Stuff You Should Know - SYSK's 12 Days of Christmas… Toys: How Monopoly Works

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to the Brothers Ortiz on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 Mr. Peanut. Plus also, it makes sense that he would be wearing a monocle. It's a bit of a crime that he wasn't.

At any rate, here's the episode, I'm Monopoly. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from How StuffWorks.com. 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. That's right. I got on my top hat and my cane and monocle. Does he have monocle? I thought it was... No, that's Mr. Peanut. Oh, yeah. Not Mr. Monopoly.

And I think Mr. Pringle has a monocle too, doesn't it? Oh. No, he just has a mustache. Yeah. Mr. Monopoly doesn't have a monocle, huh? I don't think so. Huh. You'd think we'd know.

We do not. But I do know this. Mr. Monopoly is a nickname for that man. That's right. His born name is given name by his parents is rich uncle pennybags. Three names. So Uncle would be his middle name. Yeah, well, he even has a regular name, too.

Oh, not that I saw. Yeah, it is Milburn Pennybags. No. 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 characters on the board, Milburn Pennybags, and then the jail guy is Jake the jailbird. Okay. And the police officer and go to jail is... It's all bet it's iris, isn't it?

Officer Edgar Mallory. Really? You just guess that, huh? Yeah. That's pretty funny. We're talking about monopoly, by the way. Oh yeah. Yeah. This is not about anything else but monopoly.

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. Yeah, I can explain why. Because this was written, there was a whole suite of... suite of game articles written. Yeah. Like just how to play certain games. Sure.

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 then this article's done, whereas Monopoly, it's like, this is more like McDonald's or Twinkies or something like that. It's like a cultural cog. Yeah, I mean, there's so much extra junk history and. I mean, you talk about the different versions, it's ridiculous. Milburn penny bags? Yeah.

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 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. Yeah, they do. They like licensing it off. A lot of money doing that. They like making some changes here or there.

and 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 Fendis Jekyll. Yeah. I think I'm saying that right. Yeah, sure. Okay.

I think it sounds right. And it's interesting to me that the game of monopoly, which is all about capitalism and bankrupting your neighbor, was stolen. The game was stolen. From a leftist intellectual Quaker. In the original version of the game, it was to teach against monopolies and how they were bad. Right. So let's talk about this. Monopoly, actually, if you trace it back to about the literal beginning of the 20th 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 today you would kind of call them socialist. But for the most part, they were followers of a guy named Henry George. Yeah, Georgeism. Yeah, he came up with this thing called Georgeism, which is based on some other philosophies. But the idea of it is that if you produce something through your own labor, your own work, you own that.

That should not be taxed. Right. What should be taxed is things that everybody owns. If somebody's taking something that belongs to everybody, say a parcel of land, technically the land belongs to everybody. Well, that was his notion, was that you shouldn't even be a landowner. Like the whole concept of owning land to him was ridiculous. 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. Yeah. And then that tax will be given back to the community for the greater good. Yeah.

So that's Georgeism. And that was kind of the philosophy that formed the basis of Monopoly, what was originally called the Landlords game, which was created by a lady named Lizzie Maggie, M-A-G-Y. M-A-G-I-E. M-A-G-E.

Yeah. Almost magpie, but without the P. Right? Yeah. And she basically... I think that was on her card. Right. In quote.

Yeah. And 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 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 chest.

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. Yeah. In her original version, it was a good thing, like the community won. Right. And that was the basis of the whole thing. 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 was kind of to teach people lessons

and she had it stolen from her. She did. Luckily Lizzie Maggie 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. 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, Bored, it looks a lot like

the current monopoly. I mean, similar at least. 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 bid. Yeah, yeah.

Quakers prefer silence, so they just put a fixed price on a piece of land, so there wouldn't be a loud, obnoxious bidding war. Yeah. They also instituted tokens, fun tokens, before they were just boring pawns. 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, um. I know. It's pretty exciting. 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.

No, well she pitched it to Parker Brothers and they said no. Yeah, so she just kind of went on doing her own thing. 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 change some of the rules to make it look more like the monopoly we know they taught it to a friend named Todd and Todd taught it to his friend named Charles Darrow and that's where the story takes

kind of a seedy turn well actually that's where the Parker Brothers official version begins ironically things turn seedy if you go to their website is like, hey, this is where our story begins. Yeah, the inventor of Monopoly, Charles Darrow.

