Best advice on monopoly, don't become the common enemy of the group

I'm now really curious about how big would be the advantage if a player used all the strategies that worked

Wow, my family has always been baffled at how I always blow all of my money on houses and hotels and still win most of the time. I never would have guessed that you're statistically more likely to win if you do what I do.

Shame you didn't run a final simulation with all strategies that proved advantageous... Great content, keep it up!

Wow I managed to find a hidden gem youtuber like this. Ty algorythm

Pro tip: Not playing Monopoly cuts loss rates by 100% and gives you an extra 4 hours of your life.

FAQ: How does trading work in this simulation? Basically, each player has two lists: one of the things they want (missing pieces to complete a monopolly) and things they offer (stray one-of-a-color property). Every move proran search a match between pairs and trios of players - to match what they wish for and offer. If such a match found - property is excahnged, whoever gets the expensive one, pays the price difference to ehoever had a cheaper one. I agree it is quite basic - and it is a little unfair to whoever trades a cheaper item. But my question is: what it is like in real life? When you trade a 100 plot for 200 plot - what do people do in this situation? How come the sum of winners are more than 100%? It is actually a "survival rate", that is player is not banlkrupt within 1000 turns. As there are "endless" games that have 2,3,4 players at 1000 turn-mark (see my other monopoly video for details on that), the sum is greater than 100%. You should always trade up! Interestingly, I ran a simulation where Steve refused all deals where he would receive a cheaper property. Guess what - he ended up with seriously lower chances of survival. It gives you 50% opportunities to build a monopoly than your opponents, which is more important than a few bucks you are alledgedly losing on the deal. More on that in future monopoly video, someday.

I had never heard of the "buy only 3 houses" tip, usually it's "buy 4 houses so that no houses are left and no one (except you) can buy hotels" Edit: bad habit of commenting before seeing all the video The tip I created myself was "buy everything except utilities because they don't give enough money back" and I'm glad I was right

The data's actually really interesting. One thing I've learned is that spending it all really is more valuable than saving. I followed basically all the other advice anyway (though I still think that the greens are tactically viable against players who know what they're doing, since most will ignore them entirely), but I would've thought having at least a small safety net would be a good idea. Definitely going to remember this video next time I play. Great content, though, man! New subscriber here, watched a few of your vids already, recommended you to a few friends. Hope the growth continues!

Interesting. The first-player advantage is significant, but in theory, giving the other players more starting money (first blush, an extra $65 per position) might make up for that.

These videos are so good, that when I misread your sub count as 3.9M I was like "Yeah that sounds about right". Absolutely floored when I realized my mistake...

So many holes... let's start with the one that applies to just about all of these: mortgages. Optimal play basically requires mortgaging non-monopolies in order to reach the magic "3 house" monopoly as soon as possible. If you're not mortgaging most of your properties to get those houses out ASAP, you're throwing away any advantage you have by getting a monopoly. Greens may not make for a good monopoly, but *any* monopoly is better than no monopoly, and you can trade other players a monopoly they want for a lot of their cash, which you can then use to build houses before them. If you can't get all three greens anymore, those are the first properties to mortgage because they're such a bad value in general. Doing this, buying green should still be worthwhile as long as it's a four player game (two player games have more limited capital, so greens are dangerous to spend that money on). Even utilities are probably worth buying and later mortgaging with this in mind (unless you're already in the monopoly phase). This mortgage hole also applies to "savings". If you're not counting every single unmortgaged non-monopoly as part of savings, you're ignoring a critical piece of funding for houses, and it's no wonder $0 wins. Someone that aggressively mortgages their properties after they and another person gets a monopoly will be far more likely to win than if they wait until later to get 1, 2, 3 houses. With that in mind, you do still want a small buffer, but it's dependent on where you and your opponents are on the map. If no one's going to land on your monopoly next turn anyway (ignoring doubles), and you're coming up to someone else's housed monopoly, it makes more sense to hold on to your cash/unmortgaged properties until the situation changes, even if it's several hundred dollars. As for the "3 house" rule itself, your goal in the game is to get a single monopoly and build it up to 3 houses before your opponents (hotel for the first two sets). More often than not, the first person to do this will win in short order as anyone landing on a 3 house monopoly will pay an enormous amount that funds both more houses *and* a larger safety buffer. At this point, a second monopoly can be brought up to 3 houses as well if you have it, but unless you've gotten very lucky, you shouldn't have a second monopoly in the first place. Whether you do or don't, the game is all but over if one person has 3 houses on their monopoly and enough money to land on any property on the board without selling any houses. While I like the idea of running simulations, you really need to improve the AI if you want meaningful data. All this is showing is certain strategies do or don't work if everyone's playing a very specific, suboptimal way.

