Learning from the Monopoly board game

My first introduction to the Monopoly board game was our family's South African version of the board game. At first I didn't like it much because I kept getting crushed (monopolized) by my older siblings. This taught me that being on the receiving end of a monopoly can be bad for your health. So my parents would have to step in and break up any arguments similar to the role government has in breaking up or settling disputes over competitive practices or the antitrust role.

I have since come to appreciate some of the finer distinctions and lessons I've learned from this educational board game. You can increase your the odds in your favor if you know the odds of landing on specific squares for example: Park Lane is the square least likely to be landed upon reducing returns; and that two of the orange properties are most likely to be landed on so you are more likely to collect rent there.

Or just adopting a better strategic option like not automatically rolling into hotels so as to deny the houses to the other players so they can't develop their properties.

Learning from Monopoly

The game also serves as an educational board game by teaching you a various of real-life skills including:

• Getting money through rentals vs. Just the salary (passing Go);
• Managing and developing property;
• Deferring taxes on property through like-kind exchanges (1031 exchange);
• Negotiating skills (Can't afford rents, or maybe not going down the 'mutually assured destruction' route);
• The value of dominating a niche market.

Monopoly rules

The Monopoly rules also allow you to make your own rules (download this pdf of the official rules of Monopoly ) and some of the ones we've used over the years include:

• Auctioning of properties / Selling yours to other players;
• Shared rent - if you borrowed money from another player to buy a property, you could split the rent;
• Exchanging properties - if you need one more property to make the full set and another player needed on of yours to make his set, you can negotiate an exchange;
• Fixed time limit - As the game can often run for a long time, we'd often say that the person with the most cash after a set time, say 2 hours, will win.

The most valuable lesson I've learned from the monopoly board game is not that a monopoly is good, but that co-operation and understanding can often achieve more than the selfish domination of a market.

Buy the Monopoly board game

• Get the Monopoly board game from Amazon