Monopoly

     I am in Toronto, Ontario, sitting across a cafe table from the Ultimate Capitalist, an internationally renowned real estate tycoon named Jason Dunn.   Jason routinely makes or loses more money in an afternoon than I'll earn in a year.  He's gone bankrupt more than once, and he's done more than one stint in jail.  And he's only 22 years old.  And he lives with his parents.

    Jason is the 1999 World Monopoly^™ Champion. (You won't be seeing the little ^™ symbol attached to the word "Monopoly" anymore in this story.  If you can't figure out that the trademark on the planet's most well-known board game is owned by Hasbro under a license from Parker Brothers, you're a lot more likely to fall down in the bathroom and drown in the toilet than to successfully market a product that infringes on their copyright.)  In March 1998, he was listening to a local radio station, waiting for an opportunity to win tickets to a concert by the Tragically Hip.  Instead, being the 19th caller earned him a berth in a charity Monopoly tournament being held in the lobby of the Eaton Centre mall. 

   Six hours and a heavy investment in upper-middle income housing on the north side of town yielded him a decisive victory in the finals, bringing a brand-new mountain bike and a trip to the Canadian Monopoly Championships that summer in Vancouver.  On a rainy day in the Pacific Northwest, he methodically eliminated 30 challengers, including a French-speaking housewife from Quebec City with a railroad fetish and a 39-year old, chain-smoking "professional gambler" from Windsor who made a disastrous investment in hotels on the Greens.  Jason sealed the national title by bankrupting a police officer from Calgary eight spaces shy of GO, netting him $ 1,000 (CDN) and a bid to the big Kahuna-- the 1999 World Monopoly Championships being held in February in Melbourne, Australia.  

    I was spending a late Sunday morning in a laundromat, folding toasty-warm, fresh-smelling boxer shorts while reading the paper. I had burned through the good stuff-- front page, sports, op-ed-- during the wash, rinse, and spin cycles respectively, and was stuck with totally vacuous PARADE magazine and joyless Lifestyles section for the homestretch through drying.  On the last page of the latter, after the engagement announcements, recipes for bland pumpkin dishes, and the "Community Calendar" was a quarter-page photo filling out the last of the unsold ad space.   The picture showed a grinning kid in a cheap blazer and tie, flanked by a perfectly spherical man in a tuxedo, top hat, and walrus moustache and some generic blonde model in an evening gown holding a huge trophy.  The caption read "Jason Dunn, 22, of Toronto, Canada celebrates after winning the 1999 Wold Monopoly Championships in Melbourne, Australia on Saturday.  Dunn fought off four challengers in the finals to take home the $15,160 grand prize-- the total amount of money in a standard Monopoly set." 

   Jason was a natural subject for a profile piece in the low-budget magazine I write for. We don't have the pull to get interviews with washed-up B-movie actors or retired second-string professional athletes.  Even one-hit wonders and local news anchors orbit the bright star of Fame just a little bit beyond our reach.   Our niche is not really "celebrities," but a weaker species of "notables"-- the kind of people who grab their 15 minutes of fame 10 minutes into it.  You might recognize their accomplishments-- hell, you might even be impressed by them if you led a particularly shallow and pointless life-- but there's no way you'd ever remember them.  They were people who were fascinating, but not fascinating people.  They were college kids who had managed to spend a summer inside the Mickey suit at Disney World, or coffee-shop waitresses who had once sold a freelance script for an episode of a popular sitcom.  They held short-lived World's Records for riding roller coasters and created websites that became a national e-mail obsession on Monday, and were eclipsed by "the next big thing" on Thursday. In this galaxy of dim luminaries, a star like Jason Dunn, the 1999 World Monopoly Champion, was the perfect star to add to our dim constellation. 

     A quick phone call to Hasbro got me a copy of the official press release, which turned out to pretty much consist of the caption that the paper had run.  But an intern in the P.R. department got me a phone number for Dunn, and I called him to ask about arranging an interview.  I had column space to fill, but that wasn't really my motive for calling.  I just wanted an opportunity to take on the world's best Monopoly player and beat him.

     I'll never get a chance to play one-on-one with Michael Jordan or take cuts at a Roger Clemens fastball.  And, when you stop and think about it, why would anyone want to?  Sure, it's a chance to rub elbows with an incredible athlete, but every second you're out on the court or up at the plate is a reminder that a handful of people were blessed with incredible skill and grace and power, and you sure as hell weren't one of them.  And, even worse, you never will be.  No matter how many hours you spend shooting free throws or doing plyometrics to build up those fast-twitch muscles, you will never be able to compete on a world-class level. 

   Monopoly, on the other hand, is about 85% luck, with just enough of a strategy component to make it challenging.  You don't need the skilled eye of an actual real estate developer, just the ability to count your cash and see if you have enough to build another tiny emerald ranch house on Virginia Avenue.  Full statistical breakdowns of the probability of landing on each square on the board are readily available on the internet, as are detailed financial analyses that determine exactly how much revenue will be returned over the course of a game by each property and building level.  Like mastering blackjack strategy, a few months of study and memorization can turn any trained chimp with a head for numbers into a perfect Monopoly-playing robot.  That's assuming you've got those months to hole up and study.  In the three weeks between Jason's weary agreement to an interview over a "friendly" game and the moment I knocked on the door of his parents' condo in the northern suburbs of Toronto, I had managed to spend a full eleven minutes preparing.  I spent more time reading the details of how some mathematics PhD at the University of Virginia devised the algorithms to determine which properties yielded the highest incomes than I did actually memorizing the properties themselves. 