It's crazy coming across such a criminally underrated channel. I get the feeling that the algorithm will bless you in the near future good sir. Best of luck with your youtube journey, I love your videos.

I feel like move order is heavily effected by auctions. Sucks that it's hard to simulate objectively, since I bet it would equalize quite a fair bit.

man i am glad i subscribed, didn't know we were getting part 2 so soon

I always used to buy the brown properties and build houses on them, since they were so cheap. Good to see I did a lot right. Great video!

This is my favourite video on KZfaq now. I love it!

Fascinating stuff! It's so neat to see how these various things add up to a statistically significant result.

This channel deserves a lot more attention! Interesting stuff. :)

I discovered your channel today, you're really underrated. I love how you put the source code in each one of your videos.

Just wanna say first of all, I really love this type of content. I thought your video was very cool. Definitely be conscious of the strategies that the opposing AIs are using, since it's not easy to statistically "prove" that one strategy is better than another. Playing against sub-optimal opponents definitely could affect your results. I tried building a chess AI based on a random opponent, and it ended up wanting to capture protected pieces because it didn't think the opponent would capture back. Nevertheless, I'll definitely try some of these strategies out. Wish me luck. :)

Commenting for the algorithm. I can't wait to use these tips in the next game of Monopoly I play.

so shocked when i saw that you only had just under 2.5k subs, insane, you deserve so much more, keep up the good work

I think auctions are very important to consider, as is other players playing with the same strategy. E.g. if you're the only player willing to buy green and it goes to auction, it's almost certainly worthwhile to buy it for $1

what started out i thought was a fun meme video turned out to be an increbily interesting research Bravo!

Such a great video. This deserves more views!!

Neat analysis! Thanks for uploading!

Shocked you only have so few subscribers, so commenting for the algorithm. Very interesting video, I'll be using these tips if I ever play Monopoly with my family again ;)

Amazing content! Keep it up! Definitely subscribed! :)

I discovered your channel today, and you today upload this. Thank you very much!

Part of the problem with unwavering strategies is that each game is dynamic. Some actions are powerful early in the game and some are better later. If only one player controls any color group that allows them to play differently than if other players also had groups. Following proven strategies is good, but circumstances can cause a person to play more aggressively to try and force other players to be weakened.

Properties advice and saving cash idea was mind blowing

Awesome video. Would love to see more tips tested.

Awesome video! I don’t play monopoly much but these tips will definitely help next time I do (:

Really interesting content. Subbed :)

very interesting I haven't played monopoly in years but i was sure interesting to see the results^^

Amazing video as always :)

Monopoly is too situational to really broad brush everything, but this video does a good job of making that clear

This channel is bound to become massive

Very interesting! Real surprise to me to notice how bad the green colour actually is. I always knew deep blue is a killer set. The last point is difficult: I still believe that in certain situations you would be a total jerk to invest ALL your money - say, if nobody is coming to your place during the next two turns and you are facing a jungle of dangerous squares with your very next throw. But these nuances are of course next to impossible to computerize. Great stuff - keep it up!

Thanks going to look at your code for interest on how you go it running so fast. I'm your second only follower on GitHub. Good Luck with the channel

Fun video I like the business power point presentation style.

It would be interesting to see the ‘mortgage everything once you hit a monopoly and build build build!’ strategy works in a million games.

Just found your channel, its so small, yet so good! Usually by the time a small channel reaches me its just before it gets an exponentian boost... I forgot to make this call last time it happened, lets see if my prediction is correct again...

At this point, “no house rules” is practically a house rule

got this in recommended. loved it. stayed.

Your channel is seriously underrated!

Posting this before watching the vid. Here's the essential Monopoly strategy: - Buy everything you can (i.e. never allow a property go to auction early on in the game; if you land on it, buy it) - Trade with other players in order to gain "monopolies" (i.e. usually 3 properties of the same color group), so you can put houses/hotels on them - Late game, stay in jail in order to avoid paying rent (or paying anything else) - Because of the frequency of which people land in jail, the orange/red properties give you the most bang for your buck (i.e. they have good rental income and are situated at likely dice roll values from jail) - Late game, since only a finite number of houses can be purchased, it may be wise to use houses instead of hotels in order to block opponents - Trade, trade, trade, as without expressing skill via negotiations with others, the game is all luck; Monopoly is really a game of trading

Nice baseline stats. Next you could test synergies and metas. For instance, what happens if you use combinations of strategies--would they result in more than the sum of their parts? Second, what if all the players are Steves? Which strategies--if ignored--lower your chances of winning in such a meta? Also, another strategy to include: prioritize building houses on spaces ahead of other players--and prioritize players that are closer to 7 spaces away.