Right, so he was like a radiator salesman during the Depression. This is the 30s, right? Yeah, I mean, it was, ironically, again, during the Depression, this game really caught hold. Well, 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, apparently he didn't innovate it at all. He kind of just copied it and packaged it and said, hey, what do you think of this? 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 let's just, you just go your own way.

So Charles Darrow went off and started selling it at this Wanamaker's department store in Philadelphia. Yeah, without patenting it. Right. 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 woe like this for another 70, 80 years. And this guy's selling these things like hotcakes. You know what, sir? We will buy your idea from you. And Charles Darrow 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 penny bags likes. Yeah. And he said, okay, we also need to buy the patent off from this lady named Lizzie Maggie. 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 agreed to buy her patent and said, you know what, we're going to, we'll sell a few of your other game ideas too. None of those ever went anywhere. And she was sort of lost to history, except for people who do a little bit of digging. Yeah, and we actually have a guy named Ralph to thank for doing that digging initially.

We'll talk about him later. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, because he's the one who came up with the unofficial history and really tracked it down. There's a lot of teases in this one so far. So the Parker Brothers now on the game, and it becomes a huge hit virtually off the bat in the 30s is when they bought it and started really printing it. 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's the name of it, Monopoly Goes Corporate?

Yeah, it was written by, what's the lady's name? Mary Pillen. She is a monopoly expert. There's a lot of those out there, I've learned. Well, she wrote a lot of the articles you'll find. Oh, really? Yeah, she's good. Well, she pointed out that it's interesting that it mirrored sort of the cartography of the day in Atlantic City,

boardwalk was clearly like a rich area yeah the baltic and mediterranean the cheapest properties were in african-american neighborhoods there was a reading railroad uh that transferred people between philly and atlantic city yeah and little known fact for 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 right. If you're playing Monopoly. Yeah.

That's what I would do. And maybe just, you know, don't charge anybody when they land on it. Yeah. Just be like, this is a party place. That's right, exactly. And Marvin Gardens apparently is misspelled. Yeah, E instead of an I, or I instead of an E? Yeah, on the board it's an I.

Right. And it's supposed to be an E. Yeah. There's a lot of monopoly facts dropping all around us right now. I know. It's raining thimbles. And before we go any further, though, you want to do a message break? Yes.

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One for your favorite sports team. Yeah. I have personally, my version is a Star Wars Monopoly. Nice. Which is pretty fun. Yeah, I guess Hasbro's like, you got some money. Sure, you can license this. Make your own Monopoly game.

Go ahead. There's a Simpsons. Monopoly. I haven't played it, though. And in addition to the licensed versions that you can find, like, everywhere, they also have, like, official versions, too. Like, there's a U.S. version. Yeah.

There's a U.K. version. There's a new version that's called Monopoly Here and Now. What does that even mean? Super corporate. Oh, is this the corporate one? Yeah. Oh, okay. It's like everything is multiplied by, I think, a thousand.

So the dollar amounts are way higher. Is this the one where they replaced the... The railroads are replaced by airports, including Hartfield? Is this one where they replaced corporations for all the properties, though? Yes. Like McDonald's and Sony and... Yeah. God, who would want to play that?

Some people do. You know? Yeah. I mean, I'm not a purist because I have the Star Wars version, but it's no fun to me to play as Paramount Pictures and to buy the McDonald's property. Yeah. No, 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 2008 rules. Yeah, and there's actually coming soon later this year. 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 150 bucks or something. Wow, money bags. You can get, I'm not going to do it. You can do the East Lake Monopoly. I was, no, I was talking to whoever went and got it. Oh, sure.

