The beginning of the game:

Buy every property you land on. This is especially true with three or more players as the competition for the limited number of properties of color groups (22) is very tight. If you need to mortgage in order to grab a property, then by all means do so! Generally a good rule of thumb is to not mortgage more than half of your properties in the beginning when trying to purchase a property, unless it will block the opponent from getting a monopoly. Why is this so important? Because properties is everything in monopoly. The more properties you have blocking others from the monopolies they want, the more bargaining power you have. You can sell them to other players who want them for much more than the purchase price or you can trade them for what you want.

The Trading part of the game:

Once all the properties are bought (except for maybe those one or two pesky ones that no one seems to land on) it's time to start trading! The Orange monopoly is the best color group to aim for. Why? Because it is inexpensive to purchase houses, and the rents at three houses are good enough to do substantial damage and the rents with hotels are good enough to seriously cripple and even bankrupt the opponent. This combined with the fact that they are statistically landed on the most of any of the improvable color groups, even though there is no card sending you to St. James Place, Tennessee or New York Avenue. Why are they landed on so much? Because the Jail square is the most frequented square on the board. Chance and Community Chest Cards, three double dice rolls in succession and the policeman at the opposite corner of the board all send you to this square which has you in prime position for landing on the Oranges. (Pay attention to this fact next time you play Monopoly!)

Strategies for trading:

Assess what everyone has and what properties you want.

Some trading scenarios:

Player A has Boardwalk, North Carolina Ave and Tennesse Ave

Player B has Park Place, St. James Ave and Pennsylvania Ave.

You have New York Ave. Pacific Ave.

You all have roughly the same amount of money. You want to get the Oranges. Give Player A Pacific Ave. for Boardwalk and any money or Railroad or Utility as well since you'll be helping him get the Green monopoly.

Now give Boardwalk to Player B for St. James Ave.

Another example:

You have Boardwalk, Pennsylvania Ave and St. James Place

Player A has Park Place, Tennessee Ave and North Carolina Ave.

Player B has Pacific Ave and New York Ave.

Give Player A Boardwalk for Tennessee Ave and North Carolina Ave. He gets a monopoly and you don't so you might be able to argue he should give you some money as well.

Now give Player B the two Greens (North Carolina Ave and Pennsylvania Ave) for New York Ave and $500+ because you are giving two properties of high end value for one property of lower end value.

Learn more about this author, Jason Root.
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