I would really like to see of certain "house rules" are an advantage or a disadvantage, but they have to apply to all players. common house rules i know of: 1) complete one lap before you can build houses. 2) all taxes are collected in the middle, land on freeparking to collect it. 3) no trading cards until the last card has been sold. 4) no building till the last card has been sold. 5) if you land on a railway you can travel to another railway owned by the same person, by paying the rent due again (and skipping expensive parts of the board) 6) get the houses/hotel from your opponent when he goes bankrupt.

Wow, great video!

Another possible nuance to this is, some of these strategies could show as positive effects against your baseline player, but could have negative effects while other good strategies are applied to the other players. Put differently, some strategies can be more punishing to other specific strategies. Like a Rock Paper Scissors dynamic

I thought the entire point of the "build houses, not hotels" strategy was to deny your opponents house pieces, as houses are finite.

11:27 Did you account for mortgages on this one? In general, I suspect that your simulation might create fewer monopolies than actual over-the-board trade between Human players tends to generate. This would, besides other things, make saving money less important and significantly increase the chances of an endless game.

Solid video. However, one thing that simulating these situations never accounts for is nuance. For example, you don't want to get obsessed with the blues, but given the chance to buy them you should if you have the money.

Ideas for future games: is it possible you change the buy prices of props to test the win rate? E.g. Greens cost 20 more dollars and compute win rate, it's super useful stuff for auctions. Additionally, can you compute some of these for two players? Railroads are definitely not worth buying w 2 players.

Thank you algorithm, great channel. 😄

Amazing video! Commenting to boost the algorithm

You should run a simulation where Steve mortgages individual properties to fund house buying (once they have a monopoly). I've always been curious if the houses outweigh the lost properties or not. Also, is it better to put houses on cheap or expensive properties first (if you have multiple monopolies), as well as whether you should do hotels on one set before you start houses on a second. Great video!

This was awesome!

would love to see a video simulating various house rules at scale, to see which ones make games closer/longer/worse/etc.

Man, I just typed out a long ramble/rant about my childhood strategy before watching this video to see how it holds up to math. Then KZfaq stopped responding, so here's the rundown. In essence treat the board not as individual properties, but as sets. Any set will out-value any individual property. We played highest dice roll goes first but no buying properties until you've passed go once. For the first 1-2 (big early rolls do 3) buying times round, trade nothing, if you have none of the color you land on, buy. If you have 1, don't buy, unless you also have at least 1 property in the next two colors in front of you, then buy. Trade utilities away, they're worthless to own, and hold way more trading power than you'd expect to make from them. Prioritise trading for orange, light blue, brown, and red or yellow but not both, in that order. Never make or accept a trade that would complete someone else's color set. Trade higher valued individual properties or a similar value + cash to complete your own sets. This makes people think they're gaining value, and they are, but long term your set will outweigh the investment you made trading at a loss. Build a hotel on your highest value set first, then houses the rest, then hotel them all. I haven't played in probably 8 years, being 10-11 when we played often and hating the luck factor. I've never had a real reason for why this was my strategy other than 'it feels intuitive for minimising the luck', but I only remember losing a handful of games with it - always down to luck of the rolls. I mean there's more to it than just what I've put here, over time I realised monopoly is just as much about psycology and manipulating people as it is about properties and sets. But that's the run down.

Auctions probably increases and decreases the value of certain properties. Specifically greens are are worth more since the investment into them is usually lower thanks to the auction. Assumption is that the player who lands on green knows about the advice of ignoring them and decides to not buy them, giving the opportunity for another player to get it at marked value or less thanks to the auction. There is also the chance that some properties might be too expensive to be bought by the player landing on them for the first time (happens with indigo a lot if you buy everything in your first round the table), further skewing data. The general trend might remain the same though

That chart of property color values could be useful in gauging the value of trades, like if a player gets multiple offers for the same property from different players.

