posted Oct 20 @ 01:47 PM by Jason Kottke · gift link

Perfect Play ran over 300 million games of Monopoly to determine the best strategy and the most common mistakes players make.

I turned eight classic Monopoly strategies into computer players and made them play 312,898,560 games against each other. At a table of four, the best one won 43% of its games. The worst one won 3%.

The gap doesn’t come from one clever trick. It comes from four common mistakes: being picky about what you buy, saving your cash, stopping at three houses, and refusing to trade. Then I let the computer tune every habit at once, to see how far a carefully tuned player can go and which color set is really worth fighting for.

P.S. I don’t actually play Monopoly anymore — it is the world’s most maddening game (along with Sorry) and I childishly refer to it as “Monotony” — and an aside about 3 minutes into the video is why: “roughly one game in six never ends”. Exactly! And you want me to haggle? For fun? No thank you.…