A New Landlord in the House

While we were away in Vegas for the weekend celebrating my birthday, Mimi took care of Collin.  She said that she and Collin played HOURS of Monopoly over the weekend.  Here is an excerpt from a summary email she sent.  The setting is at her house after two morning basketball scrimmages:

Collin wanted to play a board game and saw my 1961 Monopoly game.  We played a couple of hours with him winning. This game gave him reading and making change with money practice. We ended the game when it was lunch time and I had $15, little property and no houses. Collin had about $2,000 in houses, $1,000 in cash and owned all the properties except for my 5 properties. He got most of his money from me when I landed on one of his four railroads and Illinois Avenue with three houses. Early in the game, he landed on chance or community chest cards and went around Go a lot more than me because he rolled higher numbers on the dice than I did. I rolled mostly threes and fives when he was rolling doubles and 11

Between his afternoon Odyssey gathering and his 6 pm basketball practice, we played Monopoly with the newer version at his house. We played a couple hours and just like the other game at my house, Colin was winning with thousands of hotels, lots of cash and lots of properties while I was struggling with no hotels, not much property and low cash.  I have never played the game where I ended up with only around $10. 

When we came home from our trip and Collin came home from school, the first thing he told me was, "I have a new favorite thing to do inside the house...and, can you believe, that it's NOT the iPad?  I love to play Monopoly.  Can we play?"  We played for about 45 minutes before it was time for dinner before basketball practice.  He said, "I have a strategy which helps me win.  I would tell you but I don't want us to use it and then beat me!"  The little stinker got all the way down to $1 and then back up to over $1,000 because he landed on Free Parking.  Before that time, he even mortgaged a few properties so he could buy 3 of the 4 railroads which ended up being a great move because I kept landing on them and paying him $100. 

This is my favorite picture of him during the game.  He was so proud of his recent purchases and charging me a high rent for Boardwalk

Making his move to buy up Boardwalk or Park Place

Love that smile and how happy it made it to be playing a game with me

His strategy is to buy up all of the properties he can so he can charge his opponents a lot of rent.