   Jason estimates that he has given about eighty interviews in the eight weeks since winning the tournament, with an average length of three minutes.  His words were heard on morning radio in Japan and used as filler in a business newspaper in Sheffield, England; his Gen-X goatee was seen in a human-interest story on the Johanesberg nightly news and as a guest on the syndicated game show "To Tell The Truth."  He says he's answered the same five questions in every one of them, and I agree not to ask "what's your strategy for winning?", "how often do you play?", "what are you going to do with your winnings?", "what did you do to prepare for the championship?", and "are you planning to go into the real estate business for real?"  I tell him that I'll be too busy mopping up the board with him to ask such trite questions, but he gives me a quizzical look and a sigh.   "You know," he says, "ever since I won the local tourney last year, it's like I've been the fastest draw in the Old West.  Every hotshot who rolls into town wants a piece of me."  After a pause, he adds, "well, let's get it over with." 

     We agree to head down to a local coffeeshop to play, mostly because we need to rustle up three more players.  Jason explains that competitive Monopoly games always start with five players, which apparently creates the optimum distribution of property, preventing any player from easily cobbling together a quick and decisive portfolio.  Jason initially resists my suggestion of the Starbuck's down the block, but after I explain the delicious metaphor of playing our game in a business that is widely renowned for aggressively chasing competing operations out of the marketplace, he shrugs and agrees.

    We find a large wooden table in the corner, and Jason begins setting up the board while I buy us drinks.  As she whips up my hot chocolate, I proposition Jenny, the young clerk in black with the eyebrow ring, to join our game.   At first, she declines, but when I explain to her that the guy I'm playing with is the World Monopoly Champion, she stands up on her tiptoes to see over the cappuccino machine, trying to get a glimpse of this honest-to-goodness celebrity.  "He's cute," she says, "O.k."  She nudges her co-worker to cover for her while she takes her break and takes off her green apron.  On my way back to the table, I also recruit Milton, a 40's-ish college economics professor who is sitting alone at a table sipping a latte and reading a Harry Potter book.  Meanwhile, Jason has hooked Scott, a long-haired surfer dude who works in a bookstore and is almost certainly a little bit stoned.  "Dude, I love this game," is all he seems to say.

   With our regulation five-man lineup established, we're ready to pick tokens.  Jenny, like every other woman I've ever played Monopoly with, immediately grabs for the little silver terrier. We agree that Jason, as reigning World Champion, has the honors to pick next, and he takes the iron, the token he won with at the championship.  Scott takes the race car, Milton the battleship, and I pick the tiny silver top hat, the very icon of the capitalist.  Jason laughs at my choice.  "The top hat," he patiently explains, "is universally avoided by competitive players.  Every tournament winds up having some dorky kid from Iowa show up in a tuxedo and top hat pretending to be that Uncle Pennybags character in the logo.   And every tournament in the world gives away a trophy with the damn top hat on the top."  His seems exasperated talking about the game, presumably the inevitable consequence of spending the last three months of his life as a living, breathing, walking advertisement for Hasbro.  A thought hits me and I jot it down, intending to work it into the piece somehow:  "He was too busy winning money from all the other players to realize that he was about to lose his soul to Parker Brothers."  Pithy.  

   "Do you know how many different official Monopoly sets there are?" Jason asks me.   He's stopped fidgeting with one of the houses and now holds it up between his thumb and forefinger, as if the entire Monopoly empire is symbolized by this miniature homestead. When I tell him I don't, he stares at me for a moment.  I can tell what he's thinking: "What kind of writer is this guy?  Doesn't he do any research?"  Of course I don't.  I'm not writing a term paper.  "There are 384 different sets licensed by Parker Brothers," he says flatly, "including about 90 international versions, 65 local versions licensed to different cities around the world, and 7 anniversary sets with gold-tokens and mahogany boards and crap like that put out by the Franklin Mint.  Some guy in Germany has a museum dedicated to this game, and has every single official version ever produced.  He e-mailed me with a list of all his Monopoly crap.  The guy's whole garage is full of it." 

   I propose that we roll the dice to determine who goes first, but Jason interrupts.  The tournament rule, he says, is that the player to the left of the banker always goes first.  He scoops up the dice and, with a bit of a smile, hands them to Jenny.  Something about this rule strikes me as a bit arbitrary, but it's clear to me-- and everyone else at the table-- that the guy knows his Monopoly, and if he says that's the tournament rule, I guess I'll take him at his word.

