gold? Uh? Yeah, okay, one,
it's definitely golden rod like yellow. But I remember the
five hundred it was. Yeah, I guess gold is the
way to go.

Speaker 4 (22:15):
Yeah. See I was a cash hoarder, which is no
way to win a monopoly.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
No. I thought it was I can't save.

Speaker 4 (22:22):
No, I just thought that just figures for me though, Like.

Speaker 3 (22:25):
You gotta spend money to make money.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
Yeah, I was like, look at all this cash, right
that I will soon be paying to everyone else.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
You just keep wandering off from the table and try
to buy stuff with it.

Speaker 4 (22:34):
Did not work.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
So Chuck, You've got the board laid out and if
you count them, if you're that kind of person, yeah,
you're gonna find that. There's forty squares, that's right. I believe,
twenty two of which are no, twenty eight of which
can be purchased.

Speaker 4 (22:51):
Yeah, twenty two are properties. You've got your your electric
company and water works.

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, suckers bet. And then you've got the four railroads.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
Four railroads.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Yeah, so that's twenty eight.

Speaker 4 (23:02):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
There are others that you can't buy. So, for example,
there's a luxury tax square.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
Yeah, you got to pay what one hundred dollars when
you land on that.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
I believe, so just right out of just right out
of your pocket. There's an income tax square.

Speaker 4 (23:15):
Yeah, no, good.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
There's the go square, which is where you start, and
then when you come back around you collect two hundred dollars,
which is in Monopoly called your salary.

Speaker 4 (23:26):
That's right. I never knew that.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
I didn't either.

Speaker 4 (23:28):
And there's a lot of rules in here, and I
guess it's a good time to point out Monopoly is
one of those games where house rules are highly encouraged
and a lot of the fun of the game, and
in fact, to make more money, Monopoly this year are
incorporating the top house rules, as voted on by fans

(23:49):
as official rules for this one version.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
In a seventy dollars hard backbook.

Speaker 4 (23:55):
I don't see why a lot of people were in
sense they were like, no one plays by the real
rules anyway, So why by they're packaging it and selling it?

Speaker 3 (24:01):
Right?

Speaker 4 (24:01):
And they went, I think you just said.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
The word sell someone as they sell, there unlies the answer.
So you've got, oh, there's and so there's forty squares,
but there's actually forty one places you can go to
on the board because jail is divided into two squares. Right,
you got the jail with the jailbird. What's his name?

Speaker 4 (24:21):
Uh, I can't remember, Johnny Jailbird or something, Jake the Jailbird.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Right, okay, which is where Jake the jailbird is. And
then you've got the lower part of it. It's just visiting.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
Yeah, if you want to visit Jake, give them a
bunch cake with a nail file in. It'd be very
old school.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Or a monopoly set with maybe a map with an
escape route embedded in it.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
Hey, that sounds familiar.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Yeah, POWs in World War Two were given such monopoly sets,
which is strange to me. It's like where the Nazis
allowing Monopoly sets to be delivered to POW's. Is that
what I'm seeing here? Maybe here's the Burmese.

Speaker 4 (25:00):
You've seen the like The Great Escape, on those those
the war prison camps in World War Two. It seemed
like a lot of them. They let them like garden
and they were kind of chummy with him. You saw
Hogan's heroes.

Speaker 3 (25:11):
I saw Hogan's heroes. I didn't put a lot of
stock into it. Yeah, but yeah, no, I just figured
they played soccer. Maybe the Japanese or the Burmese, or
the the Italians. I could see like saying like, yeah,
he bring to Monopoly and who cares? But the Nazis,
I would think, would. I just don't see that.

Speaker 4 (25:28):
Yeah, I'm not saying it was a walk in the park,
but I think from the depiction and like, like I said,
like the Great Escape, it's not like Vietnam prison camp.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Oh yeah, you know, like they weren't playing.

Speaker 4 (25:44):
Soccer or Monopoly, right, they were playing Survive Another Day
that game. Yeah, I'm not making light of that. By
the way.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
Oh I didn't think you were.

Speaker 4 (25:54):
And I'm basing everything on war movies, so I'm probably wrong.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
I've seen uncommon Valor.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
That was a good movie.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
That was a great movie.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
It doesn't age well though, really.

