I am going to bed early tonight. It’s only 9:20 but I don’t care. I’ve been up too late two nights in a row. Last night was the earlier of the two and it was late. Of course, you’re never going to have an early night when you start a game of Monopoly at 9:30pm or so. I’ll get to Friday night later. (hence this is called part 2)
After having our other plans shot down by a series of mishaps, Paul, Laura, Chey, and I headed back to Paul and Laura’s house for some kind of game. After a bit of prodding by her husband, Laura finally relented and we got out Monopoly. The game was going quite slowly for a while with no one owning a Monopoly until Chey came away with Baltic and Mediterranean. And those two properties just aren’t going to put people out of business. The cash was flowing easily with our two house rules: the always popular $500+ for Free Parking, and a rule I’d never heard before–$400 for landing directly on Go.
So something needed to be done. Laura is one of those players who is not a wheeler-dealer. But Paul and Chey ganged up to give her the best outcome of a three person deal. Laura ended up with Boardwalk and Park Place while Chey got the Light Blues and Paul ended up with the Magentas. Houses and hotels were thrown up and the game began in earnest.
I at the time had 4 properties. A veritable anti-bounty. It was unbelievable. But everyone decided that we needed to make some shady deals so that everyone could have some fun. Paul ended up with almost all of the Yellows and a few extra Railroads, Chey got a little bit of money, and I ended up with the Greens. More houses and soon hotels were built.
I collected a few big paychecks from people staying at my places and everyone continued to miss Laura’s properties. We all landed on Chey’s a number of times but they just didn’t generate much cash flow. For a while no one was landing on Paul’s Magentas. But then the tables turned. Paul landed on Go to Jail about three times just as he was coming around the corner to the Greens. It was maddening. And when he wasn’t doing that Laura and Chey were skipping past to Short Line R.R. or landing on the Community Chest. There were many groans and the gnashing of teeth from my side of the table. And while no one was landing on my properties we all started landing on Paul’s.
Before too long Laura had to mortgage everything to pay off Paul. As soon as this happened we started landing on Park Place and Boardwalk. The timing was uncanny. Laura wasn’t too happy about that. The final straw came with Laura went bankrupt to Paul–this landed him the Yellows and the Reds. Houses and hotels were not far behind.
With everyone constantly missing my Greens it was only a matter of time before Paul started accumulating all of the cash in the game and Chey and I slowly running out of money. Chey finally went bankrupt on one of Paul’s properties and I looked at the fat stack of $500s he had and knew that the game was over. I conceded (in second place, I might add).
As far as I’m concerned a good time was had by all. But Laura made it known that in light of her great sacrifice that Monopoly wouldn’t be coming out for quite some time.
