August 27, 2008: Players participate in a Guinness world record attempt taking place across the world for the largest simultaneous game of Monopoly, at a hotel in Madrid. (Reuters)
The board game Monopoly may be the closest the average Joe gets to becoming a real estate mogul – but have you been playing it wrong your entire life?
A 2011 blog post that has gone viral on Twitter details a sometimes-overlooked rule in the famous game, according to Buzzfeed.
If a player chooses not to buy a property after landing on it, instead of his or her turn ending, the property goes up for auction.
“If you do not wish to buy the property, the Banker sells it at auction to the highest bidder,” the Monopoly rules state. “The buyer pays the Bank the amount of the bid in cash and receives the Title Deed card for that property.”
Without observing the rule, Monopoly players can find themselves “suffering long action-free periods in which [they] endlessly circle the board in search of the streets they need to complete a set,” a blogger on Critical Miss wrote.
A set of properties is needed to build houses and hotels on spaces.
Sending unwanted properties to auction speeds up the game.
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