Speaker 3 (26:04):
No. Remember that menu with the gun silhouettes on it.
Oh yeah, and when you're twelve you're like, oh my god.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
Yeah, it's like I would buy that one and that one.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:15):
All right, So where were we?

Speaker 3 (26:16):
We were talking about the board itself. Yes, and the different squares.

Speaker 4 (26:21):
Yes, there are the cards that you can draw as well,
Community chest and chance squares. When you land on these,
you draw a card from one of those two piles.
And there are various things in there, like you want
to fashion modeling contest, you get ten dollars.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
And there a dog show one in there too.

Speaker 4 (26:38):
I think there's probably a dog show. And there's also
you know, you have street repairs.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Or those are big time.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
General repairs, and that's based on your properties that you own.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
That's right. They percentage they can have you pretty hard. Yeah. Yeah,
it's like in real life, that's right, you know. And
that's funny because the monopoly what was her name, Lizzie Maggie.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
In an interview she gave with some leftist magazine at
the time, she said she basically called the thing the
game of life.

Speaker 4 (27:17):
Yeah, that was already taken out.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
I don't know, was it.

Speaker 4 (27:20):
Yeah, that was that's around since the like mid eighteen hundred.

Speaker 3 (27:23):
Oh okay, it's old. I thought she was being prescient.

Speaker 4 (27:26):
Now she was being a glib.

Speaker 3 (27:29):
She was making a pop culture reference for the time.

Speaker 4 (27:31):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
But did you know apparently there used to be a
square on the Game of Life board for suicide. Really,
it was the way that you could go.

Speaker 4 (27:40):
I never really played that. I think I played a
couple of times.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
I never did either. I always thought it was kind
of like you get the whole family in the car
and it's like whatever.

Speaker 4 (27:48):
Yeah we did. I mean we weren't the biggest game
players as families, but we did Monopoly some and Yachtzi
was a big one.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yachtzi was great that I still enjoyed today.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
I love Yatzi.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (27:58):
Yeah. We also played this game called Bull and it
was like a stock trading game, oh yeah, with cards.
And it's just now occurring to me that all these
games are just teaching you about life. Yeah, it's like
real Monopoly is nothing but real estate. The Game of
Life is everything, right. This game Bowl was about the
stock market.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah, sorry, it was about sarcastic. Sorry, yeah, because you.

Speaker 4 (28:26):
Had to say it like a jerk, right, Candy Land,
we know what that's all about.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah, drugs, right, probably shoots and ladders tall you to
stay away from snakes.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
Yeah. Operation taught you how to be a doctor.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Oh yeah, that's right, that's where I got my MD.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
And then of course Battleship taught you how to be
a warmonger. That's so do risk can take great pride.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
Risk taught you to be the Antichrist.

Speaker 4 (28:50):
Yeah, risk, we should do what. There is an article
on risk I saw.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
I looked it over. It didn't seem as interesting as
this one, though. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:57):
I don't know if the history is as interesting for sure.

Speaker 3 (28:59):
And I mean, isn't that what's interesting about any game,
the history of it? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (29:04):
I think so.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
So let's talk about the rules, dude, Okay, let's start
at the beginning. We'll start it.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
Go Go is where you start, and that's where you
Like you said, you collect the two hundred every time
you land on it or pass it. Sometimes house rules
you get four hundred for actually landing on it, oh yeah,
and only two hundred for passing it.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
We never Oh that makes sense. That's good good.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
But free parking is where we had house rules. That
is a space on the corner of the board where
you supposedly, per the official rules, don't do anything.

Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, there's nothing. It's just a space.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
But what we did was we donated all the collected
taxes and fees and put it under free parking, and
if you land on that, that was like a lottery win.
Oh yeah, and a lot of people play that way.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
I think I've heard of that one before.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
Yeah, it was, you know, we were a bunch of
pepe never mind. I liked it because it allowed you
more money, which is favorite thing cash, it's the lotto.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah, exactly, we got ahead of ourselves. Let's just start
at the real beginning. Okay, So everybody sits down at
the table. Yeah, maybe somebody, Yeah, somebody gets a drink.
Maybe you have to wait because somebody has to go
to the bathroom. So you're all sitting there quietly. And
then when everybody's finally at the table, yeah, you guys
select a banker, huh, and the banker distributes the monopoly

(30:24):
money fifteen hundred dollars to each player two five hundreds,
two one hundred, two fifties six twenties and five tens,
five fives, and five ones. That's thirteen hundred dollars.

