Dawn of the Geeks

Monopoly Odds

I heard somewhere that the purchasable space you are most likely to land on in Monopoly is Illinois. So I decided to write a program to test that out. The first number in parenthesis is the relative odds. 0% is least likely and 100% is most likely. The second number is the number of times that after a roll the player ended up on that space.

The program starts you out on GO and rolls the dice 1 million times. Not so surprising is that Illinois is the winner. But what is surprising is how much the game changes because of chance cards. Without them the game resides almost entirely on the west and north sides. That’s because you’re very likely to end up in jail which prevents you from reaching the east and south sides.

Taking out the “Go To Jail” space turns the board into a very even playing field. You’re pretty equally likely to end up on any spot although Illinois still takes the top spot. I don’t know if that would make the game more or less difficult. Boardwalk goes up into the top 10 properties so that could ruin the game.