I once won a game of Monopoly by prioritizing the brown spaces while doing everything I could to prevent anyone from getting all the indigo spaces. My reasoning was that it would be easy getting all the brown spaces because everyone sees them as worthless and that the indigo spaces sucked to land on with buildings. It's pretty cool seeing my strategy actually has a good amount of merit to it!

Yeah man the algorithm decided it likes you. I got a random minesweeper probability of finding an 8 vid and now you live in my recommended. Their good vids interesting and we'll produced. have a sub.

you can't not allow for auctions, it's a core mechanic that has a large impact on the decision making process within the game.

Thank you for your sharing

Great video my strategy has always been buy orange and build hotels there.

I've died to so many got dam misfortunes at St. James Place that I can assure you - Greens are NOT to be ignored. They're extremely strategically relevant given their high relative value and location. Strategically speaking; because "Go To Jail" is the one corner you can't safely land on; and high-frequency rolls (5s-9s) from the preceding Red section before them will nearly always land you on one.

The thing about not building hotels in order to create a house shortage... Only really works if you already have a controlling amount of properties on which you _can_ build houses. If you don't have enough properties on which you can build houses, it would be better to build hotels as soon as possible, so that you can get enough income to buy up properties from your opponents, preventing them from being able to build houses at all. This strategy has merit, and can much more significantly increase your chances of success, but only if applied intelligently.

Ive played a lot of monopoly and i can tell you most of these statistics were expected, although i did believe greens were worse than they really are

Not buying hotels advice seems like it might work better if thought of as "don't buy hotels if there is an opponent that won't be able to buy all the houses he can accomodate thanks to that". Also, "don't buy hotels if you can still buy more houses" to keep with the spirit of "don't save money" advice.

I think it would be worth testing the 4 house system again seeing if odds go up if exactly two players always try to hoard all the houses. Do the overall chances for the two players go up relative to the other two? And then what about if three out of four hoard the houses? Do they hurt the chances of the one player who didn't hoard houses?

I've used the shortage of houses (as my own idea) before if I happen to end up owning the browns and blues because they're really cheap. So that one I think is very contextual. Only do it if the situation makes it worth it. Otherwise I can understand it being detrimental. The oranges tip I have also persued since going to jail is apparently above average and collecting rent in jail makes it advantageous to stay there by rolling to get out rather than paying. So each roll to get out has a 1 in 18 chance of putting the player on orange, on top of the usual chances for players going round the board. I think that's a worthy boost. Before these plans I had certain folk strategies of my own that most would not follow. I would collect utilities but I also collect stations so I guess they offset when most people aren't interested in them and it does me well. I always bought browns and purples (indigo) and always wanted the greens but that was never easy and probably formed an unplanned distraction. I have to say yellow would always be a bit of a pain and became worth grabbing as the game went on for some reason.

I thought the Monopoly rules were quite clear on player order - players roll two dice and the player with the highest total goes first; then play proceeds clockwise from there. Therefore, there's no strategy available in "trying to go first" - it's effectively random.

I wonder which properties it is best to upgrade first, should all properties stay about even, or focus on 1 set?

I wonder about paying to leave jail vs rolling, and whether these strategies might be better or worse at certain stages of the game. Early in the game you want to buy as much as possible, go into debt if you have to, but the more you have the more leverage you have in the late game. Keeping a bit of a cushion later in the game when there aren’t as many properties to buy might be wiser, perhaps it’s better to keep a bit of money on hand in case you land on a bad square rather than developing a property for example.

You should do a video on Catan next! I want to see if the "No grain = pain" mantra holds water

This is fantastic. Could you have the player agents procedurally modify their strategy to try to find some hidden master strategies?

Super interesting! Why would there be such a big difference between Indigo and Green properties? Because of the community chest and chance cards that make you go to the indigos? Or is it because of the Go Directly to Jail region making it harder to land on greens?

Regarding what property to upgrade first. I think it makes sense to upgrade the property that is most likely for an opponent to land on within a the next turn. So if everyone stands on GO dont upgrade your indigo. Likewise with saving money, if you are about to cross a dangerous area you might wanna save some money, especially if the alternative is upgrading property that opponents likely wont land on.

Great video

It was hidden by the algorithm, but the channel is amazing!

Building hotels vs 4 houses has to be done based on position, 4 houses is not generally better but is important to guaranteeing your win when you're ahead, or in some other positions. For example, if the housing shortage will give leave someone else with more houses than you, you should go for hotels to leave more for you. If there aren't more than 3 monopolies, housing shortages won't really matter so you should make hotels.