Speaker 4 (30:35):
And the goal of the game that we're getting to
here at thirty minutes in is to bankrupt all of
your family and friends. That's the whole point, pretty much.
Some people put a time limit because this game can
go on forever, and other people say, no, it's got
to You got to finish it by bankrupting everyone or
until the last person is like, I give geez, I've

(30:56):
got eight dollars.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
I hate this game.

Speaker 4 (30:58):
Yeah, that's usually me, right, and he's usually has her
foot on my throat.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:02):
We played two person Monopoly, which is just not fun.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
Yeah, because you know one of you is gonna lose.

Speaker 4 (31:08):
No, that's not why. It's just it's a game that's
more fun with more people.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
I think. Yeah, I got it. Yeah, So okay, So
everybody's got fifteen hord bucks. You roll the dice to
see who goes first. Whoever rolls the highest goes first.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
Classic move.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Then you roll both die and you start moving from
the ghost square and you go clockwise around the board. Yeah,
and when you land on a property this I didn't know, Yeah,
which is kind of a basic rule, I guess, but
I never played it this way. When you land on
a property, yeah, you have the option to buy it.
I knew that part. Yeah, but if you decline to
buy it, then then the property goes up for auction.

Speaker 4 (31:43):
I've never not only have I never played it the way,
I've never heard of anyone playing it that.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
Okay, so it's not just me, not just you, all right,
So I guess the during an auction, not only the person,
not only everybody else, but the banker and the person
who declined to buy it can bid on.

Speaker 4 (32:03):
It, which didn't make sense unless you're trying to get
it for lower because yah, can't you start the bidding
it wherever?

Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yes, you can start the bidding anywhere you want, so
you could consumably get it for lower. And if you're
playing against somebody who declines to buy something and then
starts bidding on it at a lower price, keep an
eye on that person because that's a shark they're out
to win. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
Yeah, I hate that rule because to me, it's just like,
what's the point in rolling and landing on something? I
guess right at first refusal, but yeah, I don't know.
I don't like it.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
No, And plus the Quakers were like, we specifically put
a price on these things so there wouldn't be a
lot of yelling. Yeah, we don't like yelling.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
They had another game to follow called the quiet roof
raising Ceremony.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Those are not Quakers. That was fun, that was the honest.
They're different.

Speaker 4 (32:51):
Oh don't you think Quakers raise some roofs?

Speaker 3 (32:54):
Yeah, they do. Hate No party like a Quaker party.

Speaker 4 (32:57):
That's right, all right. So let's you buy all of
the properties that you know they're they're divided into different colors,
like there's three green around you know, green ones, orange ones,
blue ones, light blue. If you buy all of the
properties that are tied together by a single color, then
you have what's called the monopoly, and that means you
can then charge double rent, although we never do that.

(33:19):
We just keep it single rent. And you now have
the option to buy houses. And then once you have
enough houses I think three, you can then buy a hotel.

Speaker 3 (33:28):
Right, and let's call improvements. You're improving your land. And posedly,
once you start to do improvements, things change a little bit.
Not only can you start making more money, but it's
actually harder to mortgage your properties if you are if
you find yourself in debt, right, because this is this
is how crazy complicated it is. Like I don't think

(33:49):
I was ever paying that much attention to monopoly that
I ever mortgaged a piece of land. Oh really, I
think it's like sorry to get into debt or whatever.
It was, like I'm done, I'm done. But apparently so
if you find yourself indebted, and let's say you have
a monopoly and you want to mortgage, you can mortgage
just one of the spots, right, yes, But to do so,

(34:12):
let's say you have a hotel on that piece of
land that you're mortgaging, you first have to sell the
hotel back to the bank at half price. Yeah, and
then you can mortgage the land. You're still I think,
are you collecting rent on that land or doesn't go
right to the bank.

