guest article by Oliver Whitford-Knight

After reading Sakari’s exciting tales from Germany and subsequently feeling rather jealous I decided to write an article in how fun can be found in a more traditional way than the attractive prospect of spending Christmas in a nightclub of the German kind.

In my opinion Christmas is not only a time of giving and receiving and concentrating on the fundamental principles that bind and allow society to survive on the multiple planes that our minds coexist on. What better way to exemplify the spirit of Christmas than to be with your relatives and play a heart warming ole’ time board game such as Monopoly surrounded by the things you love and the people you love. What better way to “make the Yule-tide gay”? Certainly not by visiting a German nightclub, no ‘siree’ Yes that’s right, definitely more fun can be found by playing Monopoly with your beloved relatives than semi-consciously partying all night long with strippers in a nightclub...

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Okay, maybe AS much fun can be found playing Monopoly with your semi-conscious relatives while your beloved friend parties all night long with strippers in a nightclub...

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Fine! Monopoly sucks and a lot more fun can be derived from semiconsciously partying all night long with your beloved alcohol and strippers - the only things that truly matter at a time like Christmas and the things (that I think we will all agree) really make life worth living. I’ll admit it, nothing more exemplifies the commercialisation of Christmas (for which we are all eternally grateful) than dancing all night long on the ‘Holiest Night of the Year’. What better way to celebrate our materialistic culture and in essence, what better way to “make the Yule-tide gay”?

It may be the case that semi-consciously partying all night long with your beloved alcohol and strippers is a much better way to spend Christmas then playing Monopoly with your beloved, semi-conscious Great Aunt May but nevertheless my story entirely focuses on the latter. I will try my best to make this particular game of Monopoly as interesting and vibrant as it really was and I will strive to replicate the excruciating degree of tension in the room that fateful evening - bar the gentle hum of Great Aunt May snoring.

The game takes place on boxing day at approximately 19:00 after a few glasses of moderately priced consumer sparkling wine, a class or two of port and perhaps a nip or three of brandy. The players, on the whole are of a fairly young age group with a mean age of approximately 27 - stakes are high as several match participants carry the dominant family gene of acute competitiveness, including yours truly, to add further drama the game will be played for an elaborate title which was never decided upon.

The board - a contemporary set ‘UK Here & Now’ edition with the board revised to cities around the UK instead of London street names, for the purposes of this article each place name will be followed with the original name in brackets. All prices are now increased by a factor of x10^4, meaning that the base unit of £1 has now been upped to £10,000! Players therefore collect £2m for passing go but pay £2m on the occasion they land on income tax with the average community chest or chance card to the value of £500k! Aliases will be used for the protection of identity. Ole’ Grandpa and Grandma plays as Fogey Patrol, Uncle and Aunt play as Team Yuppie and dearest parents play as Hippie Magic.

That leaves me and only me playing as team me.
Spectators outnumber combatants by approximately 5:1 and ole’ Grandpa II plays as Executive Banker with no piece on the board giving him no vested interests. The banker deals £15m to all teams.

The game is set the match begins.

Qualifying begins and I promptly waste no time in securing first place. Naturally team fogey remains last - something that they waste no time in correcting however. On the first rotation of the board around 15% of tiles are snapped up. I land in jail for identity theft but I manage to buy two airports at auction for £3m each. That’s and extra £1m on top of the face value had I landed on the tile but I judge this as a superficial sacrifice given the advantages airport ownership will give me later on.

The game ensues and 45 minutes later the game starts picking up pace. Fogey Patrol dominates the board with ownership of approximately 50% of tiles, as a result the ole’ Fogeys have very little accessible equity and find paying the fines and bills a struggle. Team Yuppie owns the utilities, telecomms and sateilitte (electricity and water works) with no complete sets of property however has a substatial amount of cash available on tap for any investment they may wish to consider. The situation looks dire for Hippie Magic. Not only are they strapped for cash but their otherwise strong portfolio is streched out across the map and as a result property development prospects are grim. The situation for me on the other hand is very much looking up. Not only do I have substantial sums of money on tap but I also I own three airports (railroads) 2/3 properties on a landing hotbed (spaces before free parking) as well as the key locations to several other player’s portfolios. As a result the value of these key components raises by quite a sum.

