YHK - yet another hacker news clone

I thought the best Monopoly strategy was not to play.

They don't say what the strategy is in the comments (duh) but I seem to remember a similar study from years ago saying the optimal strategy was to always buy if you can.

Meta, but one rule I was surprised to learn: if someone doesn't buy a property when they land on it, it is immediately auctioned off by the bank.

AlphaZero (Google's chess bot) famously started with no 'book knowledge' (e.g. ideas on how to play chess), instead, it learned by playing against itself many, many times over.

Has anyone done something similar to that with Monopoly? (by contrast, the technique used in this video is much more basic; it comes up with some specific rules a player will use, then has those bots play eachother)

It'd be interesting if the strategy would change without the auction rule. I don't think I've ever played with that.

So the conclusion is « buy everything even with borrowed money, but anyway it’s mostly a game of luck and even with the best strategy you’ll loose most of the time».

Not a bad model it seems, curious to test against a « I never want to die strategy », where everyone saves enough to keep playing, which is what mostly happens in real life too.

In the end, it aligns with YC and the startup model to try the all in for a project that will make you win disproportionately.

I enjoy a monopoly variant where every property landed on causes an auction regardless of who landed on it.