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Monopoly Strategy
Many books have been written about Monopoly, the world's most popular game. Now for the first time a 35-year internationally known Monopoly tournament player shares secret game strategies and tactics previously known and practiced by only a handful of top competitive Monopoly tournament players and coaches.
192 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 9, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 13, 2020
When I was a kid in the early Sixties, board games came and went like frost in the sun. The Cootie game, with all those cool-looking colored pieces, was doomed from the start. It was made up of red, yellow, green and blue plastic bits that represented the head, body and legs of a cootie-like bug. The object was to take turns trying to be the first to assemble a complete bug body.
There were two problems with that game. One was that at six or seven years of age, I didn’t grasp the concept. And because the pieces were small and easily lost (or ingested), it wasn’t long before the game was rendered unplayable, disparate parts of the cootie eventually relegated to the Toybox of Doomed Game Pieces. Same went for the Merry Milkman, whose hundreds of parts I only remember seeing once, on Christmas morning in the very early Sixties. Scrabble? Forget it. Bingo was the same.
But Monopoly- that was a different thing entirely. It just showed up one day in our living room, a used version from the forties or fifties that some relative must had gifted to us. It came in a 6” by 6” cardboard box, the board separate. Inside were all of those little wooden houses and hotels, the dice, the pewter playing pieces (iron, dog, hat, ship, etc.), the yellowish business card-sized Chance and Community Chest cards, and all that pastel-colored money- 1$ white, 5$ pink, $10 yellow, $20 green, $50 blue, $100 beige, and $500 goldenrod orange.
There was a set of instructions which- like the roadmap I always set aside on long road trips, in favor of my less reliable sense of direction- we would give a quick, but insufficient going over before diving into the game itself.
And then there was the board. Whoever came up with those colors was a genius, for back in the day, I could look at the deep blues and greens and oranges of the property squares for hours. It starts with the dark purples of Mediterranean and Baltic (which we branded the “leaky toilet” properties), then on to the bland, light blue squares, followed by light purple or maroon, orange, red, yellow, green, and finally the dark blues. Eventually, my parents taught me how to play, but then left me and one of my sisters to our own devices. Which is why I never learned to play it correctly, when I was younger.
Around my eleventh or twelfth birthday, the original game gone with the board game wind, I was sure I’d get a new copy. I’d begged for it, dropping subtle hints to cover all the bases, but the birthday party came and went. After it ended and all my friends had gone home and the ice cream melted beyond repair, I stood there in the living room, my folks asking if I’d gotten every present I was hoping for. Creeping disappointment making me lie thorough my teeth, I said that yes, I had- which is when Dad pulled a brand-new Monopoly game from behind his back. I was in ecstasy. I set the box down on the dining room table, opened it, and basked in the glory of all those game pieces and the board. It looked new and smelled even newer.
Trouble was that there was no one to play with, my younger sisters into dolls and the like, my parents too busy to teach me. Which is when I learned my first lesson about Monopoly: it takes time- something I had in abundance, but more experienced hands did not. The second thing about the game was that no one was willing to teach me how to play it. This was soon followed by the sense that no one seemed to know the rules. The final hard truth was that non one else in the family, including relatives, wanted to play the damned thing, my cousins and grandparents more interested in canasta, hearts, pinochle, checkers, and Scrabble.
What followed was a series of abortive attempts at gameplay. First, I’d try to engage one of my sisters in the game. We’d set up the board with the requisite amount of money, choose tokens and begin. Buying properties was easy to do, as long as I didn’t have to do too much addition or subtraction fulfilling my duties as the banker. Chance and Community Chest directions weren’t too hard, and going to jail was self-evident. But anything more complex, like mortgaging or figuring out the Income Tax, were things we either guessed at or skipped outright. The purpose of Free Parking was a mystery, so we decided to give it a purpose in life by placing tax money or utility fees there as a bonus for anyone landing on that spot in the future. The fact that this was in direct violation of the rules had no meaning for us- as did a majority of the rules, which we never bothered to learn, since the rules were boring or incomprehensible, to begin with.
