How to Take Over the World! (of Monopoly)

Bergmann divulges ruthless strategies and sneaky advice for winning the classic board game.

Given that a well-known gaming guide was entitled Backgammon for Blood (2011), Bergmann doesn’t spare the exclamation points in his passionate guide for how to emerge gloriously triumphant in Monopoly. In a Gen. Patton–like voice, he declares, “Everything you know about Monopoly is probably wrong.” He says that too many competitors rely on simple luck—i.e., wherever the dice take them—in a game that can only be mastered as a battle of cold, calculating, thought-out strategy, like chess. Some of his well-argued advice is counterintuitive: Despite the game’s trade name, it’s foolish and wasteful to get bogged down in an opening buying spree to acquire all sets of color-coded properties or “Utilities.” Instead, Bergmann advises that aspiring Monopoly conquerors sabotage other players’ attempts at achieving a monopoly. Try using psychological tricks, Bergmann says, perhaps with a casual (yet distracting) conversation to conceal how big a bankroll you’ve accrued. Players could even pick up nonverbal cues, such as eye movements, to guess what rivals around the board are thinking. The object, he repeatedly hammers home, is to survive by ensuring all other players’ bankruptcies through carefully measured, high-rent squares (“Damage-per-Dollar”) and duping foes into obtaining a property monopoly but losing all their cash in the deal, the penultimate stage to bankruptcy. Bergmann cites certain areas of the board he favors (or doesn’t) and which squares are underrated, and he returns to railing against other strategy guides that discuss Monopoly in terms of probabilities and random dice throws, since his system, he says, eliminates the luck factor as much as possible. Quick-reference appendices help summarize the short book in bullet points and break down various risk and reward factors.

A sharp-eyed guide to dominating the playing board.