Yeah, rich, uh, Uncle Rich Pennybags. That's what you should have said. Rich Uncle Penny bag. Penny bags just sounds not, not that wealthy. Well, actually, I have a bag of pennies on me right now. He, uh, Forbes has their silly, fictional 15 list of fictional characters wealth and he in 2013 was number 13 15 is stars declined to him huh guess who the first the richest fictional character is the

incredible Hulk no he was not rich Scrooge McDuck oh yeah well dude he had that gold vault apparently 65 billion number two was smowg which I thought was kind of silly Smog from like... Board of the Rings. It's a dragon, I think, had like... Was sitting on a bunch of gold. Gotcha. Carlisle Cullen, number three,

Tony Stark, four. Charles Foster Kane, number five. Who's number three? Carlisle Cullen from Twilight. Who's that? He was the dad, vampire dad. Of the vampire family.

And he's been alive forever, so I guess he just keeps accumulating well. Bruce Wayne, Richie Rich, Christian Gray. Richie Rich. I forgot about him. He's number seven. He had a robot made and a crazy, like, weird scientist friend, didn't he?

Sure. Like a richy-rich robot of himself? I think he had that too, but no, his maid was a robot, wasn't it? That was the Jetsons. No, he had a robot made too, I believe it. I thought Monty Burns at number 10 was pretty good. Oh, yeah, that's good. Although, I would guess Mr. Monopoly would be

wealthier than Monty Burns, but I guess not. Yeah, 13. Huh. And they put it out each year, and it's dumb. Can we just admit that? I was thrilled by it. Okay. We just spent three minutes on it. Yeah, well, that's true.

Okay, so Chuckers, you want to talk about the rules of the game? Again, 2008 rules, if you are a monopoly purist, and like, I'm sorry, that's just what we're going with. 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. 12, they call them tokens. That's not the right amount either, is it?

No, there's eight. Yeah. I don't understand where they got 12 from unless they're counting ones that maybe were retired or something like that, but when you open the box, there's only eight there. Yeah.

There's a, can we go? over. Sure. There's a wheelbarrow, a Scotty dog. Yeah. Top hat. A cat, which replaced the iron in 2013. Yeah. There was a big, um, big to-do because Parker Brothers or Hasbro was like, we haven't made a lot of money off of this for a couple months. So let's just do something. Well, they let people vote at least, which is kind of cool. Right, but it was also, did you see the other ones that they were voting for? Yeah. It's like a robot, like Richie Rich's made. A guitar. A guitar?

Yeah. They didn't make the cut though. No, they got voted out. And the cat got voted in. But the iron got booted. Yeah, it only got 8% of the vote. There's the classic shoe, of course. Or boot.

Which is modeled after a 1930s working shoe. And I think they've kept it the same. Yeah, that's one of the original ones. The Scotty Dog was not one of the originals. It came in the 50s. Yeah, and I think that was supposed to be the companion of Milburn. Money, penny, rich.

Penny bags. Penny bags, it's not. It should be cash bags. Fat stacks. That's tax bag. There was a cannon, which has since been retired. Yeah. They thought it was too militaristic.

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. Let's just throw them in Monopoly for now. Right. It's pretty smart.

But they phased the cannon out because it was just too overtly violent? It just says without any fanfare or vote or campaign. So probably, yeah, that'd be my guess. If it's hush, hush, it's probably because of violence. There's a conspiracy afoot. There's the race car. Yeah. Which every little kid's favorite.

Which apparently had a number three on the side for a little while. Yeah, I didn't know that. Dale Earnhardt. I guess so. Purse has been retired. Yeah. The rocking horse was retired. Yep.

The lantern was retired. Oh, yeah. I'm doing my best Ben Bowling impression. Did you get Wheelbarrow in there yet? I think I... No, yes, I did. It was the first one I said. Did we say Top Hat?

Yeah, that was always my favorite, actually. I don't remember what my favorite was. It fit on my pinky, and I used to draw faces on the pinky. The horse and rider, which is retired, which I didn't know, that's one of the best pieces to me. What you didn't know was retired? No, it was kind of sad. Yeah. And now they're, and the sack of money was retired as well.

The sack of money and a purse. Those are a little similar. Yeah, the cat, come on. Yeah. Cat people. I'm sure they're like, yeah, that's exactly right. I guarantee that's why they got cat voted in. And I am a cat person, you know?

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 2008 set. 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.

Right. Yeah, because supposedly, at least as far as Hasbro calculates, over one billion people have played Monopoly. And frankly, I'm surprised as that low. It sounds like an old number. Yeah.