Speaker 4 (34:32):
Now that's where you just turn the card over and
it's just you still technically own it, right, but you
can't collect any rents on it.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
But you can't collect rent and everything on the other
two pieces of property or the other one, depending on
which one you own. I don't know, really you can.
I looked it up.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
So that doesn't bust up the monopoly.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
No it doesn't. Okay, so you still own the monopoly.
It's just that that one is mortgaged, and then to
get it back you have to pay the bank the
mortgage plus ten percent. Right.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
And this is where you can get silly with your
house rules if you want. Yeah, you know, like as
far as mortgaging and stuff like that, because supposedly it's
a rule too where you can't. The only thing that
is not allowed is a personal loan. And I did
all kinds of personal loaning because I was mister cash.

Speaker 3 (35:15):
What were your your interest rates?

Speaker 4 (35:17):
I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
Did you break any usury laws? No?

Speaker 4 (35:20):
That was a kid, so it was probably just.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
Like just painting back whenever ten percent or something.

Speaker 4 (35:25):
I guess I'm not the right I'm not enough of
a You're not the shark capitalin though.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
You're not the one who like declines to buy something
so you can bid on at a lower price.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
I'm playing candy Land.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
I loved candy Land.

Speaker 4 (35:36):
Actually I never played that.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
It was a great game, was it because of the art?

Speaker 4 (35:41):
Was this crazy?

Speaker 3 (35:42):
It was beautiful stuff. And then nowadays you look at
the candy Land board and you're like, poor kids. Yeah,
they don't know what they're missing.

Speaker 4 (35:48):
I just got a Ticket to Ride game that I
haven't played yet. Have you heard of that one?

Speaker 3 (35:52):
No?

Speaker 4 (35:52):
It was a German game that's like one game of
the year. It's a train train game, like you established
train routes between cities. Uh huh, but it's supposedly like
it sounds like, really that's fun, but it's supposedly great.

Speaker 3 (36:06):
I just bled a tear. Did you at the thought
of it?

Speaker 4 (36:09):
Yeah, it does sound pretty bad. Yeah, but no, it's
it's one game of the year. Those Germans and watch
people Ticket to Ride enthusiasts will be like, dude, it's
the best ever.

Speaker 3 (36:18):
I'm sure we're gonna know. I've heard like German game
night is like a thing now.

Speaker 4 (36:22):
Yeah, I think they're a little more heady.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
Is that what it is?

Speaker 4 (36:26):
I think? So this seems like I read over the
rules the other night just so I would know what
to do. And uh, because you got to like the
purchase over the game has to be the game explainer
as well.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
Right, do you have to listen to craft work while
you play? Yeah, well you don't have to, but it
helps house rules.

Speaker 4 (36:42):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (36:44):
I guess we've Oh and we said you you can
do anything but give personal loans.

Speaker 4 (36:49):
Right, that's what the official rules stays.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
So like you can I can buy from you on
the side or something like that, or you can hold
something up for auction, whatever anybody's doing.

Speaker 4 (36:59):
Yeah, And we always played where you had to do
that when it was your turn. That makes sense and
that that would take your turn as well.

Speaker 3 (37:04):
Right, Yeah, but again, the whole point is is to
be the person who owns the most stuff so that
you can bankrupt all of your family and friends, right,
And I mean those are the rules, but there's actually
strategy to it, and people pay a lot of attention
to this. You know, there's a Monopoly World Championship roughly
every four years, although it's been the last one was

(37:26):
in two thousand and nine. Yeah, so we're due.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
An American lawyer one right in two thousand and nine.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
And no, I think it was a Swede or anti man.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
Okay, maybe he was the North American.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
That's what he was, the North American champ. Yeah, and he.

Speaker 4 (37:41):
Represented the US and the World championships.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
It sounds so silly, weird, yeah, huh, well he uh
he used the iron.

Speaker 4 (37:52):
Yeah, yeah, I think the American used the thimble.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Gotcha.

Speaker 4 (37:56):
Let's Terry just laughed. She was like, really, that's a
that's the fact that people need.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Well, we're trying to really appeal to the purists here too,
which want everybody to be engaged. Yeah, all right, so
let's do one more message break and then we'll come
back and talk strategy. Okay, chucker, So again the point bankrupt.

(38:27):
Everybody bankrupt, But there's like techniques that you can use
to more efficiently bankrupt people, like the overall the best strategy,
the basic strategy is to buy everything every chance you have.

Speaker 4 (38:41):
Yeah, I mean I looked up there's a lot of
different people's strategies and opinions online. I did find this
one from a guy and that was his strategy is
buy everything. It doesn't matter what it is, right, even
the suckers bet the electric company in the water works.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
Yeah, which I don't pay off.