There's certainly a lot of nuance to all of this. With spending your money, if there are no opponents close to landing on your properties, and you're close to landing on something with a big payout, then there is simply no reason to spend all your money. But of course, if you live by a hard rule of "my money cannot go below this amount", then you're going to be in a world of hurt. There's other strategies here relative to how much you are winning the game by. If you are losing, then desperation plays of throwing all your money are are obviously the only choice. Play to your outs. But if you're winning, you can slowly squeeze your opponents out of the game rather than opening yourself to additional risk

On the "don't buy" category, you are not just increasing the odds of somebody getting the property. You are guaranteeing it

Pro Tips: 1.Browns are worthless. 500 you could have spent on houses on your main. 3 players coming up on Yellows 2 vs. 3 houses a piece. 500 gets 5 houses on Purples & Go money added. 2. Oranges with 3 houses wins so everyone blocks this. 3. 1000 3rd house on Boardwalk bankrupts more than anything mid-game. 4. Light Blues + another monopoly is OPed so no one stupid enough to give you the game. 5. Greens + 3 Railroads off sets cost to build making them powerful. 6. Railroad Monopoly can bankrupt you. You have Oranges and you land on Yellows survive then land my railroad go bankrupt now I have your Oranges and will win game. No one gives 4 Railroads yet 3 is easy and now I will out build you. 7. Purples ok yet weak late game. 8. Boardwalk 3 houses, Greens 2 houses a piece + 3 railroads let someone land on it for 3rd houses. Rest colors do hotels max rent. My favs:1.Yellows easy to get, highest rent before jail, landed on a lot, end game good, easy rebuild. 2. Reds same. Tie 2. Greens & Railroads 3. Boardwalk 3rd house. It all comes down to building the fastest which is mostly luck. Pros games are very close no advantages. Any questions or comments on these tips?

didn't expect this to have less than 6M views

One thing I'd be interested to see is how some of these tips perform relative to other players doing the same thing or with some other bits of nuance. Does avoiding greens/utilities still break even if other players do the same? Does saving money only once another player has 3 houses or hotels do any differently than not saving any money (it is almost certainly bad to save money early in the game where penalties are low but the reward of owning a lot of properties is very high. What about extending the 3 houses rule further (building 3 houses is more important than saving money, worth selling properties to other players for, worth mortgaging most other properties)? What about only applying the 4 house rule when you can get reasonably close to all the houses bought out? What about this in combination with the 3 house rule? It is significantly easier to buy out all houses if you start with 3 houses on all your properties. What happens to various strategies when property trade values are weighted according to your "dont buy" graph (i.e. greens are worth face value but blues are worth double). The "dont buy" graph seems to be a good representation of the actual value of each of those property sets *with the current AI playing the game*. How would those values change if the AI performed differently?

Regarding the 3-house and hotel tests - were ALL players playing by that, or just one? It might be interesting to see if more advantage is seen by players using that strategy if only 3, 2 or 1 player is using that strategy.

Great video. I'd be interested to see how ignoring utilities holds up in two or three player games. I'm guessing that in a four player game, often the utilities are spread out across players, lowering the amount you need to pay when landing on them. If you have less players, it's more likely for a single player to have them all, increasing the price you need to pay when landing on them. Alternatively, perhaps only buying one utility and ignoring the second could help to prevent others from getting both. I personally never save money, unless I'm in jail at which point I'll save 50, since I'll likely have to pay that amount to get out in a few turns. I'd be interested to see if that actually helps.

another great video

In Monopoly (Pc and Console versions) the turn order is decided by who rolls the highest (if your tied with another player the player who rolled the number first will get the higher place)

One of my friends agreed on a $25 bet and I'm using this next time we play.

It would be awesome to see a monopoly AI based on your program

Great concept! One thing I’m curious about is how the results would change if the simulations were run on games with 30-40 turns instead of 1,000 turns. I would suspect that it could change some of the results, particularly if the benefit increases the longer the game. For example, buying the “blue” properties may be somewhat advantageous in a shorter game, but may be more advantageous in a game the runs longer. If the break even point is turn 25 a 1000 turn game will have different results then a 30 turn game.

1K mark lessgooo! discord when?

I have a question about the don't buy hotels strategy, what if it's changed to don't buy hotels unless you can buy more houses to keep the house shortage? will that make any differance?

Should've simulated the "perfect player" at the end