Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.

From: matt@severian.chi.il.us (Matt Crawford)

Date: Sat, 10 Jul 1993 21:01:56 +0000

In article <1993Jul10.164126.27748@alleg.edu> kosakd writes:
> A magazine from many years ago, I think it was Popular Scince (I could be
> wrong) contained an article that had a mathematical probablility analysis
> of the entire monopoly board.

I have here a copy of "1000 Ways to Win Monopoly Games," by Jay
Walker and Jeff Lehman.  The authors used a program called MIDAS
which represents a player's travel around the board as a 43-state
Markov chain.

> Do you know that per $ investment the
> orange properties are going to make more than Boardwalk and Park Place?

That's true for some amounts of investment, but not for others.  In
particular, the orange group pays the most money per opponent's roll
of the dice if the amount invested in the group is in the range $800
to $1500.  But the dark blues with hotels do pay slightly more per
roll than the oranges with hotels.

> The red properties were also good ... the 'Advance to Illinois Avenue'
> helped them out.

Even though a player lands on Illinois 3.49% of his turns (it's the
next most common result after Jail), there is no investment level at
which the reds are highest-paying group, nor the fastest group to
repay the investment.

> The purple properties, if I remember, gained you the least profit
> for what you put into them.

There are plenty of worse places to invest up to $500 of your money,
($500 being the most you can invest in the purple group).  But the
light blue group is always better.

Of course, how often do you have a completely free choice about which
color group to invest in?  Make the best of what you have.
__________________________________________________________
Matt Crawford       matt@severian.chi.il.us       Java Man
      There are secrets man(1) was not meant to know!

References

Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Fri, 09 Jul 1993 03:30:36 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
kosakd@reis36.alleg.edu (David Ulysseus Kosak)
Sat, 10 Jul 1993 16:41:26 +0000