The game continues and I take advantage of the dire financial situation that Fogey Patrol find themselves in. It just so happens that they are unable to pay the £1m fine for landing on one of my three airports. What a shame.. My Grandfather refuses to mortgage any of his locations on the basis that he “never trusted those thieving bankers” and I receive the last 1/3rd of my set as compensation for bills not being paid. With £16m spare change floating around I waste no time in constructing Hotels on each of the three locations. It is a huge gamble considering it will set me back around £15m but as I am about to pass go I figure that £3mil will be enough to pay for any unforeseen events that may occur on a board rotation.

Team Yuppie is first to fall at the hands of my hotel ‘Monopoly’ (excuse the pun) and as my  Uncle casually tells me to keep the change from his £100k note I savour the moment and casually inform him that the rent is no longer £80k but instead £9.5m. The smile is wiped clean off his face as the fact dawns on him that he will not be able to pay this weeny sum.  At first he attempts to raise the funds from his brother and his dad but they are only too pleased to watch him squirm. Whilst my Aunt has a go at him for always landing them in financial difficulty I even more casually suggest that I may be open for negotiation.

I am offered £4m + St Albans (Mayfair) the most expensive tile in the game - I laugh in his face!
I am offered £4m + St Albans + Satellite (Waterworks) my laugh esclates to a chortle!
I am offered £4m + St Albans + Satellite + the elusive 4th Airport (railroad), my chortle amplifies to a guffaw before resolving my complexion and uttering the words.. “I humbly accept.”
Pale faces dominate the sides of the board as the contestants realize that perhaps they have underestimated me and maybe, just maybe they should not have played so defensively.

I am the only player to have any property developed past the stage of 2 apartments (houses) and as a result have a significant advantage. Although I own the minority of the map prospects for me look up. Especially now I own a utility and the very exclusive St Albans tile. My sights are now set for acquiring the other half of the expensive duo, Exeter (Park Lane) once I have acquired both building apartments will bring in a tasty slice of income should the opportunity arise.

A further 30 minutes pass and the game is very much Fogey Patrol vs me. My opposition is frantic and unwilling to cooperate, they haggle over deals that would ultimately be beneficial for both parties but a slight discrepancy in price means Team Yuppie won’t agree to the trade. It means the deal doesn’t go through and property development cannot begin. Hippie Magic is unable to expand and they have hit a glass ceiling with three apartments on their tiles, drawing in a nice income but bad luck and probability means they tend to land on my hotel promenade rather a lot. Landing them with some nasty fines in the area of £10m+. As a result, both Hippie Magic and Team Yuppie are breaking about even but Fogey Patrol has secured a nice little strip with apartments that cost more to rent than my hotels, in excess of £15m per piece. If they can cobble together the funds to build hotels then there is a good chance they could dominate the game. The match continues and the tension builds.

Team Yuppie is annihilated by falling on my Mayfair hotel, “hard luck” I quip and I get shot a fierce look. As a dieing act of aggression Team Yuppie donates all of it’s property to Fogey Patrol! Fogey Patrol now has potential for property expansion in 66% of the board! Thankfully for me the Fogeys don’t have the books in order. Their equity has gone down the spout and they are literally relying on mere hundred thousands to survive.

Hippie Magic is the next to go after being hit twice consecutively on Fogey Patrols’ hotels. This gets Fogey around £30m in equity and Hippie Magic doesn’t donate their property to me, but out of spite places it out of play! This can still be used to my advantage however as it will prevent my urge for expansion and allow several ‘safe houses’ across the board on which I can hopefully land. The following round of the board becomes the decisive point. I am locked in jail for identity fraud (you’d think I’d learn) which actually plays to my advantage as I am less of a liability to myself. I lose no money when in the following three dice rolls Fogey loses no less than £50m! Landing on Hotel after Hotel after airport!

The clock has reads 0:4:45 remaining and a quick summary of the assets reveals that there is only a few million pounds between us. The next few dice rolls will prove to be conclusive to this epic festive game.