Speaker 4 (38:58):
Really, he said, buy it all and never have more
than one hundred dollars in cash is his rule.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (39:04):
He says the number one people mistake people make is
hoarding cash like I did.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
Yeah, you're making the number one mistake.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
That's right. And he says that buy everything and do
whatever it takes to get a monopoly, even a bad one,
Like he will trade to get a bad monopoly and
give someone a good monopoly even as long as he
gets the monopoly. Oh gotcha, And he says it's fine
because then you know, you two will probably take out
everyone else. The point is just to get a monopoly

(39:31):
and improve it as fast as you can.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
So supposedly, though, a general rule of thumb among like
hardcore monopoly players is that while you're improving your monopoly
your properties, yeah, by adding houses or whatever, you want
to stop at three houses, yes, because the jump from
the third house to the hotel, yeah, is financially it
doesn't pay off. Usually it's over improvement.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah, just like in your home, Like, don't build a
eighty thousand dollars kitchen because you're not gonna get your
money back on that. Right, So three houses, this guy
doesn't subscribe to that. He buys everything.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
And puts hotels on it.

Speaker 4 (40:07):
Yeah, he says, as first as he gets as soon
as he gets his first monopoly, he mortgages everything else
to get cash back, right, and then uses that cash
to improve.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Wow, which I thought was a little risky. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:20):
A couple of bad roles. I mean, it's a game
of strategy, but the end of the day, you're rolling dice,
and so it is very much a game of chance.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
I'll but that guy feels like he's on the back
of a pegasust though the whole game, like he's just thrilled.
He claims to have been there on the edge.

Speaker 4 (40:36):
He claims to have won a game in twelve minutes
one time, which I thought was shooting his own horn
a bit. Yeah, sure, but real regular strategy. You're right,
they say three houses is the max you should go.

Speaker 3 (40:48):
And then there's also some that you should avoid, even
though they seemed like very tempting. We already said the
electric company and the water company, the utilities. Yeah, they
The most you can get for rent from landing on
them was ten times a roll of the dice, which
is one hundred and twenty bucks. But it also mas
roll it could be as low as twenty dollars. Yeah,

(41:08):
so I mean this guy would probably say, well, hey,
it was worth it. I still own them, and I'm
still making money if somebody lands on them. But a
lot of again, the monopoly purists say just stay away
from them. Yeah, and you also may want to stay
away from the most expensive ones boardwalk in park place.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
Yeah, there are only two of them, and they just
don't get landed on very much.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Yeah, so think about it right out of the gate
when you're thinking of probabilities. The fact that there's two
of these properties, yeah, rather than three, means that you
are another player is less likely to land on your
monopoly because there's three or two instead of three. So
that's one problem.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
The other problem is placement. Where they are. They're right
after Go, right before, right before go.

Speaker 4 (42:01):
Yeah, so it's at the end of the board essentially.

Speaker 3 (42:03):
No, I'm sorry, they're right before jail. No, there, right
before we go.

Speaker 4 (42:06):
There, right before we go.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Okay, So that means that most players are going to well,
they're going to pass them for sure whenever they hit that.

Speaker 4 (42:15):
Go directly to go exactly.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
Yeah. So that means that your your monopoly is going
to be passed over. The likelihood of making your money
back recouping it, especially if they're improved to the hilt
like a really fancy hotel, means.

Speaker 4 (42:29):
That there's a lot of money.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
Yeah, you've probably sunk a lot of money unwisely into those.
You want to go for some other ones.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
Yeah, supposedly, and there are people that have done those.
This one guy. If you really want to get into monopoly, Uh,
this dude, I don't even know his name, but just
look up probabilities in the game of Monopoly. And Scientific
American in the mid nineties at an article that talked
about probabilities of landing on different spaces, but they excluded

(42:56):
community chest and chance and being sent to jail. So
this guy said, I took all of that and included everything,
and he has statistical charts long term probabilities for ending
up on each square, expected income per opponent roll, yeah,
average income per role, expected number of opponent roll, to
recoup incremental costs, to recoup mortgages.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
So it's the name of his website. By the way,
is Monopoly was fun dot com?

