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In today’s monopoly column I am going to talk about the importance of the trade. The trade is key for survival in monopoly. It is very rare for a player to go around the board and simply collect a set, unless there are only two players taking part.

You need houses and hotels to move the game forward but you aren’t allowed them until you have a complete set. So what are you going to do?

Now some players won’t trade until all of the property has been sold to the players. This is just one of the tactics used while, as it’s known, slowgaming. This practice can sometimes be difficult to deal with especially if you have several slowgamers at your table. However if successful deals are struck without them they may quickly cave to protect some kind of position.

It does sometimes happen that one player at the table has one set already. This player is the strongest. And by sets here, and in the rest of the article I am talking about development property not railroads or utilities. These other types are referred to as ballast and come in handy as we will see later.

Triangulation deals are key and if you pull one off then you may well win the game.

In a straight deal all the angles will seem obvious. It can work when both of you have two properties from a set in which each of you have one property that the other needs. Then you will both be getting a complete set. Then you can use some ballast to equal up the values of the sets.

This is all very well but the best situation is to do a deal like the one above but in which the ballast is being a potentially developable property.

Then you complete this set by making a deal with another player.

This is a risky strategy but, potentially, it is very advantageous. One of the key pitfalls are that the second player feels you have already become two powerful from the first deal and therefore won’t do a deal which leaves them with only one set, but you with two.

They may very well be right not to do a deal with you. It’s a difficult set of odds to compute. But at the same point that the deal is made you may very well be offering them the chance at second place or coming last.

“Who wants a bagel?”
“Not me.”
“Why not?”
“Because…”
“Because?”
“Because bagels are for breakfast.”
“Not really.”
“They are for me.”
“Okay.”

There is an uncomfortable silence.

The person who is clearly in charge of food production starts up again, “how about a muffin?”
“What kind of muffin?”
“Well I was thinking of a pizza muffin.”
“A pizza muffin?”
“Yes. You take a muffin and sick ketchup, cheese and oregano on it.”
“Oh you’re talking about an English muffin.”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”

Today as it is February and a Thursday it’s time for a monopoly column. This week we look at the number seven.

Ah magic number seven. Seven is the most important number to consider when you are playing monopoly. Seven is the most likely number you will roll. And while I’ve seen lots and lots of complicated ways of explaining why this is true in the end it’s quite simple.

6 + 1 = 7

The highest roll of one die and the lowest of the other will produce a 7. Reduce one die by 1 and add 1 to the other side and you’ll get seven up until:

1 + 6 = 7

No other combination of dice numbers has as many in between iterations.

This simple fact is the reason that, so called, “death rows” are so effective.

I encourage you to build a “death row” as soon as possible.

I saw somebody getting arrested. And if you will allow me the pun it was an arresting image.

Two police officers in luminous yellow jackets were leading this guy away from a shop. The arrestee, or I suppose the suspected criminal, held his hands flat against his body as though the handcuffs were weighing him down which, I suppose, they probably were.

Bizarrely enough just as I finished that last paragraph a young lady asked me to watch her bag for me. An odd moment and one that is lees usual these days. I often have to leave items out in public but I am generally of the opinion that drawing attention to your items as being worth watching is simply asking for trouble. I’m not exactly sure where this opinion came from and why I would not trust people to successfully watch my items on the one hand but also trust enough to leave my personal items out. It seems a little odd. The only answer I can give is that I really wonder how much the person watching is really going to do. Not too long ago I was in a off-licence* and I asked the assistant a question that required her to go into the back. While in the back another “customer” took three bottles of champagne and walked out of the shop. I thought about saying something to him but the risk associated with such an action seemed too great. Pure cowardice on my part. The moment he was out of there I called for the assistant. She came back and told me that a) it happened all the time, b) they weren’t supposed to do anything about it and c) she would have to make a note for the record.

My mind suddenly jumped to the popular John Woo movie “Broken Arrow”. A movie about the possibility that the people we trust with Nuclear capability might have different ideas for its use than our own. In the film, a character is told that “Broken Arrow” is a term they have for when Nuclear weapons go missing. The response goes “I don’t know what to be more disturbed about, the fact that a Nuclear missile has gone missing or the fact that you have a term for it.” This was the same thing on a smaller scale. I didn’t know whether to be more disturbed by the fact that I had just witnessed a theft or the fact that the staff were so used to it that they didn’t even raise an eyebrow. That they had a book with which to log such incidents.

I’ve seen some odd things in my time but there are certain things that strike a different sort of chord. It’s probably something to do with their formal nature, the fact that they all end up happening in the same way whether you are a millionaire or a pauper but in the end all arrest are the same. Maybe that’s what fascinates us? It’s hard to tell.

* There are three types of licence in the UK. And by licence I mean a licence to sell intoxicating beverages. But as it’s all defined in the “licensing act” if you see the word licence non-specifically talking about something it’s normally safe to assume it’s talking about alcohol. The three types are “off-licence” only licences to sell alcohol to people to consume off of the premises. “On-licence” a licence to sell alcohol to people to consume alcohol on the premises. And finally an “on and off licence” which incorporates both.

A new pen is a very wonderful thing for me. I tend, these days, to use pens a lot. And I tend to get quite particular about them.

I used to, about eight years ago, do all of my writing on the computer but in complete opposition to everyone else I have moved towards paper and en. I still edit on the computer but for some reason I just started to find that I preferred my writing when I wrote it on paper. So it decided to switch and now it seems to be a bit fixed. I almost never write anything directly on the computer except e-mail. And even then if it was a really long e-mail that I wanted to get right then I think I would, and in fact do, write it first and then type it.

So the new pen, as with the new notebook or pad, are fabulous moments. I tend to feel like their very necessity is a sign of progress. I have used up their predecessor and now it’s time to start again.

Usually I write in Black ink and edit in blue. I favour the Pilot Hi-Tecpoint V5 Extra Fine. My father introduced them to me*. But currently I am experiencing something different. I am using the Pilot V. I think that’s all it’s called. But this is a disposable fountain pen. Bizarrely I’m writing in blue. I have a rather nice Parker fountain pen too but I never remember to buy the cartridges when I’m in the shop. For some reason buying cartages for a pen you already own is less exciting than buying a whole new exciting pen.

And so I tend to get distracted by the fancy packaging and son on. This isn’t really true either of course because I tend to just buy a Pilot Hi-Tecpoint V5. But this pen, I’m pleased to say wasn’t purchased at all. It came from a firm’s stationary cupboard.**

* I’m afraid I must shatter any illusions you might have about this fabled introduction. We did not shake hands exactly but I used him. He felt used, and how can I deal with that kind of pressure?

** Yes, this is my equivalent of drawing a squiggle*** or signing my name. I am, in reality, exposing you to the testing of my pen.

*** I do not believe that there are real squiggles out there which people draw when they manage to get them to sit still. The squiggle has actually been extinct since 1724 when the last known specimen was tragically slaughtered for it’s supposed aphrodisiac qualities. It was often conjectured by Freud that the length of a persons squiggle was in direct proportion to the length of their…****

**** This is a lie.

Another two halves of a conversation here.

“Did you serve my friend earlier?”
“Pardon?”
“I can’t remember what my friend ordered earlier. Do you?”
“I don’t remember what your friend looked like. Were you standing next to her?”
“No, I was at the table. She just came up to order.”
“Well then how could I know what she looked like?”
“Oh I don’t know? Maybe I should ask her?”
“Yes, maybe you should.”