How do you play Monopoly? This classic board game sees players compete for survival, with the winning player bankrupting all other opponents. Buy property, charge rent, and make money – but first of all, learn how to play Monopoly properly. This guide covers the official Monopoly rules, plus the top strategies for winning.
Monopoly remains a classic board game, but few people would consider it one of the best board games in our collection. If you’re looking for something else to play, head to our linked guides to check out other great tabletop options.
How to play Monopoly:
- How many players in Monopoly?
- How long is Monopoly?
- Setting up Monopoly
- How much money do you start with in Monopoly?
- Monopoly board game rules
- How to win Monopoly
How many players in Monopoly?
Monopoly is a board game designed for two to eight players. Some copies of the game may include more player tokens, which allows for larger games. However, two to eight remains the optimal number in modern Monopoly games.
How long is Monopoly?
Typical Monopoly games last between 20 and 180 minutes. The length of your game will depend on how many players there are, and the randomness of your dice rolls can greatly extend or reduce play time.
Setting up Monopoly
A standard copy of Monopoly includes the following:
- 1 game board
- Eight player pieces (some copies include spares)
- 28 deed cards
- 16 chance cards
- 16 community chest cards
- 32 houses
- 12 hotels
- 2 dice
- 1 pack of Monopoly money ($20,580 worth, though the amount in older editions may differ)
Monopoly setup
Begin setting up Monopoly by placing your game board and organizing your houses, hotels, title deeds, and money. Your money can be organized by value – keep the $500, $100, $50, $20, $10, $5, and $1 in neat piles for easy access. The Monopoly box will have separate game trays for all of these components, which makes the setup job even simpler.
Next, shuffle your chance and community chest cards into two separate piles. Place them in their designated spaces on the game board.
Who goes first in Monopoly?
Before the game begins, players take turns rolling both dice. Whoever rolls the highest takes the first turn in Monopoly. From there, play continues clockwise, with the person on the starting player’s left going second.
With player order decided, everyone chooses a player token and places it on the ‘Go’ square.
Monopoly Banker
Choose one player to be the ‘Banker’ for the duration of the game. They’re in charge of the ‘Bank’, which refers to all components kept in the game box, separate from play.
The Bank is not a personal supply of resources for the Monopoly Banker. Instead, they manage it on behalf of all players, handing out money, houses, and deeds from the Bank as needed. The Banker’s personal supply is kept separate, just like all other players in the game.
The Bank is an infinite supply of resources. Even if you run out of paper Monopoly money, the Banker can hand out substitutes that represent money from The Bank.
How much money do you start with in Monopoly?
Each player begins with the following Monopoly starting money:
- Five $1 notes
- One $5 note
- Two $10 notes
- One $20 note
- One $50 note
- Four $100 notes
- Two $500 notes
That gives you $1,500 total. Some older editions give you different distributions of notes, but the overall starting money is the same.
Monopoly board game rules
On each turn in Monopoly, you start by rolling both dice and moving that many spaces clockwise around the board. The space you land on will prompt you to perform one of the following actions:
- Buy a property
- Pay rent
- Pay taxes
- Draw a chance card
- Draw a community chest card
- Go to jail
- Collect $200 when you pass ‘Go’
We’ll explain each of these shortly. You’ll also come across spaces where you won’t take any action at all, such as Free Parking or the ‘Just Visiting’ section of the jail square. Whatever square you land on, you stay put when your turn is over. With one exception…
If you roll doubles in Monopoly
If you roll doubles in Monopoly, you can roll again and take a second turn once your first is over. If you roll doubles again, you can take a third turn.
Roll doubles a third time, and your luck has run out. Instead of taking another turn, you must move your piece to the jail space. See the ‘go to jail’ section below for more information on this.
Collect $200 when you pass ‘Go’
Any time you would move past the ‘Go’ square in Monopoly, you get $200 from the Bank. Landing on the square doesn’t count.
Buy a property
If you land on a property square with no owner (i.e. no one has the deed), you can choose to buy it for its listed price. Hand your money over to the Bank, and you’ll receive the deed card in exchange. Keep it in front of you.