Speaker 4 (43:27):
It totally should be. But if you just want to
do some basic probabilities, the orange properties are landed on
more than anyone else.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
Yes, and why chuck.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
Because they are after jail.

Speaker 3 (43:43):
Six, eight and nine spaces after jail.

Speaker 4 (43:46):
Yeah. So if you get sent to jail, which is
gonna happen at some point, and we actually didn't talk
about jail, we'll talk about that, Okay, then you Yeah,
chances are you're gonna hit one of those orange squares
on your way out of jail.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Yeah, because you're rolling with two dice, so you're much
more likely to roll like a six, eight or a
nine then you are like a two or three or
a one. Yeah, it's not even possible to roll a one.
Try it. You can't.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
You can't unless you eat one of the dice.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
And in which case, unless it's a house rule, everybody's
gonna yell at you and have to wait around until
you poop it out to keep playing.

Speaker 4 (44:16):
Actually, our rule was you had to roll the child
in the one the child who ate the dice.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Oh yeah, just shake them up.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
All right.

Speaker 4 (44:26):
So jail is on the corner of the board and
you can there are a few different ways you can
go there. You can draw a go to jail card.
You can throw three doubles in a row and go
to jail, yeah, which I never understood, because that's a
good thing.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
I guess, but it's also the sign of the devil.
So that's why you have to go to jail for
a little while to be cleansed.

Speaker 4 (44:48):
Or there is a square mark to go to jail
and you can land on that and go to jail.
You can also get out in three ways. You can
have that get out of jail free card. If you
draw that, you can hold on to it. We could
sell it, although I think that's a house rule. You
can sell it to a friend or enemy.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
Whoever had the most cash, right exactly.

Speaker 4 (45:08):
And then you basically the other ways to roll to
either pay your way out with fifty bucks or to
roll your way out. The way we played it was
each turn you had one chance to roll your way
out of jail.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
So you are rolling doubles, rolling doubles, right, yeah, and
then if you under official rules, if you don't roll
doubles for three consecutive turns, like you get three consecutive
chances to roll doubles, and if you don't on any
of those turns, then you have to pay fifty bucks
to get out of jail.

Speaker 4 (45:37):
We just played where you just got out and you didn't.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
Have to pay. Well, then you guys weren't following the rules.

Speaker 4 (45:43):
I told you the house rules. The house rules.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
So there's actually a strategy to jail. Yeah, if you
go to jail early on in the game, you want
to pay your fifty bucks to get out immediately. Yeah,
just pay the fifty bucks because then you can keep
going around the board and there's more stuff available to buy.

Speaker 4 (46:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
But later in the game you want to just kind
of hang out in jail.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
Yeah, like Josh has bought all the Orange spaces. Yeah,
and you've got hotels on each one.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (46:11):
So I'm thinking it might be good to sit in
jail for a few rounds.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeah, because you can still collect rent on your properties,
but the fact that you're in jail keeps you off
of my properties.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
Yeah, and all another Bryant rule we played where when
you were in jail you could not collect any rents.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Yeah, I mean that makes sense, but according to official rules,
that's right. You just make as much money as you
want there.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
And apparently in jail you can officially you can also
buy and sell properties, yeah, and improve your and collect
rent and build hotels and houses, which I thought, I
don't know. You're in jail, you can lose that.

Speaker 3 (46:43):
Right, It seems like it in real jail, that's the
way it is.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
No, it's not. You can own a house and be
in jail. I guess that's true, And technically you could
probably charge rent to someone you could sublet it, like
I'm gonna be gone for three to six.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
No, it's true, but what happens when the dishrush breaks?
Try to get light out of jail to go fix it.
They're not gonna let you do that. It's very funny,
but it's true too.

Speaker 4 (47:08):
Probability experts also say you get a good return on
buying all of the railroads because they're pretty cheap. There's
one on each side, and once you have each, once
you own all of them, they're two hundred dollars in rent.
So that's not too bad, not too shabby. But to me,
a monopoly is the reason monopoly is are valuable is

(47:30):
because they're in a row, whereas the railroads are spaced
out right. And our friend, the strategist who thinks he
invented the game, says, but what you have to remember
is none of these strategies matter because you're playing. It's
a game of people and personalities. So he said, you
got to sit back and watch the different personalities emerge

(47:53):
and then manipulate that like the cash hoarder versus the shark.
And he's like, you're really playing against people.

