"Uncle Matthew, play Monopoly!"
I fished the top hat out of the plastic bag and my niece counted out a pile of notes for me.
How many games of Monopoly actually make it right to the end? I mean when you play it properly, most people get bored, tired, or upset long before one person has anything like a 'monopoly'.
In addition to that, the full-blown zero-sum version of the game eliminates players as you go, rather than crowning a champion. It means the balance of interest changes when people are out.
What I mean is that the bankrupters go off and have a stress-free chat and a cup of tea, while the finalists thrash it out around the board.
The balance shifts when there are more people who lost than are still playing.
My guess is that even at that point, the game is likely to be cut short - unless you've got extremely competitive people after several hours of course. Even then, the possibility of the board being flipped up and the pieces scattered across the carpet has not been completely eradicated.
Anyway, with children (and the Niblings are definitely children) the only way to play Monopoly is to set the oven pinger to go off about an hour after you started.
Then you count the money. And in the capitalist microcosm of the world of Monopoly of course, the person with the most cash always wins.
There weren't too many tears this time. We'd gone for the strategy of making up a song about things we'd landed on, which I thought would take some of the aggression out of them shouting: "I own that!" before demanding to be paid immediately. Maybe there's a future for 'karaokeopoly'?
There ought to be a game where you're rewarded for how much you give away. In this day and age, I'm not sure we should be teaching ourselves to snaffle up everything we land on and then demand rent from everyone who gets there after us.
In truth, it isn't the person with the most money who wins, is it?
Anyway, I suppose I would say that. When the pinger went off, I had £500 left and a lonely looking Old Kent Road.
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