You might not want to buy a particular property for its full price, and you don’t have to. In this case, an auction takes place, allowing your opponents to bid on the property.
Anyone can take part in an auction (even the person who originally passed on the property), and any player can begin the bidding process. Bidding continues until one player names a higher price than anyone else is willing to pay.
Once you own a property, you can develop, sell, or mortgage it at any time.
Houses in Monopoly
If you own the deed to all properties in the same color group, you can begin building houses on these property squares. The deed to your property shows how much it costs to build houses. This money is paid to the Bank.
You can buy and build houses in Monopoly at any time, even if it’s not your turn. However, you can’t build a second house on a property until all others in that color group have a house built on them. The same goes for the third and fourth houses you build on each property.
Once your properties have four hotels on them, you can start building hotels. When you buy a hotel, you remove the houses from a property square, replacing them with the hotel you have bought. Only one hotel can be built on a property.
If the Bank runs out of houses, players who wish to build must wait for some to become available before they can buy them. In the rare case that two or more players want to buy houses at the same time and there aren’t enough to go around, the Banker holds an auction, selling the houses to the highest bidder.
Houses and hotels can be sold back to the Bank at any time, and you’ll receive half the price you originally paid for them. When selling houses, you follow the same rule as construction – sell the fourth house from all properties of the same color before you start selling their third houses.
Selling hotels is slightly more complicated. The simplest thing to do is sell all your hotels at once. For each hotel sold, you’ll receive half the price you paid, plus half the value of the four houses you exchanged for the hotel. Alternatively, you can receive half the value of the hotel and four houses to place back on the property.
Houses and hotels can only be built on squares with colors, meaning you can’t add them to utilities and stations.
Mortgages in Monopoly
An unimproved property (one with no buildings) can be mortgaged to the bank at any time. Once you’ve announced your plans to mortgage a property, the Bank will pay you half that property’s value.
Mortgages in Monopoly mean that, while you still own that property, you no longer collect rent on it. However, you still collect rent on unmortaged properties in the same color group. Flip your deed card to remind yourself which properties are mortgaged.
If you have buildings on a property and you wish to get a mortgage, you must sell those buildings on every property in its color group. If you later want to lift the mortgage, you must pay the Bank an amount equal to your mortgage plus 10% interest.
Trading property in Monopoly
At any time, you can opt to trade property in Monopoly. All properties in a single color group must be unimproved (with no buildings on them) before you can agree to trade any of them. After that, you trade for any price you and your opponent agree on – whether that be money, other property, or something less conventional.
You can also trade mortgaged properties, as long as they meet the above requirements.
Pay rent
If you land on a space already owned (but not mortgaged) by another player, you must pay rent. Their deed card will explain how much money you need to hand over. The amount of rent players can charge changes depending on how they develop their properties.
If a player owns every property in a single color group and they haven’t built any buildings on them, they can charge double rent on those squares. In some editions of the game, this rule applies even if one or more of those properties is mortgaged – though others rule that a mortgage cancels out double rent.
Additionally, building houses and hotels on properties increases their rent. See the deed card for how much the price changes.
If you land on an owned property, the owner must ask for their rent before the next player in the turn order rolls the dice.
Pay taxes
Spaces that order you to pay taxes will tell you how much to give to the Bank.
Chance and community chest cards
Draw a card from the relevant deck, and follow the instructions. After that, put the card on the bottom of the deck.
These cards may ask you to:
- Move your player piece
- Pay money
- Gain money
- Go to jail
There’s also the coveted ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card. Instead of returning this card to the deck, you’ll get to keep it until you’re ready to use it. It can also be sold to other players at any time.
Speaking of jail…
Go to jail
There are three ways you might end up in jail in Monopoly:
- You roll doubles three times in a row
- You draw a card that sends you to jail
- You land on a ‘Go To Jail’ space
If you pass the ‘Go’ square on your way to jail, you do not collect any money.
Landing on the jail space does not send you to jail – instead, you are in the ‘just visiting’ part of the square.