Speaker 3 (48:01):
Man, that's interesting, I.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
Thought, so.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Okay, so let's talk about another friend, an economist friend.
His name is Ralph Antspoch. Yes, and he back in
the seventies had a game called anti Monopoly. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
He was an econ professor at San Francisco State and
like it made his own real game. Like he didn't
just like draw it up on paper, like, he started
a little small business right and manufactured it.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Apparently sold about two hundred thousand copies of it, like
right out of the gate. Yeah, could just hit a
nerve again. It was called anti monopoly, and the whole
point of it was to break up monopolies rather than
build monopolies.

Speaker 4 (48:46):
Yeah. At the beginning of the game is essentially the
end of a regular game, Like everyone starts off with monopolies,
and instead of real estate and utilities an anti monopoly,
they had their individual businesses that have been brought under
a single ownership. And you take the role of federal
caseworker and bring indictments against monopolized businesses.

Speaker 3 (49:08):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
In order to return the board to a free market system.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
You have to wear sensible shoes.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
It sounds awesome.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yeah, Well, and he came up with this because he
was trying to apparently explain to his son what was
wrong and bad about monopolies, and I suspect capitalism to
a certain extent. And he came up with this game instead,
Like I said, sold a substantial amount two hundred thousand
copies of a game, especially back in the seventies that

(49:37):
was pretty good as a startup. Yeah, you know, and
it caught Parker Brothers attention enough that they sent him
a season desist letter, took him to court, got a
court order for him to hand over his like thirty
seven thousand copies that he had in his warehouse, and
they Parker Brothers went and unceremoniously buried him in a
landfill in Minnesota. Yeah, so Ralph didn't cott into this

(50:04):
very much. He didn't like that. He doesn't like to
be pushed around. I get the impression.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
No, I mean, a guy who makes anti monopoly is
not going to cave in the courts initially.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
And he did so, like very much, at his own
financial detriment. He had a very expensive team of lawyers
at first, and spent quite a bit of money fighting
Parker Brothers for the right to use anti monopoly, and
it wasn't really going anywhere, and he was losing a

(50:35):
lot of money, so he started to do legwork himself,
found a lawyer friend who worked on the Cheap Forum,
and that's when things started taking off.

Speaker 4 (50:46):
Yeah, I mean, he basically uncovered the lie that it
was invented by Charles Darrow. Yeah, he found out that
the game was essentially in the public domain or should
have been, and went all the way to the Supreme.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
And yeah, he won at the Supreme Court. This e
come professor who came up with a game called anti
Monopoly won in the Supreme Court, won the right to
name his game anti Monopoly.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
Yeah, I mean, he deposed the two Quakers that were
friends of Hoskins. They were old at that point. They
took the stand. He deposed the CEO of Parker Brothers,
and he took the stand and it had to admit
under oath like, yeah, we did kind of steal it
nice the idea from that lady after all.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
And so, as Ralph says, the whole point to him
was for this true story, the true origins of monopoly
and how it came about, the whole point of it originally. Yeah,
could still be told openly that what he said couldn't
be bought at any price. In his opinion, that's right,
So way to go, Ralph.

Speaker 4 (51:53):
Yeah, he wrote a book awkwardly titled The Billion Dollar Monopoly.
In swindle Colin during a David and Goliath battle, Anti
Monopoly uncovers the secret history of monopoly. That's a little clunky,
a little clunky, but it's still around. In nineteen eighty four,
there was a new version called Anti Monopoly two where

(52:15):
you could actually be a monopolist or a competitor, So
you got to choose, which I thought was interesting. And
if you chose the competitor, you charge lower rents and
you can improve property at anytime. But if you're a monopolist,
you have to own at least two properties before in
a group, before building houses, and charge a lot higher rents.

(52:36):
So I think you're like playing against the two systems
within the same game.

Speaker 3 (52:40):
That's really interesting.

Speaker 4 (52:41):
Yeah, I'm gonna I might grab one of these and
see what it's like.

Speaker 3 (52:44):
Yeah, maybe tell everybody's German. Uh, you got anything else?

Speaker 4 (52:50):
I got nothing else.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
I do the longest monopoly game of all time seventy days.