So around and around we went, rolling the dice and buying and paying rent, and getting zapped with taxes or fees, occasionally receiving some blessed income here and there, but all the while the sands in our Attention Span hourglass slowly running out. It didn’t help matters that we were players without long-term purpose or some sort of goal. The rules of the game were to have fun and be the last person to run out of money. But with no clear idea of how long the game was supposed to last, Monopoly turned into a death march, and soon we walked away from the table to watch TV or play outside. The experience left a taste in the mouth that meant not playing Monopoly again for weeks or months.
Time passed. I was next involved in a serious version of the game while visiting neighbor kids in a other town, one summer day. I didn’t was a stranger to these guys, and they played a tough game, eventually taking sides and kibitzing to eliminate outsiders. They were mortgaging and trading and doing other things beyond my understanding. Within a short time I was bankrupt, not to mention upset at what I’d assumed was going to be a fun experience. I moped my way home to my grandparents house, no plans for Monopoly in the near or distant future.
Then came Akilesh Kumar. My parents decided it would be rewarding and educational for our family to provide room and board to a foreign exchange student from India. The idea was for us to learn about another culture; in return, Mr. Kumar would learn about life on the farm and our American way of life. What happened instead was that Akilesh sat around the house, expecting to be waited on, his justification for such behavior being that he was considered a prince back in the old country, etc., etc. Said attitude did not sit well with my parents, though us kids though he was a grand fellow- especially me, since Mr. Kumar was the first adult I’d met who was willing to spend hours- and I mean hours- playing Monopoly.
The one game we engaged in lasted one and off throughout the day, pleasing both of us to no end. Unfortunately, there were chores to do. I would head outside to work, return sometime later to find Akilesh still relaxing indoors. Eventually, my parents found our exchange student another place to live, far away on a section of farmland where he wouldn’t be able to sit around much. I ran into the man later in the year, at a fair of some sort, where he gifted me with a copy of a Mahatma Ghandi book.
The years passed. More Monopoly was played, but the game remained an enigma to me; so popular, but equally misunderstood. Those who indulged in role-playing games hated the “Property Trading Game from Parker Brothers.” Scrabble players dismissed Monopoly as non-intellectual, a mere game of chance. Card players said it was just too boring. And all that time I continued to look for players.
Triopoly arrived on the scene, touted as the “Monopoly Killer,” mainly by me- since it had three boards instead of one, and seemed more fun to play than the original. Yet, after a few sessions, it became cumbersome to play. There were so many more properties available, and at least twice the spaces to travel, along with gas stations, malls, and a lottery, that it started to have a gimmicky feel.
Then several years ago, I was strolling amongst a few tables where authors were selling their self-published books, when one book caught my eye: “Monopoly Strategy.” The author, a wheelchair-bound lawyer named Ken Koury, was autographing his book, which carried the subtitle, “How to Win the World’s Most Popular Board Game,” the book cover itself the same color as the standard Monopoly board. At first, I thought it was some sort of satirical account, but when I talked to Ken, and found out that he holds two world’s records in official tournament play, I started taking him more seriously. I bought a copy of his book and began reading. And that’s when I started taking the game of Monopoly more seriously.
One of the first things I learned was that Monopoly is not a game of chance; it’s a decision-making game. The next thing I found out was that the game- if played by the rules- should take no more than 45-90 minutes. But what people do is adopt “house rules” that can not only prolong the game indefinitely, but hamstring the skilled player. Putting tax money or any other funds on “Free Parking,” as a jackpot for the person lucky enough to land there, is against the rules. You can collect rent while in jail. The game does not stop while I’m negotiating a trade. You don’t have to wait until it is your turn to build houses and hotels. The orange properties are the best ones to own, while the railroads suck, since they can never be improved.
The end result of reading Ken’s book was the humbling realization that I’ve been playing the game wrong for at least fifty years. But by reading the book, and following Ken Koury’s advice, I could become a tournament winner. Even if one is not planning on that path to fame, “Monopoly Strategy” is a fascinating read- an eye-opener about the most famous board game in the world.
There were two problems with that game. One was that at six or seven years of age, I didn’t grasp the concept. And because the pieces were small and easily lost (or ingested), it wasn’t long before the game was rendered unplayable, disparate parts of the cootie eventually relegated to the Toybox of Doomed Game Pieces. Same went for the Merry Milkman, whose hundreds of parts I only remember seeing once, on Christmas morning in the very early Sixties. Scrabble? Forget it. Bingo was the same.