How to get out of jail in Monopoly
There are three ways to get out of jail in Monopoly:
- If you have a Get Out of Jail Free card, you can discard it on your turn
- Pay a $50 fine to the Bank
- Roll doubles at the start of your turn
If you unsuccessfully attempt to roll doubles three times, you must use one of the other methods before you can leave jail. When you leave jail, move your piece to the ‘just visiting’ square.
If you leave jail by rolling doubles (or failing for a third time), you immediately move that number of spaces. Rolling doubles, in this case, does not mean you can roll again for a second turn. If you leave jail by some other method, roll your dice and carry on your turn as normal.
Bankruptcy
If at any point you owe more money than you can pay (to the Bank or another player), you must declare bankruptcy. Give everything you own (money, deeds, and so on) to the person or entity you currently owe money to – be that another player or the Bank.
Any houses or hotels you own must be returned to the Bank, with half their value being given to the person you owe money to. If you give another player a mortaged property, they must immediately pay to lift that mortage.
If you give property to the Bank, all buildings are removed. The Banker then auctions off these properties to the remaining players.
How to win Monopoly
A game of Monopoly ends when all players but one have declared bankruptcy. If you want to learn how to win Monopoly, there are a few simple strategies you can start using:
Buy up properties aggressively
The early turns of Monopoly can make or break an entire game – get stuck in jail early, and you might as well pack your bags. You need to buy up properties as quickly as possible, and in the earliest turns, should be grabbing everything that you land on. Don’t make the mistake of saving money, passing over the low value properties you land on in the hopes of landing a bigger fish. It’s a gamble that usually doesn’t pay off.
In fact, while it’s particularly important on your first few goes, you should never really be saving money. ‘Spend, spend, spend’ should be your mantra throughout a game of Monopoly. While it might feel nice to wave around a big wad of fake cash, that money is doing no good burning a hole in your pocket. Use it to develop your properties, claim new ones, or to make smart trades whenever you can.
Prioritize the red and orange properties
While the green and dark blue properties are the ones Monopoly players lust after, red and orange are secretly ultra-valuable. That’s because they’re the properties players are most likely to land on, and therefore the ones that will pay the most dividends over the course of a game.
There’s a simple reason for that. Jail is the space players visit most often, statistically, and the red and orange properties are the ones players are most likely to land on after visiting jail. If you can get a monopoly on these colors, your chances of winning Monopoly will skyrocket.
Skip utilities, but grab all the railroads
According to a strategy devised by mathematician Tim Darling, you should never buy the utilities. They won’t earn you a lot of money, and there are better ways to spend your cash.
Utilities are at least a safe space in the later game, so you can pick them up if you get a very good deal, but no one will win a game of Monopoly due to owning the utilities, so if in doubt, steer clear.
Meanwhile, the railways are more promising, but be aware they’re an all or nothing strategy. Either you want to invest a lot of money and effort into claiming all the railways, or you should ignore them entirely. On the flipside, if someone else is getting close to four railways early on, you should try to stop them if at all possible.
Three houses is the magic number
It’s tricky to know how many houses to go for, but expert Monopoly players hold that you should focus on getting three houses on your properties as quickly as you can. Check out Darling’s numbers, and you can see that you can break even very quickly with three houses – within just 10-15 opponents’ rolls. It’s typically not worth grabbing hotels or a fourth house if you’ve got valuable properties that don’t yet have that magic number three.
But when should you buy houses? The best time is when players are approaching your properties. The most rolled number on two dice will be seven. So, pay attention to when players get within seven squares of your properties, and buy your houses and hotels then.
Lurk in jail in the lategame
It might feel counterintuitive to stay in jail, but once hotels are popping up, racing around the Monopoly board starts to feel pretty scary. You’re actually more likely to win Monopoly by remaining in jail for the full three turns. Once there are no free properties left to buy, consider selling your ‘Get out of jail free’ cards to somebody else.
For more fun board games, here are more that we’d recommend. The best family board games are suitable for all ages, while board games for adults offer a little more complexity.
Several photos in this article are used with with permission under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. These photos have been cropped and their colors slightly enhanced. In order, the images belong to: David Stewart, Rich Brooks, HouseTrained.