Speaker 4 (52:56):
I played a game of risk that seemed like it
lasted that long once it may have. It didn't last
so long, but it lasted a weekend, okay, and Monopoly.
I don't have the patience for that. I'll just give up.
I'll take my cat fake cash and go home.

Speaker 3 (53:13):
Yeah you'r horride of it. Yeah you're like, oh, just
saved all this money.

Speaker 4 (53:17):
That's right, and I own the utilities.

Speaker 3 (53:20):
If you want to learn more about Monopoly, including how
to play, if you don't like house rules, but you
also don't feel like looking at the official rule book,
you can just go on to house stuff Works. Yeah,
and check out the rules that is in this article.
To cite Monopoly in the search bar at housetuffworks dot
com and sin I said, search bar, it's time for
what listener mail? Yes, okay, I'm.

Speaker 4 (53:41):
Gonna call this help for a fam in need.

Speaker 3 (53:45):
Oh that's nice.

Speaker 4 (53:45):
Hey, guys, want some help please. My wife and I
are expecting our first kid this summer, and thirteen days
ago we also found out that my wife has stage
four breast cancer, so we are spending our third trimester
getting chemo.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
My goodness, I know.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
We're gonna kick cancer in the but we have no doubt.
But we're scared and overwhelmed, obviously, we're doing chemo now.
Then we'll have the baby get more chemo than bilateral
mastectomy than radiation. We have great doctors and great fans
and family, so even in the face of this, we
feel very lucky. And by the way, I got to
follow up more recently that says, uh, there is no

(54:21):
gestational diabetes and the cancer is already shrinking.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
Oh it's great.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
So things are going great so far.

Speaker 3 (54:26):
Thanks for keeping us in suspense.

Speaker 4 (54:27):
I know I was going to wait till the end.
And he asked for a couple of favors. He said,
First of all, if you want to follow and promote
my tumblr to keep people updated, it is h T
T P colon slash slash gala freakidiki g A L
l I f R e e k y d e
e k y dot tumblr dot com. Okay, he says,

(54:49):
we're huge nerds and doctor who fans.

Speaker 3 (54:51):
So that was lost on me some doctor who referenced
I guess apparently, so does that have to do with
the phone booth?

Speaker 4 (54:57):
Maybe that's the only thing you know about doctor here. Secondly,
I'm biking one hundred and fifty miles to raise money
and could you plug that and you can go to
goo dot gl slash two w j z x Q.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
These people don't like normal words. Well that's one of
those shortened URLs. Oh, I see, it's a goo gotcha.

Speaker 4 (55:20):
And then third, how about a shout out? I think
that's what we're doing here. My wife is a little shy,
so just to use her nickname, the mayor.

Speaker 3 (55:28):
That's hilarious. She wears a sash during chemo and childbirth.

Speaker 4 (55:32):
I guess, so, I mean I call Emily the boss,
So I guess it's the mayor. Yeah, but the.

Speaker 3 (55:37):
Mayor is like the boss of several bosses. I would guess. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (55:41):
We used to call my friend Justin who you know,
the Mayor of Atlanta, because everywhere you went, somebody knew him.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
He's a sociable fella.

Speaker 4 (55:47):
But now we just call him the manager of Atlanta
because everywhere you go he has some improvement to that place.
Oh okay, like the lighting's not quite right, or the
door should be over there, the kitchen is not located
properly those Brits. Yeah. And then fourth, my wife works
in public policy, specifically helping women and families get themselves
out of poverty and advocating for low income workers. So

(56:08):
there you have it. An awesome an incredible woman who
dedicates her considerable talents helping others, is pregnant and has
breast cancer.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Kind of hard to say, no, right, I'm not above
guilt tripping.

Speaker 4 (56:18):
So Bob from Swethmore, Pennsylvania, there you go. People should
go and check out that stuff and support your bike ride.
And I hope things have continued to progress well for
your wife and child.

Speaker 3 (56:29):
And keep us updated. Yeah, and you keep me updated
at the very least. If not everybody listening, I will. Okay,
thanks a lot, Bob and the mayor. Good luck to
you both. And let's see if you want to get
in touch with us, whether you're a mayor a provincial
governor who knows. Yeah, you can get in touch with

(56:51):
us on Twitter at SYSK podcast. You can join us
on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks
dot com and join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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