Okay, so you've got the box open. You get the board, you got two dice, you got the tokens, 32 houses, and 12 hotels. Yeah. 16 chance cards, 16 community chess cards. Yeah. A title deed card for each property.

It's got the information on it, like how much it cost to purchase, how much rent is, depending on how many houses or hotels you have on it. Yeah, what the mortgage value is worth. That's right. And then you've got your play money, your monopoly money. Yeah. I think that's where it grabs kids because, and they even pointed out in this article, that's kind of the first time a lot of kids have money to play.

with. Yeah, especially the $500 bill ones. Oh, man, that gold bill. I always thought it was orange. Is it gold? Yeah. Okay. One's definitely golden rod, like yellow. But I remember the 500, it was, yeah, I guess gold is a way to go. Yeah. See, I was a cash hoarder, which is no way to win at Monopoly. No, I thought it was... Can't save? No, I just thought that just figures for me, though, like... You got to spend money to make money. Yeah, I was like, look at it. all this cash that I will soon be paying to everyone else. You just keep wandering off from the table and try to buy stuff with it. Did not work.

So Chuck, you've got the board laid out, and if you count them, if you're that kind of person, you're going to find that there's 40 squares. That's right. I believe 22 of which are, no, 28 of which can be purchased. Yeah, 22 are properties. You've got your electric company and waterworks. Yeah, suckers bet. And then you've got the four railroads.

Four railroads. Yeah. So that's 28. That's right. There are others that you can't buy. So, for example, there's a luxury tax square. Yeah, you've got to pay, what, $100 when you land on that? I believe so.

Just right out of your pocket. There's an income tax square. Yeah, no good. There's the Go square, which is where you start. And then when you come back around, you collect $200, which is in Monopoly called your salary. That's right. I never knew that. I didn't either.

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 as official rules for this one version. In a $70 hard backbook? I don't see why a lot of people And since, they were like, no one plays by the real rules anyway. So why bother packaging it and selling it? Right. And they went, I think you just said the word sell.

Did someone say sell? Therein lies the answer. So you've got, oh, there's, and so there's 40 squares, but there's actually 41 places you can go to on the board because jail is divided into two squares. That's right. You got the jail with the jailbird, what's his name? I can't remember. Johnny jailbird or something? Jake the jailbird.

Right, okay, which is where Jake the jailbird is, and then you've got the lower part of it. It's just visiting. Yeah, if you want to visit Jake, give him a bunt cake with the nail file in. It'd be very old school. Or a monopoly set with maybe a map with an escape route embedded in it.

Hey, that sounds familiar. Yeah, POWs in World War II are given such monopoly sets. Which is strange to me, it's like, where the Nazis allowing monopoly sets to be delivered to POWs, is that? Is that what I'm seeing here? Maybe it was the Burmese. No, I mean, you've seen the great escape

on those, the war prison camps in World War II. It seemed like a lot of them, they let them like garden and they were kind of chummy with them. You saw Hogan's heroes. 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 Italians, I could see like saying like, yeah, hey, bring to Monopoly and who cares. But the Nazis, I would think, would I just don't see that. Yeah, I'm not saying it was a walk in the park, but I think from the depiction and, like I said,

like the Great Escape, it's not like Vietnam prison camp. Oh, yeah. You know, like they weren't playing soccer or Monopoly. They were playing survive another day that game. Yeah. And I'm not making a lot of that, by the way. Oh, I didn't think you were.

And I'm basing everything on war movies. I'm probably wrong anyway. I've seen Uncommon Valor. That was a good movie. That was a great movie. It doesn't age well, though. Really? No.

Remember that menu with the gun silhouettes on it? Oh, yeah. And when you're 12, you're like, oh, my God. Yeah. It's like, I would buy that one and that one. Yeah. All right, so where were we? We were talking about the board itself.

Yes. And the different squares. Yes, there are the cards that you can draw as well, community chest and chance square. 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 a fashion modeling contest. You get $10. And there are a dog show one in there, too?

I think there's probably a dog show. And there's also, you know, you have street repairs or... Those are big time. General repairs, and that's based on your properties that you own. That's right. A percentage. They can hit you pretty hard. Yeah.