   By the end of our first trip around the board, our approaches to the game have begun to emerge.  Milton was a "railroader," said Jason, a certain species of player that avoided most residential real estate with its expensive building costs and potential tax and upkeep penalties, and focused instead on seizing all four railroads and imposing crippling $400 fares on everyone who rode.  Railroaders, according to Jason, were sink-or-swim types, having won three of the last eight championships, and being the first ones bankrupted in four more.  Scott also avoided residential property, but only because he had taken more of an interest in talking to Jason about mutual acquaintances they have at the local university. This exposed Scott's achilles heel: an inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and he twice passed up buying opportunities because he was too busy talking to Jason about the present whereabouts of a guy they knew named "Munchmaster."  Jason, Jenny, and I were playing textbook Monopoly, buying up all the property we could, except that Jenny had a fondness for the woefully poor performing utilities.  My few minutes of research had taught me that the utilities were the properties on the board with the worst return on investment, but Jason defended Jenny's purchases, accusing the website I had studied of being "full of crap," and telling Jenny that the utilities she had bought were actually "really good bargains."  I noticed, however, that he had chosen not to buy Water Works when he landed there first.

    In between rolls of the dice, I asked Jason about his travels as Monopoly champ.  He brushed off my questions about promotional stops he had to make for Hasbro in places like Bombay, Rome, and Paris on the way home from the championships, until I asked him about his travels in Australia.  Jenny perked up at that, mentioning how she was saving up to spend a winter surfing Down Under.   Jason fell into an animated conversation with her about beaches in Queensland, even though I was pretty sure he had never surfed in his life.  He also complimented her eyebrow ring, claiming that he had considered getting one.

   By the time we finished the second circuit of the board, Jenny had snagged two of the three Red properties, and I had two-thirds of the Yellow group, with Jason owning the odd lot of both colors.  I offered him a trade involving Baltic Avenue, the cheapest slum on the board.  Alone, it was only slightly more valuable than a vacant lot, but coupled with Jason's holding of its Purple counterpart, Mediterranean Ave., it was an inexpensive place to build a stable of revenue generating homes.  I also offered to throw in a railroad that I had snatched two turns before Milton landed there, and $500 cash in exchange for his spare Yellow lot, but Jason wouldn't even entertain the offer.  Meanwhile, Jenny offered him a measly $200 and a "Get Out of Jail Free" card worth a lousy 50 bucks for the remaining Red property on Kentucky Ave.  It was an absurdly lopsided trade, but he quickly agreed to, causing Jenny to blurt out "You're the best" and giggle before plowing close to a thousand dollars into a small fleet of rental homes there.  When I questioned the soundness of his rejection of my offer and acceptance of hers, he shrugged his shoulders and started to explain something about the difference in "rent thresholds" between the Reds and the Yellows before suddenly pausing in mid-sentence, turning to Scott, and asking "Hey, do you know Lisa Martin from Oakdale High?"

    Jenny's bungalows bankrupted Scott the next time he rounded the corner of "Free Parking."  She inherited his meager holdings, including a Pennsylvania Ave. that she quickly swapped with Jason in another sweetheart deal, giving him a monopoly on the Greens.  Yet she simultaneously refused to part with Virginia Ave., a cheap Violet parcel that I needed to complete that group.  Jason had advised her not to trade with me, contending that "the Violet group is the most dangerous color to hand over to another player," even though I was pretty sure the conventional wisdom was that the Orange group at the other end of the board had that honor.  When I confronted him with this, Jason sighed and told me that I shouldn't trust the internet, and that I could ask any tournament player I wanted about it, before turning back to Jenny and cutting a deal for the Oranges.

   After being thwarted in his efforts to build a transcontinental railroad empire, then mortgaging all his property to pay for an overnight stay in one of Jason's condos on pricey New Jersey Ave., Milton fell $40 shy of having enough to pay the Luxury Tax, and surrendered all his property to the Bank.  The ensuing foreclosure auction should've generated frantic bidding, as Milton's few properties were key to all of our remaining holdings.  Struggling to hang on, I lacked the cash to actively participate, but Jason and Jenny had the resources to do some furious bidding against each other to snap up the keys to each other's imminent victory. However, Jason refused to tender bids on any of the properties except the ones I needed, telling Jenny outright that she could have Boardwalk, thus completing her control of the high rent district, in exchange for her phone number.

   The game didn't last much longer after that.  Milton drifted away to refresh his latte, and by the time he returned, Jenny had quickly dispatched me.  Had Jason chosen to build on some of his groups, he'd have had a good chance to trap her on the lower two sides of the board, but for whatever reason, he didn't.  When I broke our earlier agreement and asked him to explain his strategy, all he would say is "it's important to set priorities."  Six turns later, Jenny took his last $300. He handed it over to her, joking that she could now afforded to take him out to lunch today.  She giggled shyly, and told him that she had to get back to her shift.   She looked down at the board for a minute, then picked up her token and called over to the counter.  "Trevor," she said to her co-worker, "tell Ron I had to go home sick."  She turned back to Jason, took him silently by the hand, and led him out the door.

   Before they exited, he turned to me.  "If you want to clean up the board and stuff, you can keep it," he said.  "I've got a bunch more at home anyway. 

Posted: 5/30/01