According to Martin Lewis, there are actual strategies to winning at Monopoly this Christmas - and he’s revealed them on his brand-new show.
Monopoly at Christmas feels like an aggressively British pastime, because what better tradition is there to have over the festive period than one that will make you and your entire family hate each other with a white-hot fury?
Personally, my strategy for winning had always simply been to be so annoying in how I played that others gave up and I declared myself the winner by default.
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That is not, however, Martin Lewis’ preferred strategy.
Unsurprisingly, the money boffin instead goes about Monopoly with a methodical approach that would have Sean Dyche crying out ‘woke nonsense’.
Jokes aside, the strategy he recommends to win every time is in actual fact based on sound financial principles when you break down the objective of the game: end up with the most money while taking everyone else’s.
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Appearing on his newest ITV documentary, Martin Lewis: How to Win at Board Games, he has a whole section dedicated to how to win at Monopoly.
Within this, he introduces the financial principles of ‘return on investment’ to the game.
Lewis at first states the obvious. When you first start out, the most expensive properties are the ones that will make you the most money.
Don’t worry, that’s not the secret strategy.
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He also states, however, that early on, you should be trying to buy as many properties as possible in a relatively gung-ho approach.
He added though that, by thinking about properties return on investment, i.e. how much they get you vs how much they’re worth, that’s how you win.
Indeed, rather than the dark blue and green properties from the end of the board, the second-cheapest are actually the ones that will fuel you to victory.
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Lewis claims that, based on ROI and factoring in hotels and houses being added, the light blue properties of Pentonville Road, Euston Road, and The Angel Islington are the three best properties for ROI.
This is followed by the brown Whitechapel Road, the dark blue of Mayfair, and the three orange properties.
Another strategy that he believes is vital is to pick up properties of various different colours.
This is due to the fact that, in Monopoly, you can only start building houses and hotels in sets.
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By keeping one of various sets, you have leverage over other players and prevent them from building.
The financial journalist also went on to state that, when buying houses, three is the ‘sweetspot’.
He said: “When you buy one house, the return on investment is 26 per cent.
“With two houses, it's 56 per cent.
“With three, it's 110 per cent – that's a massive jump between two and three.”
There you go, if you want to become the ultimate capitalist and see the light leave your family’s eyes after they realise that six hours of their life spent playing monopoly with you was a waste, here’s your go-to guide to domination.
Topics: Monopoly, Martin Lewis, Christmas, Property, TV and Film, TV, ITV
Michael Slavin