Just like in real life. That's right. You know? And that's funny because the Monopoly, what was her name, Lizzie Maggie? Yeah. In an interview, she gave with some leftist magazine at the time.

She said, she basically called the thing the game of life. Yeah, that was already taken out. I don't know, was it? Yeah, that's around since the mid-1800s. Oh, okay. That's old. I thought she was being prescient. No, she was being glib.

She was making a pop culture reference for the time. Yeah, exactly. 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. I never really played that. I think I played it a couple of times. 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. Yeah, we did, I mean, we weren't the biggest game players as families, but we did Monopoly some, and Yatsy was a big one. Yatsi was great. That I still enjoyed today. I love Yatsi. Sure. 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, Monopoly is nothing but real estate. The game of life is everything. Right. This game, Bull, was about the stock market.

Yeah. Sorry was about sarcastic. Sorry. Because you had to say it like a jerk. Right. Candyland, we know what that's all about. Yeah. Drugs, right?

Probably. Shoots and ladders taught you to stay away from snakes. Yeah, Operation taught you how to be a doctor. Oh, yeah, it's right. That's where I got my MD. And then, of course, Battleship taught you how to be a warmonger. That's right. So did Risk.

And take great pride. Risk taught you to be the Antichrist. Yeah, risk, we should do. There is an article on risk. I saw, I looked it over, it didn't seem as interesting as this one. Yeah, I don't know if the history is as interesting for sure. And I mean, isn't that what's interesting about any game? The history of it?

Yeah, I think so. So, let's talk about the rules, dude. Okay. Let's start at the beginning. We'll start at Go. Go is where you start, and that's where, like you said, you collect the 200 every time you land on it or pass it. Sometimes house rules, you get 400 for actually landing on it.

Oh, yeah? and only 200 for passing it. We never played that way. Oh, that makes sense. That's a good rule. 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. Yeah, there's nothing. It's just a space. 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.

I think I've heard of that one before. Yeah, it was. you know, we were a bunch of, beep, never mind. I liked it because it allowed you more money, which is my favorite thing. Cash. It's a loto. Yeah, exactly.

We got ahead of ourselves. Let's just start at the real beginning. Okay. So everybody sits down at the table. Yeah, you all get a drink. 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, you guys select a banker. Uh-huh. And the banker distributes the monopoly money. $1,500 to each player. $2,500s, $2.50s, $620s, and $5.10s, $5.5 and $5.1s. $1, $1, $1. And the goal of the game that you're getting to here at 30 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, you've got to finish. shit by bankrupting everyone, or until the last person is like, I give, geez, I've got $8. I hate this game. Yeah, that's usually me.

Right. And Emily's usually has her foot on my throat. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we play two-person monopoly, which is just not fun. Yeah. Because you know one of you's going to lose. No, that's not why. It's just, it's a game that's more fun with more people, I think.

Yeah, I got you. Yeah. So, okay, so everybody's got $1,500. You roll the dice to see who goes first, whoever rolls the highest goes first. Classic move. Then you roll, both die, and you start moving from the GoSquare, 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, you have the option to buy it. I knew that part, but if you declined to buy it, then the property goes up for auction. I've never, not only have I never played it the way,

I've never heard of anyone playing it that way. Okay, so it's not just me. Not just you. All right. So, I guess, 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 it.

Which didn't make sense unless you're trying to get it for lower, because can't you start the bidding at wherever? Yes, you can start the bidding anywhere you want. So you could conceivably 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 sharp

They're out to win Yeah Yeah I hate that rule Because to me it's just like What's the point in rolling and landing on something I guess write a first refusal But yeah I don't know I don't like it

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 They had another game To follow called The Quiet Roof Raising Ceremony Those are not Quakers

That was the Amish, they're different. Oh, don't you think Quakers raise some roofs? Yeah, they do. Ain't no party like a Quaker party. That's right. All right, so let's say you buy all of the properties, you know, 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 a monopoly. And that means you can then charge double rent, although we never do that 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 right and that's called improvements you're improving your land supposedly 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 how crazy complicated it is like I don't think I was ever paying that much attention to monopoly that I ever mortgaged a piece of land oh really I think what's like started to get into debt or whatever I was just like I'm done I'm done yeah but apparently so if you find yourself indebted and let's say you have a monopoly and you want a mortgage you can mortgage just one of the spots right yes but to do

so let's say you have a hotel on the that piece of land that your mortgage 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 does it go right to the bank? No, that's where you just turn the card over and it's just, you still technically own it. Right. 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? No, you can. I looked it out. doesn't bust up the monopoly 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 10% right 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 right I did all kinds of personal loaning because I was mr. cash what were your your interest rates I don't remember. Did you break any usury laws? No, that was a kid, so it was probably just like... Just paying me back whenever. 10% or something. I got you.

I'm not the right. I'm not enough of a... You're not the shark. You're not the one who declines to buy something so you can bid on it at a lower price. I'm playing Candy Land. I loved Candy Land. Actually, I never played that.

It was a great game, was it? Because of the art. Was this crazy? 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 were missing.

I just got a ticket-to-ride game that I haven't played yet. Have you heard of that one? No. It was a German game that's like one game of the year. It's a train game, like you establish train routes between cities. But it's supposedly like, it sounds like, really? That's fun, but it's supposedly great.

I just bled a tear at the thought of it. Yeah, it does sound pretty bad. Yeah. But no, it's one game in the year. Right, those Germans. And watch people, ticket to ride, enthusiast will be like, dude, it's the best ever. Oh, I'm sure.

No, I've heard, like, German game night is like a thing now. Yeah, I think they're a little more heady. Is that what it is? I think so. This seems like I read over the rules the other night, just so I would know what to do. And because you've got to, like, the purchaser of the game has to be the game explainer as well.

Right. You have to listen to craft work while you play? Yeah. Well, you don't have to, but it helps. House rules. Yeah. So, I guess we've, oh, and we said, you can do anything but give personal loans, right?

That's what the official rules state. 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. 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. 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. That's 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 in 2009. Yeah. So we're due. An American lawyer won, right? In 2009? No, I think it was a Swede or a Norwegian man. Okay, maybe he was the North American, that's what he was.

The North American champ. Yeah, and he represented the US and the world championships. It sounds so silly. weird yeah huh well he uh he used the iron the piece that was retired yeah yeah i think the american used the thimble gotcha let's talk more just laughed she was like really that's a that's a fact that people need well we're trying to really appeal to the purists here too we want everybody to be engaged yeah all right so let's do one more message break and then we'll come

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Go to hellofresh.ca and use promo code Dinner50. That's Hellofresh.ca promo code Dinner 50. Hellofresh.C., Canada's number one meal kit delivery service. Stuff you should know. Okay, Chucker, so again the point, bankrupt everybody. But there's like techniques that you can use to more efficiently bankrupt. people like the the overall the best strategy the basic strategy is to buy everything every chance you have yeah i mean i looked up there's a lot of different people's uh strategies and opinions online

um 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 and the water works yeah which i don't pay off really he said buy it all and uh and never have more than a hundred dollars in cash is his rule. He says the number one mistake people make is hoarding cash like I did. Yeah, you're making the number one mistake. 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 two will probably take out everyone else. The point is just to get a monopoly and improve it as fast as you can. So supposedly though, a general rule of thumb among hardcore monopoly players is that while you're improving your monopoly, your properties, by adding houses or whatever, you wanna stop at three houses.

Yes. Because the jump from the third house to the hotel is financially, it doesn't pay off usually. It's over improvement. Yeah. Just like in your home, like don't build that $80,000 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. And puts hotels on it? Yeah, he says as soon as he gets his first monopoly, he mortgages everything else to get cash back. Right. And then uses that cash to improve. Wow.

Which I thought was a little risky. There's a couple of bad roles. I mean, it's a game of strategy, but at the end of the day, you're rolling dice. And so it is very much a game of chance. I'll bet that guy feels like he's on the back of a Pegas though the whole game like he's just thrilled he claims to have been out there on the edge he claims to have won a game in 12 minutes one time which I thought was

tooting his own horn a bit yeah sure but real regular strategy you're right they say three houses is the max you should go and then there's also some that you should avoid even though they seem like very tempting we already said the electric company and the water company the utilities yeah the most you can get for rent from landing on was 10 times roll of the dice, which is 120 bucks. But it also means that it could be as low as $20. Yeah.

So I mean, this guy would probably say, well, hey, it was worth it. Like 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 and park place. Yeah, there are only two of them. and they just don't get landed on very much. 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 rather than three means that another player is less likely to land on your monopoly

because there's three or two instead of three. So that's one problem. Yeah. The other problem is placement where they are. They're right after Go. Right before. Right before go. Yeah, so it's at the end of the board, essentially.

No, I'm sorry, they're right before jail? No, they're right before go. They're right before go. Okay, so that means that most players are going to, well, they're going to pass them for sure whenever they hit that. Go directly to go. Exactly.

Yeah. So that means that 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. Sure. It's a lot of money. Yeah.

You've probably sunk a lot of money unwisely into those. You want to go for some other ones? Yeah, supposedly, and there are people that have done, there was this one guy, if you really want to get into Monopoly, this dude, I don't even know his name, but just look up probabilities in the game of Monopoly. A Scientific American in the mid-90s did an article

that talked about probabilities of landing on different spaces, but they excluded community chess and chance and being set 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 role. Average income per role, expected number of opponent role to recoup incremental costs, to recoup mortgages. It's the name of his website, by the way, is Monopolywasfun.com. It totally should be.

But if you just wanna do some basic probabilities, the orange properties are landed on more than anyone else. Yes, and why, Chuck? Because they are after jail. Yeah, six, eight, and nine spaces after jail? 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. 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 a three or a one.

Yeah. It's not even possible to roll a one. Try it, you can't. You can't, unless you eat one of the dice. And in which case, unless it's a house rule, everybody's going to yell at you and have to wait around until you poop it out to keep playing. Actually, our rule was you had to roll the child in.

The what? The child who ate the dice. Oh, yeah. Shake them up, yeah. Yep. All right, 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.

Right. You can throw three doubles in a row and go to jail. Yeah. Which I never understood because that's a good thing. 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. That's right. 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-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 could sell it to a friend or enemy. Whoever had the most cash, right?

Exactly. And then you basically, the other way is to roll, to either pay your way out with 50 bucks or to roll your way out. And the way we played it was each turn you had one chance to roll your way out of jail by 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 50 bucks to get out of jail. We just played where you just got out and you didn't have to pay.

Well then you guys weren't following the rules. I told you the house rules. So there's actually a strategy to jail. Yeah. If you go to jail early on in the game, you want to pay your 50 bucks to get out immediately. Just pay the 50 bucks because then you can keep going around the board

going around the board and there's more stuff available to buy. But later in the game, you want to just kind of hang out in jail. Yeah, like Josh has bought all the orange spaces. Yeah. And you've got hotels on each one. Yeah. So I'm thinking, that might be good to sit in jail for a few rounds. Yeah, because you can still collect rent on your properties, but the fact that you're in jail

keeps you off of my properties. Yeah, and another Bryant rule we played where when you were in jail, you could not collect any rents. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense, but according to official rules, you just make as much money as you want there. And apparently in jail, officially, you can also buy and sell properties and improve your in-collect rent and build hotels and houses, which I thought, I don't know, if you're in jail, you can lose that right. It seems like it in real jail.

That's the way it is. 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 going to be gone for three to six. No, it's true, but what happens when the dishwasher breaks? Try to get let out of jail to go fix it.

They're not going to let you do that. That's very funny. But it's true, too. 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 own all of them, they're $200 in rent. So that's not too bad.

Not too shabby. But to me, a monopoly is the reason monopolies are valuable is 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've got to sit back and watch the different personalities emerge and then you manipulate that.

Like the cash hoarder versus the shark and He's like, you're really playing against people. Man, that's interesting. I thought so. Okay. So let's talk about another friend, an economist friend. His name is Ralph Ansbach. Yes.

And he, back in the 70s, had a game called Anti-Monopoly. Yeah, he was an econ professor at San Francisco State. That's right. and, like, 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.

Apparently sold about 200,000 copies of it, like, right out of the gate. Like, it 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. 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 in 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 in order to return the board to a free market system. You have to wear sensible shoes.

It sounds awesome. 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, 200,000 copies of a game,

especially back in the 70s. That was pretty good. As a startup, you know? And it caught Parker Brothers attention enough that they sent him a cease and desist letter, took him to court, got a court order for him to hand over his, like, 37,000 copies that he had in his warehouse.

house and they Parker brothers went and unceremoniously buried him in a landfill in Minnesota yeah so um Ralph didn't caught into this very much he didn't like that he doesn't like to be pushed around I get the impression no I mean a guy who makes anti-monopoly is not going to cave in to the courts initially 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 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. 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 Court and won. Yeah, he won. At the Supreme Court, this E-com professor who came up with a game called Anti-Monopoly, won in the Supreme Court,

won the right to name his game anti-monopoly. 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 and so as Ralph says the 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 and that what he said couldn't be bought at any price in his opinion That's right. So way to go, Ralph. Yeah, he wrote a book, awkwardly titled The Billion Dollar Monopoly and Swindle, colon,

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 1984, there was a new version called Anti-Monopoly 2, where 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 any time, but if you're a monopolist, you have to own at least two properties in a group, before building houses and charge a lot higher rent. So I think you're like playing against the two systems within the same game. That's really interesting.

Yeah, I'm gonna, I might grab one on these and see what it's like. Yeah? Maybe. Tell everybody's German. You got anything else? I got nothing else. I do. The longest Monopoly game of all time, 70 days.

I played a game of risk that seemed like it lasted that long once. It may have. It didn't last that long, but it lasted a weekend. Oh, okay. And Monopoly, I don't have the patience for that. I'll just give up. I'll take my fake cash and go home. You're a hoard of it? Yeah.

You're like, oh, I just saved all this money. That's right, and I own the utilities. 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 rulebook, you can just go on to How Stuff Works. Yeah. And check out the rules that is in this article. Just type Monopoly in the search bar at House StuffWorks.com. And since I said search bar, it's time for, what, listener mail? Yes.

Okay. I'm going to call this help for a fan in need. Oh, that's nice. Hey, guys, I want some help, please. My wife and I are expecting our first kid this. summer. And 13 days ago, we also found out that my wife has stage 4 breast cancer. So we are spending our third trimester getting chemo. My goodness. I know. We're going to kick cancer in the butt. 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, then radiation. We have great doctors and great fins and family, so even in the face of this, we feel very lucky. And by the way, I got a follow-up more recently that says there is no gestational diabetes and the cancer is already shrinking. Oh, it's great. So things are going great so far. Thanks for not keeping us in suspense. 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-P-C-L-E-K-L-E-K-Y-F-R-E-E-E-K-Y-E-E-K-Y. D-E-E-E-K-Y dot tumbler.com. Okay. He says, we're huge nerds and Doctor Who fans, so that was lost on me. Some Doctor Who reference, I guess. Apparently so.

Does it have to do with the phone booth, maybe? That's the only thing you know about Doctor Who. Same here. Secondly, I'm biking 150 miles to raise money. And could you plug that? And you can go to g-o-g-g-l-2-J-Z-X-Q. These people don't like normal words. Well, that's one of those shortened URLs.

Oh, I see. It's a goo. Gotcha. 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 use her nickname, the mayor. That's hilarious. She wears a sash during chemo and childbirth.

I guess so. I mean, I call Emily the boss, so I guess it's the same. The mayor. But the mayor is like the boss of several bosses, I would guess. Yeah, we used to call my friend Justin, who, you know, the mayor of Atlanta. Because everywhere he went, he does somebody, know him. He's a sociable fella. But now he 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. It's hilarious. 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, there you have it. An awesome and incredible woman who dedicates her considerable talents to helping others is pregnant and has breast cancer. Kind of hard to say no. right. I'm not above guilt tripping. So Bob from Swathmore, 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 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 this, whether you're a mayor, a provincial governor, who knows? Yeah. You can get in touch with us on Twitter at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to StuffPodcast at how stuff works.com.

And join us at our home on the web. Stuff you should know.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works.com. I know he has a reputation, but it's going to catch up to him. Gabe Ortiz is a cop. His brother Larry, a mystery Gabe didn't want to solve until it was too late. He was the head of this gang. You're going to push that line for the cause.

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