But Monopoly- that was a different thing entirely. It just showed up one day in our living room, a used version from the forties or fifties that some relative must had gifted to us. It came in a 6” by 6” cardboard box, the board separate. Inside were all of those little wooden houses and hotels, the dice, the pewter playing pieces (iron, dog, hat, ship, etc.), the yellowish business card-sized Chance and Community Chest cards, and all that pastel-colored money- 1$ white, 5$ pink, $10 yellow, $20 green, $50 blue, $100 beige, and $500 goldenrod orange.
There was a set of instructions which- like the roadmap I always set aside on long road trips, in favor of my less reliable sense of direction- we would give a quick, but insufficient going over before diving into the game itself.
And then there was the board. Whoever came up with those colors was a genius, for back in the day, I could look at the deep blues and greens and oranges of the property squares for hours. It starts with the dark purples of Mediterranean and Baltic (which we branded the “leaky toilet” properties), then on to the bland, light blue squares, followed by light purple or maroon, orange, red, yellow, green, and finally the dark blues. Eventually, my parents taught me how to play, but then left me and one of my sisters to our own devices. Which is why I never learned to play it correctly, when I was younger.
Around my eleventh or twelfth birthday, the original game gone with the board game wind, I was sure I’d get a new copy. I’d begged for it, dropping subtle hints to cover all the bases, but the birthday party came and went. After it ended and all my friends had gone home and the ice cream melted beyond repair, I stood there in the living room, my folks asking if I’d gotten every present I was hoping for. Creeping disappointment making me lie thorough my teeth, I said that yes, I had- which is when Dad pulled a brand-new Monopoly game from behind his back. I was in ecstasy. I set the box down on the dining room table, opened it, and basked in the glory of all those game pieces and the board. It looked new and smelled even newer.
Trouble was that there was no one to play with, my younger sisters into dolls and the like, my parents too busy to teach me. Which is when I learned my first lesson about Monopoly: it takes time- something I had in abundance, but more experienced hands did not. The second thing about the game was that no one was willing to teach me how to play it. This was soon followed by the sense that no one seemed to know the rules. The final hard truth was that non one else in the family, including relatives, wanted to play the damned thing, my cousins and grandparents more interested in canasta, hearts, pinochle, checkers, and Scrabble.
What followed was a series of abortive attempts at gameplay. First, I’d try to engage one of my sisters in the game. We’d set up the board with the requisite amount of money, choose tokens and begin. Buying properties was easy to do, as long as I didn’t have to do too much addition or subtraction fulfilling my duties as the banker. Chance and Community Chest directions weren’t too hard, and going to jail was self-evident. But anything more complex, like mortgaging or figuring out the Income Tax, were things we either guessed at or skipped outright. The purpose of Free Parking was a mystery, so we decided to give it a purpose in life by placing tax money or utility fees there as a bonus for anyone landing on that spot in the future. The fact that this was in direct violation of the rules had no meaning for us- as did a majority of the rules, which we never bothered to learn, since the rules were boring or incomprehensible, to begin with.
So around and around we went, rolling the dice and buying and paying rent, and getting zapped with taxes or fees, occasionally receiving some blessed income here and there, but all the while the sands in our Attention Span hourglass slowly running out. It didn’t help matters that we were players without long-term purpose or some sort of goal. The rules of the game were to have fun and be the last person to run out of money. But with no clear idea of how long the game was supposed to last, Monopoly turned into a death march, and soon we walked away from the table to watch TV or play outside. The experience left a taste in the mouth that meant not playing Monopoly again for weeks or months.
Time passed. I was next involved in a serious version of the game while visiting neighbor kids in a other town, one summer day. I didn’t was a stranger to these guys, and they played a tough game, eventually taking sides and kibitzing to eliminate outsiders. They were mortgaging and trading and doing other things beyond my understanding. Within a short time I was bankrupt, not to mention upset at what I’d assumed was going to be a fun experience. I moped my way home to my grandparents house, no plans for Monopoly in the near or distant future.