My turn of bad luck comes, I hit three hotels in a row costing me £45m followed by a bout of income tax and luxury tax - things are not looking good. Fogey two my hotels costing £22.5m followed by telecoms. Before the telecoms fee can be added to my stash the time reads 0:00:00 and a fog horn sounds, courtesy of the banker. The predetermined rules stipulate that as the player has landed on the tile before the end of the match, the player must pay up. A round up of assets gives us as net worth of £145 million £143 million Fogey, me respectively. What I lost in property acquisition I made in cold hard cash.

The game was not over yet however, Monopoly players amongst you (Monopol-ers as I believe they like to be known) will know that special  rules are given for landing on a utility tile. The offending player must roll the dice and this value will multiplied by 100,000. Due to the fact that I now own both utilities this is further multiplied by 10, much to my Grandfather dismay. Something to the effect of “This is an outrage.. a bolshevik outrage!”

The probability is stacked highly in my favour. As any alcoholic, stripper obsessed gambling maniac like Sakari will tell you, there is a 1/36 chance of rolling Snake Eyes. That is, 1 and 1. For that matter Maths enthusiasts (such as Sakari) will also tell you there is a 1/36 chance of rolling any specified sequence once using two dice or one 36 sided die.

Normal people such as myself* will disregard this puny probability as a 2.7% chance of rolling snake eyes seems superficial when compared with the 97% chance of the player rolling something else. Well I think thats what everyone at the table was thinking at that tense moment gathered round the table. “He’s done it again” they were thinking. “That boy’s epitomizes the ingenuity of man..” “Why couldn’t I have had kids like him?” “How does he balance his Monopoly tact with his voluptuous physique and pulsating muscles?” “When he’s Supreme Imperial Lord of the Senate I can tell my Grandchildren that I watched His Worshipfulness play Monopoly against infidels in a house in suburban London..”

Alas Lady Luck had other things planed for me that fateful night, as my grandfather raised his arthritic hand a final time that night the dice hit the table with more might than even Beelzebub could muster. The dice span and span until several people started vomiting, the walls caved in and out and undulated as if they were my toned biceps, people started turning different colours and the speed of the psychedelic music increased to an unimaginable tempo!

Until finally all was still and the values of the dice were revealed.

“SNAKE EYES!” Bellowed an excited geriatric man sitting beside me, who morphed into my Grandfather.

The words of that odd, goblin like excuse of a man will haunt me forever.

The Banker read the result of the game with a somewhat cold accusative tone as if I were being sentence for life imprisonment in the Tower of London, or worse still, life employment as a menial slave to Sakari Mesimaki.

“The game is resolved as draw.”

“There is no winner of the 2007-2008 Monopoly Championship.”
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I hope this article has given you an insight to some activities that took place around my household this year.. and I hope that you genuinely feel sorry for me as this is just an example of what I endure on a day to day basis.

Later on in the evening the games continued with Trivial Pursuit. I began writing an article but Sakari “respectfully declined my request for it to be published” I can’t understand why but maybe you can enlighten me in the comments section. I will however, let you in on the news that I won Trivial Pursuit by a very wide margin, from knowing which Island the Buddha’s tooth is kept on (Sri Lanka and it is a replica) to knowing which leader of which Island went backstage to get the autograph of the Manic Street Preachers (Fidel Castro, Cuba) I knew every question that was asked. I don’t mean to gloat but I have been going through symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after losing Monopoly and bragging is sure to only ease the pain

I hope you had a great Christmas and please share your own ‘hilarious’ board game anecdotes in the comments section of the post. Please don’t share any stories of the nightclubs you went to over Christmas as this post is strictly board game related ONLY to prevent the jealousy from prevailing.

Perhaps you may find it ‘quaint’ or ‘dandy’ to know of some quintessential British things I got up to in the festive season, from Christingel services to bottling quince and crab Apple jam. Perhaps if scrooge is in a good mood he will allow you to sit round the fire and ‘enjoy’ another festive tale of magic and mystery from the infinite story tome of my heart. Good-night and seasons greetings to ye’ all!

*I’ll leave it to you to decide my normality status given I have just written around 2,700 words on what is essentially a board game.