Then came Akilesh Kumar. My parents decided it would be rewarding and educational for our family to provide room and board to a foreign exchange student from India. The idea was for us to learn about another culture; in return, Mr. Kumar would learn about life on the farm and our American way of life. What happened instead was that Akilesh sat around the house, expecting to be waited on, his justification for such behavior being that he was considered a prince back in the old country, etc., etc. Said attitude did not sit well with my parents, though us kids though he was a grand fellow- especially me, since Mr. Kumar was the first adult I’d met who was willing to spend hours- and I mean hours- playing Monopoly.
The one game we engaged in lasted one and off throughout the day, pleasing both of us to no end. Unfortunately, there were chores to do. I would head outside to work, return sometime later to find Akilesh still relaxing indoors. Eventually, my parents found our exchange student another place to live, far away on a section of farmland where he wouldn’t be able to sit around much. I ran into the man later in the year, at a fair of some sort, where he gifted me with a copy of a Mahatma Ghandi book.
The years passed. More Monopoly was played, but the game remained an enigma to me; so popular, but equally misunderstood. Those who indulged in role-playing games hated the “Property Trading Game from Parker Brothers.” Scrabble players dismissed Monopoly as non-intellectual, a mere game of chance. Card players said it was just too boring. And all that time I continued to look for players.
Triopoly arrived on the scene, touted as the “Monopoly Killer,” mainly by me- since it had three boards instead of one, and seemed more fun to play than the original. Yet, after a few sessions, it became cumbersome to play. There were so many more properties available, and at least twice the spaces to travel, along with gas stations, malls, and a lottery, that it started to have a gimmicky feel.
Then several years ago, I was strolling amongst a few tables where authors were selling their self-published books, when one book caught my eye: “Monopoly Strategy.” The author, a wheelchair-bound lawyer named Ken Koury, was autographing his book, which carried the subtitle, “How to Win the World’s Most Popular Board Game,” the book cover itself the same color as the standard Monopoly board. At first, I thought it was some sort of satirical account, but when I talked to Ken, and found out that he holds two world’s records in official tournament play, I started taking him more seriously. I bought a copy of his book and began reading. And that’s when I started taking the game of Monopoly more seriously.
One of the first things I learned was that Monopoly is not a game of chance; it’s a decision-making game. The next thing I found out was that the game- if played by the rules- should take no more than 45-90 minutes. But what people do is adopt “house rules” that can not only prolong the game indefinitely, but hamstring the skilled player. Putting tax money or any other funds on “Free Parking,” as a jackpot for the person lucky enough to land there, is against the rules. You can collect rent while in jail. The game does not stop while I’m negotiating a trade. You don’t have to wait until it is your turn to build houses and hotels. The orange properties are the best ones to own, while the railroads suck, since they can never be improved.
The end result of reading Ken’s book was the humbling realization that I’ve been playing the game wrong for at least fifty years. But by reading the book, and following Ken Koury’s advice, I could become a tournament winner. Even if one is not planning on that path to fame, “Monopoly Strategy” is a fascinating read- an eye-opener about the most famous board game in the world.
January 2, 2025
This book made fantastic reading. I've always enjoyed playing monopoly since I was a child with fond memories of the London 2012 Olympics Board. However, since downloading a Monopoly game on my phone probably over a year ago now, I've been playing a lot more. Some of my friends would think it be a waste of time reading this book considering there's not much of a competitive scene in the UK (at least that I'm aware of), however, I've enjoyed applying my new found skills in online games and securing wins faster and faster. Not all of the advice is applicable for online, for example, unlike in the rules, you can't buy houses at any point in the game, however, most of the knowledge shared is very helpful. I recommend this to any monopoly fan looking to acquire glory at Christmas.
July 15, 2018
For those wishing to up their game.
My family loves the game of Monopoly and we play it quite often. This book can help a casual player become a good one and help a good player become a formidable one. It helped me gain a bit of an edge.
My family loves the game of Monopoly and we play it quite often. This book can help a casual player become a good one and help a good player become a formidable one. It helped me gain a bit of an edge.
February 8, 2015
Great book that's worth its weight in gold
This really gave me a new dynamic of the game that I never thought about before. I can not wait to play someone again and test my new found knowledge.
This really gave me a new dynamic of the game that I never thought about before. I can not wait to play someone again and test my new found knowledge.
April 7, 2015
Very good book for anyone wanting to improve their Monopoly game.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews