To All of the Complainers Out There

Everyone, including me, have complained that Scopely made the partner event harder, the peg event useless, ruined the vault, by making it a game of extreme luck and ruined the album by making it too gold-heavy. Additionally, they ruined the railroad main event by making the points 2/1/1 instead of 5/3/2, which was  HUGE pay cut for us all. 

However, in all of this they also added things that when used properly grow dice.  The non golden cards are way easier than they have ever been to get. They added lucky change and dice matching recently, both which do, at times, throw dice at you. 

I have found that if you only roll dice under favorable conditions and never "chase the prize," your dice count will gradually and steadily grow. You do not have to spend a penny. Think of this: if you have not tried to close your album, but protected your dice, your album would usually close anyway. If you start with 20k dice from last season, you now have 35k, with no effort. 

They add good things (lucky chance, dice matching, etc.). Then they have to do something to keep the dice count from exploding, and everyone complains. Cory, one of the programmers at Scopely made a good point in one of his commentaries. He said that everyone wants everything to be made easier, so everyone can get more dice, but if Scopely did that, the challenge would be gone, and everyone would stop playing. 

Addendum on 11.20.2024 - They just ruined net worth upgrades, which makes new accounts not able to get going. I used to be able to open one and 30 days later it would have 20k dice and 1400 net worth. 

I get annoyed every time they ruin something else. They first ruined the vault, then the album itself (with increased golds), then Peg - E, and then the Partner Event and now the Net Worth upgrades. I have to keep telling myself this, which is the only thing that keeps me playing at all: "Scopely has to make it so the bottom 50% of players can still play, which means when they ruin something, they have to provide something good in its place." We just have to adjust, both our strategy and our joy, to match the good new stuff (such as more normal fives coming our way, Lucky Chance, Dice Matching, that damn ball guessing game, etc.), and not mourn the loss of the things they ruin.

How to Play a Gold-Heavy Album with Useless Vaults

A prior analysis was written before Scopely made the albums gold-heavy and also took away useful vaults, replacing them with purple back vaults. Unless Scopely fixes those two issues, the best strategy is to not attempt to close your album, but instead only roll under favorable conditions. If you do this, your first album will probably close, but closer to the end of the season. You will get 15-20k dice on top of what you already had, and your account will be almost guaranteed to grow by 15-20k dice per season with no real effort on your part. It is a more boring way to grow dice for sure. 

If you try to close the album, you will be chasing cards and each one will cost a thousand dice here, four thousand there, and you will end up paying 50k dice for an album with sets worth 11k and a grand prize of 15k. This is a very good way to always be out of dice. 

Partner Event Mega Slot Trick

This last partner's event (Amazing Partners) was break even at best and a dice guzzler at the worst. Why? 

They added the Mega slot in exchange for the 5k/10k/20k/ etc. slots, depending on your multiplier. The mega slot is much harder to hit and often returns fewer dice than 5/10/20k when you do. It was a VERY bad deal Without the Mega slot it generally takes from 6k - 7k tokens to complete a build. With the mega slot it generally takes 8k - 10k.

In summary: the Mega slot is rarely hit and rarely gives more dice than the other larger and more common slots did. The Mega Slot is a shiny invention to gobble your dice while you purr like a kitten. 

Monopoly Resources I use

Sites I Visit Routinely

• Unofficial Wiki - Tells you want flash events are happening today, adjusted to your time zone
• App Gamer - Shows Event and Tournament Rewards and Milestoneshttps://www.appgamer.com/monopoly-go-all-events-explained
• Mogo Daily - Knows What is Up and Coming and Usually Gives Good Advice
• Past Blitzed Cards

To Review

• https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCo9qcy5bkb8h9cQbeOjG23g
• youtube.com/watch?v=SNolpiTbl3Y&list=PLP5VMKsOQuJrkW6m0aQeHWtHce3lh9qIC

Partner Challenge Strategy

Update: 11/17/2024 

The strategy below is highly successful if the partner challenge has the Lucky Chance, Dice Matching and High Roller Trio to which we have become accustom. However in the Amazing Partners Challenge, the one we just had, Scopely removed those. One side-effect is that the strategy listed below could not be used. There is no good strategy to win Amazing Partners. Your best hope, per me, is to break even. I don't generally roll to break even. 

Update 11/12/2024 - After two seasons of having the flash events in the partner event, they removed them from Amazing Partners. I believe, off the cuff, there is now no winning strategy for this event. 

This refers to the current climate. This strategy would have worked in the prior two sticker seasons and does work now. If Scopely changes things as they were before, or a different way, then it will not work anymore. 

Summary

• Do not take 50/50 partners unless you are each doing a cake all by yourself. 
• Never have two people work on the same cake.
• Do not start a build (a cake currently), until you have enough tokens to complete it, currently around 8k tokens. 
• Only build cake using high multiplier, once you reach the first good flash event (Lucky Chance, Dice Match or High Roller). After that, use need to finish the cake in no more than three minutes. 
• Do not open a build your partner is doing until it is complete. 
• Once build rewards are collected, immediately roll he monopoly board for seven to ten minutes (until the flash events expire). 
• If you collect all of the rewards at once, this seven to ten minute monopoly board will be HIGHLY profitable. 

Test Results

I have done this approach on three accounts so far. Note that I do full carries, which are very expensive. they eat dice. If I did not do this, the results would be better, but it is hard to say by how much.  The numbers I am giving you here represent the dice increase I had from the start of the event up until the time each account completed the event. Keep in mind, they could increase for other reasons, so it is not purely scientific.

Here are the results, with all three accounts doing at least one full carry, but partnered in such a way that no 50/50 builds happened.  

Ancjo

Mde 11k dice on the event. 

Also

Made 13k dice on the vent. 

Kvina

Made 18k Dice 18k dice at this moment.  These accounts did full carries and that ate up some of their dice profits, as full carries eat dice. However, they still partnered in a such a way as to never have two people working on the same cake. 

For the sake of this strategy, the following assumptions are made

You get two main events during the partner event:

• The first is a Corner Square event (could as easily be a tax/utility event). 
• These typically give you four points per strike
• There are 4 of 40 squares that you can strike (the corners). 
• The second main event is a Token Event
• This generally give you 2 points per strike
• There are eight tokens on the board 
• They relocate when you strike them

Second Assumption: 

• Each build, currently a cake, contains three 10 minute flash events as part of its reward. They are: 
• High Roller
• Lucky Chance
• Dice Matching

These assumptions have been true for the last three seasons I believe and were false before that. 

What to do

• Do not take 50/50 partners for a single build. If you want to 50/50 with someone, do it with someone who has two accounts, and agree that each of you is wholly responsible for building a single cake. Two people should NEVER work on the same cake.
• Do not open a build until your partner has completed it. 
• Do not open a build until you have time to roll for 7-10 minutes, once it is opened. 
• Do not start doing your build until you have enough tokens to complete it. Currently, that would mean that you need around 8k tokens, but it would be safer to have 9-10k. 
• Do not build using low multiplier. It is gambling to build using high multiplier normally, but in this case, it is critical that you get that cake built quickly. It should take no more than three minutes to build the cake. Every moment after that are dice being flushed own the toilet. 
• Play the first event, the Corner Square Event more lightly than you play the Token Event. The Corner Square event, using the approach outlined here, is more of a gamble than the token event. Do play the Corner Square event, though, because there are two main events and three - four side tournaments and you need to get the early rewards (and specifically the tokens) out of each. 
• I will speak of the Token Event moving forward. Once you complete your build (in three minutes), you go back to the monopoly board. For the next seven minutes, all of these are strikes: 
• Lucky Chance
• Dice Matching
• Railroad
• Shields
• Partner Event Tokens (I consider hitting these roughly equivalent to hitting a shield). 
• Main Event Tokens
• Adjust the multiplier with each roll!!! 
• This board is one of the extreme few boards in Monopoly where you will have greater than a 50% chance of striking. 
• Every roll has a 1 in 18 chance of hitting the dice match. 
• If you have lots of strike possibilities, such as 8 or more squares strike, then max out your multiplier and roll. (I set my multiplier to 1000 in the case). 
• If you have a lesser chance of striking, typically use a higher than zero multiplier anyway (Almost every roll is set to either 100, 200, or 1000 when I roll this board). 
• If you have the rare scenario where you only have 4 squares in your strike zone (1-12), then on this board, I consider just setting the multiplier to 1 for that roll. 
• The Big Wins
• I often get many dice matches with a multiplier of 1000. 
• I more rarely get the 7x dice on Lucky Chance on 1000. When you do, that is 6k dice in one roll. I do often get the Lucky Chance on 100 or 200 (for 600 or 1200 dice profit in a roll). 
• And if you happen to stick Lucky Change five free rolls on a 1000 multiplier, that is generally pleasant. I am therefore more likely to set the multiplier to 1000 when the other squares are OK and Lucky Chance is at the 6,7,8 position. 
• I have been burned a lot with this because when Lucky Chance "rains cash," I want to weep. 
• If you are not comfortable using high roller, I think the strategy could be adjusted. You would, in theory, still make dice, but just fewer. It would be to set your multiplier to 100 and then auto roll. 

Note: on the advantageous token monopoly board with these flash events added, you almost can't miss very often. You virtually never have a board like this. 

What not to do

Never take a 50/50 partner for a single build. That prevents this strategy for working, because each of  you are pecking at the cake (or whatever you are building). For this to work, you have to rapidly build the cake and then roll the advantageous board for seven to ten minutes. 

Total rewards using this approach

You have four builds. Assume you partner with two people, and each of you do two builds (remember, never do a 50/50. It does not work). I am assuming you are not doing full carries for the sake of this discussion. 

• If you complete your build in 3 minutes, then you will have 7 minutes each of event time. 
• This means for the builds you complete, you get 14 minutes. 
• If your partner completes 2 builds, then you have 20 minutes for those, but once you collect it is more like 9 minutes. 
• This means for the builds your partner completes, you get about a total of 18 minutes.
• Total time to roll the advantageous monopoly boards: 32 minutes. 

Disclaimer

I have a lot of dice, so I can take full advantage of this situation. The fewer dice you have, the fewer dice you can accumulate. Additionally, because I have a fair amount of dice, I can assume a fair amount of risk. The strategy is gambling, and is not guaranteed to go well, so having more dice makes it easier to do this. 

Common Misconceptions About Monopoly Go

Bank Heist

• When you get a message during a heist saying you bankrupted the victim of your heist, it is usually a false message. You get the message saying you bankrupted the victim if you get all three golden rings in the heist. You rarely bankrupted anyone. All you did is get three golden rings. 
• When you bank heist someone and it says you stole 100 billion dollars, you did not steal that from the victim of the heist. He may have been bankrupt already, in which case you will have taken zero dollars from him. However, even if he was not bankrupt, the amount you took relates to your net worth at the time of the heist, and to the net worth milestones you have reached relating to heists. The amount he lost relates to his net worth at the time of the heist. If I start a new account, it may show that I heisted 10,000 from you. However, on your end, you may lose 100 billion dollars. Milestones in net worth, those rewards you get every so often, determine heist amounts. 

Shut Down Process

Some people establish shutdown partners, someone you can shut down for full rewards and in turn they can shut you down for full rewards. If you have a single account, I highly recommend it because the lost rewards for a shielded shutdown are substantial, whereas the cost or rebuilding a building is far less substantial. However, there are a few thing to know: 

1. Shutdowns affect your net worth. If each building has 3 circles and you shut each one down three times, that is 15 shut downs. Your net worth is reduced by 15 to represent the shut downs. When you repair the buildings, your net worth will return to its former value instead of adding net worth. In other words, people shutting you down reduces your net worth and your next building efforts are to get back where you were, not to get ahead. I am OK with this. Lower net worth has benefits. 
2. Your victims shutdowns are cached. For example, if you have accounts A, B and C and A starts out fully shieled with five shields and then B and C each hit account A three times,  you would expect to have taken out all of A's shields and it should then be safe to crank up the multiplier. It is not safe and A is still shielded for you. In order to immediately see the damage done by B, C has to restart the app. Ditto for B. I have been bitten by this gotcha many times. I tend to forget. However, it can work to our advantage. 
3. The above fact can be used to your advantage if you have multiple accounts and shut yourself down for full rewards. Once you get As shields down, have two accounts hitting A simultaneously. Each account will not see the other accounts shutdowns and even once A is completely flattened from A's app perspective, B and C are still shutting him down for full rewards. 

Tournaments

You see someone who has 7000 more tokens than everyone else in the tournament and you think: "How stupid. He wasted all his dice just to win a few in a tournament. No he didn't. He likely could not care less about winning, and is instead a very good strategic player. Good players play tournaments up until the point where the rewards become "inverted," and if they use APM or something, they rightfully finish them. If you think because they have so many more tokens/milestones than everyone else in the tournament, that this means they are trying to win it, then it means that is probably what it would mean for you in that situation. In that case, just know, they rarely care about wining a tournament: Winning Tournaments. One way to tell, is if they were just trying to win the tournament, they would only be a few thousand dice ahead of the others. Successful players don't throw away dice and if they have the means to get that far ahead, they are most likely a successful player. 

Peg E Prize Drop - One Strategy

There are lots of YouTube videos and such that discuss different strategies for playing PEG-E. In general I think many of these videos are more accurate than some other Monopoly Go tutorials. Most of them tell you what to do, but not why. I am going to tell you one of the strategies, the one I use, and also how I think it works internally. I will then tell you a slight variation that I think would be better, but that I have not tried. 

There are two bumpers and three reward settings: Token / Dice / Cash. 

There are two ways to get rewards from Prize Drop 

1. Strike a bumper 

2. Drop a token in the slots at the bottom of prize drop. This gives you cash, which is also points toward the bottom rewards. 

The bumper rewards are trivial in comparison to the bottom rewards, so you should mostly focus on the bottom rewards. However, I will discuss both. 

You should build up at least a few hundred tokens before you drop any. This is important because you need to initialize your game (I will explain this in a minute). 

How to Get the Most From Bumper Rewards

• Initialize your bumpers. Set your multiplier to 3 or 5 and drop tokens until you get the right bumper to be a token bumper and the left bumper to be a cash bumper. 
• Now, set your multiplier to 30. Drop until you get below 30 tokens, and then DO NOT drop again. If you do, it will adjust your multiplier below 30 and then drop and this will mess up your bumpers, so you will have to go through the initialization process again.  

Why the Above Bumper Rules Work

• Why do you set your right bumper to tokens?
• Tokens are your best currency in this world. They are the things that falls into the bottom slots for larger rewards. You put your right bumper as token, because it will be most often hit. 
• Why do you set your left bumper to cash if dice is the second most valuable currency? Why don't we set it to dice? 
• It's all about the right bumper. Most of our strikes will hit the right bumper. Remember, the right bumper is set to token. However, when you hit bumpers, they cycle. So, if you are using a five multiplier, for example, and the right bumper is tokens and the left bumper is cash, and you keep hitting the right bumper it will cycle away from tokens. No two bumpers can be the same, so it cannot cycle to cash. It must cycle to dice, the only thing left. We want this behavior. We don't want it to cycle to cash because we like dice better. We want the right bumper to give us tokens first, then when it cycles, dice, and then when it cycles back, tokens again. 
• Why do we set our multiplier to 30? When you set your multiplier to 30, the bumpers still cycle, but they always cycle back to to where they started. It looks like it did not cycle, but it did. With every strike you will see your dice count go up if you look at the top of the robot. Therefore, 
• When I hit the right bumper, it cycles from tokens to dice and back to tokens. Every strike earns us both token and dice, but never cash. Remember, this is the bumper we usually strike. 
• When we hit the left bumper, it cycles to dice also, because that is the only thing left, and then back to cash. 
• Therefore every strike earns us dice. If either of the bumpers were dice already, then only one strike would earn dice. 
• NOTE: For this reason I believe we may want to consider setting the right bumper to dice and the left bumper to cash. Then every strike would earn us tokens, which sounds better, but I have never tested it. 

Choosing Which Button to Push

You should always hit the fourth wedge at the top. If you do this, you maximize your chances of hitting the right bumper, and the right bumper is the one you want to hit. 

Bottom Rewards

For the bottom, I don't have a clearly defined strategy other than hitting button four. For me, that is the strategy. 

Addendum: 

Someone found a video that talks about this exact strategy and is very well done

The Video

The Races

It seems the Race thing will auto partner  you if you don't pair up. I don't care for that because I do not intend to compete and this means I will be a "bad" partner for someone. Therefore, I will probably try to find partners who also do not intend to compete and we will all be paired. In this way, my team will gift the win to competing teams and I will not let anyone down. Listed below are the reasons I don't want to complete: 

I don't know anything about the "races." I have not got involved and I really don't specifically plan to, because I have to learn more about it. At this moment, it seems like joining a team like that is a great way to lose dice, and here is why: we are racing. Normally I will not go deep into the main event, because you ALWAYS lose tons of dice when you do. However, if you are racing, then you must go deep into the main event. Therefore, you MUST lose tons of dice to race. 

Additionally, you will likely be competing with some players that are using APM. I cannot possibly win a race against a team that uses APM. 

Therefore, I would likely lose tons of dice by being forced to go deep into the main event, and then likely still lose the race anyway, because I don't use APM.

Since I have not even researched it, if this analysis is bogus, and it may well be, please send me a DM in Discord correcting me.

Amendment:

1. I was somewhat forced into playing the races by being auto-matched with people on my contacts list. 

2. On the event where I partnered with myself, I found it was easy to take the win, so I did, even though I intended to throw the race. Therefore, I now have mixed feelings about the race. 

Is Asking 40 Stars For a Five Star Card Greedy or Fair

What Price Does Scopley Set For a Five Star Card

Currently 400 stars, and we go out of our way to pay it. 

Summary of What Usually Happen

What do you think is a fair price for a five star card?

The only thing stars are good for is giving you a vault and the vault will generally only give you 2 useable five star cards if you are lucky. 

A vault currently costs 800 stars. Selling at 40 stars each, you give 20 five star cards to open a vault that gives you 2 five star cards back. 

The cost of each of these vault five star cards is generally 400 stars a piece.

And stars are only good for opening vaults, so getting a card at 40 stars, is a hell of a deal. 

It is 1 tenth of the price you would pay if you got that same card from the vault with your stars instead of trading them.

My opinion

I give 20 five star cards to open a vault that may return 2 of them.  

Each 5 star card I sell is 1/20th of a vault. 

How anyone can see asking 40 stars for a five star card as greedy is beyond me. The two fives star cards the vault may give them back cost them 400 stars each. 

If they wanted to ask the real-world value for a five star card from a star/vault perspective, it is 400 stars. They cannot ask that, so they ask for 40, the market value. 

Addendum to explain the current 700 star vault

Stars on ONLY good for a vault. Otherwise, they are useless. A vault currently gives you one purple pack, which will likely be one five star card, most likely a golden dupe, but it may be one you can trade. Vault Five star cards are 700 stars per five star card, because that is what a vault costs and you get one purple pack. If you trade 40 stars per five star card, and then you open a vault with it, you basically opened the vault by giving up 17 five star cards to do it. the person who paid 40 stars, got an awesome deal. Instead of using their 700 stars for the vault, a single five star, they got 17 fives star cards, 40 stars at a time. That is NOT unfair for the one paying the 40 stars. It is unfair for the person only getting 40 stars, but on the other hand, they have little choice, because they cannot charge much more or no one will trade. Also, when they give you those 17 fives star cards, they are, in addition, sending 17 * 5 stars, or 85 stars. They gave up 17 fives star cards, plus 85 stars, for a single five star card. I don't see how anyone can think they are the ones being unfair.

How I Avoid Running Out of Dice

 Summary: 

• Only roll when it is advantageous to do so. That is the biggest thing. 
• Do not "go after the prize." This is the second biggest thing. 
• Do not play deep into most events. Only take the early rewards from most events. That is the third biggest thing. I think if you are not using technical analysis of some kind, this still applies in the current Monopoly culture, but if you are using a more scientific analysis, some of it no longer applies. The Seventh Apprentice pointed this out to me.
• Do maintain reserves until you need them to complete something. You only need to do this until the account is established. Once it has a bunch of dice, it is no longer needed. 
• I will go into detail below. 

 Methods that may work, but methods I do not use

• APM - I do not use Airplane mode. This works for some people. It does not work for many people. Many people consider it cheating and resent it. I do not mind others using it at all at a personal level, but I have never tried it. I want my Monopoly to be game of strategy and not that one. 
• Dice Boosting. I do not use dice boosting. I think this is when you hand your account over to someone else, they get you tons of dice and hand it back. I could be wrong about the mechanics, but it is something like this. Some people may say APM is one form of dice boosting, not sure. I would never do this for many reasons. 
• I NEVER purchase dice through Scopely. I would never pay a cent of real money for fake money. Also, I don't think this would work long term. It is a band aid, and then you have would have to pay more money. 

Without using any of he above methods, I never run out of dice. I have multiple accounts, but until the end of the sticker season, each stands on its own. They are only intended to help each other at the end. I will list below what I think helps, and in the order of importance. 

Mistake One: Playing Too Far Into the Events

Note: Some of this analysis is no longer valid with how Scopely is currently managing events. At times, it is profitable to go deeply into some of the events. You cannot assume it is, though. This was pointed out to me by the Seventh Apprentice, who knows exactly how far into each event one should travel. 

I believe the biggest mistake people make is playing too far into the main events (top events) and in the side tournaments. 

• The main event is always your target. It has the best and cheapest rewards. 
• The side events should always support the main event. If you cannot or should not play a side event, you should usually stop playing the main event, even if it makes sense to play the main event otherwise.

Rewards in these events become "inverted." By this, I mean if you pursue the event rewards at some point you will start losing dice. Early in the event, you will usually gain dice or at least not lose dice. About a third to halfway in, you start consistently losing dice. In normal operations, you should stop there. Do not donate dice to Scopely just to watch a token hop around an electronic board. 

Often a new event and a new tournament start at the same time. This is your sweet spot. Roll until you get one third to one half way into the tournament, and then stop. 

You may be a quarter into the tournament at this point. Wait for the next tournament. Roll at least a third or half way into it unless it makes sense to stop in the main event, in which case stop then. 

This page shows you all of the Event Mile Stones and Rewards for each event. The links are near the top of the page. 

Related to this is not knowing when to time out (not play at all). If an event does not promote gathering dice, don't play it. If you have a lot of dice and a dig is coming, and there is an awful utility event in front of you, you do not have to play. 

Mistake Two: Not Keeping a Safety Net

• I don't spend cash. I let it get heisted. Cash is only good for increasing net worth, and increasing net worth, I believe, has negative value. It is true that spending as you get cash gives you small numbers of dice, but then your safety net is gone. I spend cash when there is a sticker boom or wheel boost that overlaps another event, such as a landmark rush, or when I have so much cash that I can never spend it all in those events.  Otherwise, I spend it if an account is low on dice and will need more. It is a safety net that makes sure that even if an account runs too low on dice to finish the dig, for example, I can get 2-4k upon demand. 
• Note: I don't care if half my cash gets heisted. I need the safety net far more than I need the cash. Additionally, I need the rewards from wheel boosts and such more than I need the cash. Cash is trash. Remember that. 
• I don't complete sticker sets. I let them complete. In an emergency, I can then complete sets and get dice. Of course, when the album is closable, then I start completing stickers sets. 
• And I don't trade duplicate fives so I can apply more stickers to my album. The fives themselves are currency and give you the power to act. Do not spend your currencies when you don't have to. Stickers in inventory translate to dice when you need them, if you don't spend them, just to complete a sticker set. If you spend them to complete a sticker set, you kill two of your safety nets, one, the incomplete sticker set, now complete, and two, the sticker in inventory. 

Mistake Three: Going After the Prize 

The most common flavor of this is probably trying to win a tournament. It rarely makes sense to try to win a tournament and the attempt almost always costs you dice, even if you win. There are two types of tournaments, one day and two day. 

• One Day - I don't ever try to win a one day. It has a few dice and Blue Pack as a reward and on balance if I go after those, I will lose more than the value of a few dice and blue pack getting there.
• Two Day - I don't start out competing in this tournament, but I do often compete. If I see I am, or can easily be, in the top three, I compete for third place. The top three places generally get a purple pack. However, if I am way into the main event, then I will not compete. I will lose more dice competing than a purple pack is worth. 

The second flavor of this is going after purple packs in the main event. They are usually very expensive to get and cost more dice than a purple pack is probably worth. I do go after them on occasion, and I usually regret it. 

Finally, it sometimes makes no logic sense to go after a Wild Pack in Prize Drop Peg-E for example. If you think it will cost 8k dice to get there (and it may, depending on where it is), unless that card is going to close your album, it is a huge mistake to pursue it. Just because something is shiny, it does not me we have to give everything we have to get it. 

For example: if you need 7 gold cards and want to get the PEG-E Wild Pack to reduce the number to six, the potential for total dice loss is high. If you spend all your dice and get it, you then need six gold cards. That gold card that took all your dice, will almost certainly appear as a dupe before you get the other six golds you need. You probably just flushed your dice down the toilet for nothing. Protect your assets. 

Note: if you are very mathematical about it, the Seventh Apprentice pointed out that it does sometimes make sense to go after the prize. However, if you are not that precise, then I think it does not, as it will burn you more often it will save you. 

Mistake Four: Spending Currency For No Reason

Keeping dice, in part, involves have the power to act when you need to. In Monopoly, I do not play to increase net worth. I play to increase my ability to act or to respond to a situation when needed. 

These are my currencies in the order of importance to me: 

• Stickers and stickers in Inventory
• If I have three Monopoly Tune stickers and I trade the two extras for two other five star stickers I need, I now have no power to use those two stickers to close a set that becomes closable (which I would only do if low on dice and an event was coming where I needed it). If I keep them in inventory, I can spend them where I need them and when I need them most. Stickers in inventory are dice when you need them. 
• Dice
• The power to act is lost when you run out of dice. This, in Monopoly, is incarceration. 
• Stars and Vaults
• Stars give you vaults, which can give you stickers when needed. Spent stars give you nothing. They are gone. 
• Additionally, stars can be spent to get five star cards. 
• I do not open a vault out of boredom. I keep the vault and retain my power to act. Once opening vaults can close my album, or once I am just getting too many stars or when there is a sticker boom and I have other safety nets, then I will open a vault. I do not, however, open a vault just to get that vault spent the the stickers it yields applied to my board. Both of these things decrease my power to act and decreasing my power to act takes away from my ability to keep dice. They reduce the size of my safety net. 
• Cash 
• Cash translates to dice when you need it, via the build process. It also translates to stickers during a wheel boost. Cash saved is very valuable and cash spent is almost worthless. 

Mistake Five: Not Actively Networking

Note, I am leaving this here, but with the current gold-locked album culture and fives being as easy as butter to get when they are not golden, the summary below, is no longer valid: 

Retaining dice is often tightly coupled with the power to act. The power to act often requires the assistance or cooperation of others. Those who have a large contact list and a network of friends can often recover more quickly from an emergency. Those who go it alone are almost doomed from the beginning. If you see someone with a ton of dice who is not capitalizing on any of the Monopoly vulnerabilities, you can be pretty sure they have a network of allies working with them. 

The Prestige Album

The following was written before Scopely made albums near useless. I currently believe you only lose dice if you make any effort to close your album or to work another. Do not do it. Getting cards is expensive. Instead, roll when favorable. Here is the older, no void, analysis: 

This does not discuss a mistake, but cements the need to network and sticker trade. Unless you use 

"cheats" of some kind, you will probably find it challenging to collect dice. I used to lose dice until I get to the prestige album and then collect dice while on the prestige album. It is easier to maintain dice on the Prestige album. Here is why: 

Power of the Prestige Album

How to Gain Dice

Everything I discussed above talked about how maintain dice. There are also things that I that believe help you get dice in the first place: 

• When Should You Adjust Multiplier With Each Roll
• Inverted Rewards - How Far Should You Play Into an Event or Tournament
• How to Win Tournaments
  

Disclosure

What I have described is one set of ways to keep dice, but not the only ways. I believe these will work if you have a single account or multiples. My accounts each stand on their own until the end. 

Some people will argue with some of these points. In some cases, they may keep dice a very different way, but still do it. Their methods may well be better. However, if they argue the points, but they themselves run out of dice, I would largely dismiss their arguments. They may still be valid, but they are unable to keep dice, so I would be weary of doing what they do. 

Addendum

Be fair, be honest and network and you will have the cards you need. Play sensibly, don't play when conditions are not favorable and do not go after the purples in the main vent or peg-e and do not try to get first place in tournaments. Make slow, steady and reliable progress and you will do well in monopoly. 

In trading, look for win/win scenarios. It is part of networking, and networking allows you to get the cards you need when you need them. Win/win deals make a friend. "I win" deals get you some card at this moment.

How to Investigate a Discord User Both Politely and Thoroughly

 Checking Rep

I do not ever use -rep to check rep. In the instructions they tell you to do this. Many newer people on the server think this is a down rep. I have had tons of people complain that someone gave them bad rep, when really someone just checked their rep. Often the person may not say anything to you, but they may want no more to do with you because they think gave them bad rep. 

Instead, I go to any normal channel (not DMs), and in the search I type: mentions:tuenis_soref, for example. This has three advantages: 

• There is no miscommunication. The user you check does not mistake the check as a down rep. 
• The user cannot see that you checked their rep (or if they can, it is not obvious. I don't readily know how they could. Really this should not matter, but I think some users feel funny when they see you checking up on them. When I just met someone, I see no reason to tell them that I am investigating them. 
• And finally, rep can (and some times is) faked and -rep does not show you that. However, when you check via mentions in the search, you see it. 
• You see one person entered all the rep.
• You also see any scamming accusations
• You also see the user's interaction on the server. Are they just a basic ass all around? You see that also. 

And remember, always check the discord user's profile, and if it is new (a few weeks or less old), NEVER trust them. We all had new discord accounts at one time. Most of the new accounts, however, are scammer accounts. 

Why I Accept Trades that are Bad for Me (on paper)

Here are the trades I offer that do me good: 

• I buy 5 star cards for a flat rate of 40 stars per card,  unless prestige, and then 50 stars per card.
• I sell Sweet Duet for 15 stars. It is the rarest four star in the current album. 
• I sell any other four star cards for 12 Stars.

Here are the trades I do more or less as a service to others:

• About midway into the season, I trade any four star I have (other than Sweet Duets, in the current album) for any other four star card.  1:1. I lose one trade for the day and gain nothing. It is not good for me.
• About midway into the season, I trade any five star I have (other than Monopoly Tunes or Prestige, in the current album) for any of other five star. 1:1. I lose one trade for the day and gain nothing. It is not good for me.
• About midway into the season, I sometimes trade a five star card for the 40 stars I paid for it (at current market rates). I do this to assist others. For me, I lose the five star I wanted and I also lose one trade. It is not good for me.

What I Gain From Losing Trades:

Here is what I gain with 100% of these trades: trading relationships, and those relationships translate to me finding what I need when I need it. Having multiple accounts is way more powerful when you have a network of contacts that want win/win trades instead of trying to trade against you. 

Trading partnerships is my first concern when I contact someone and the trade itself is secondary. 

Note: One more advantage it could have had for me was this, which has yet to actually happen: 

My Personal Monopoly Go Trading Ethics

Declarations

This is going to sound "judgy," and I am sorry about that. However, please realize that some of my most reliable trading partners are predatory traders. The ethics described in this document are my personal ethics and I do not attempt to impose them on others. Whether or not someone is a "monopoly friend," has nothing to do with how they trade or if they share my ethics. Additionally, now that I think about it, I am a complete hypocrite anyway, and I will prove that at the end. 

To make things simple, I am going to refer to someone I trade with as Komerco. This is a personification, not a real person. 

What I want out of a trade is win / win, nothing less. 

My Personal Trading Ethics

If I am trading with someone, Komerco, for example, I want to make sure she is pleased with the trade, both now and in the future. She should never look back on the trade with regret. 

I do not want Komerco to learn more and remember how unbalanced the trade was. I aim to do balanced trades. 

I do trade stickers for stars, in both directions. I trade above or at market value. For five star cards I purchase, I try to pay 20-25% above market value. For fours and fives I sell for stars, I try to sell at market value. 

I do not do 2:1 trades or 1:2 trades (trading for stars being the exception because the cards traded then have no face value other than use for stars, such as three star cards and below). 

I sometimes do complicated trades and I sometimes broker trades for others. If I facilitate, broker or execute a trade, I am then invested. If the trade goes bad or if anyone is unhappy, or worse, scammed, I insure the trade on both ends. All parties I deal with will be pleased when the trade is over. 

I absolutely refuse trades where someone offers me a four star card for a five star card. It happens more often than you would think. I consider it a violation for me to do a "down trade," because the other party is either desperate for dice, or lacks understanding about the relative value of the stickers. 

I do not engage in any form of predatory trading. I do not try to get a superior one for a lesser one just because Komerco does not know something I know. Instead, I tell Komerco what I know, and then negotiate. I don't trade their rarest five star card for my very common five star card, just because they do not know any better. However, at the beginning, when no one really has anything, I would violate that rule and trade any five star for the rarest five star, for example. In the beginning, it really does not matter as much. It is not going to make them feel harmed. Otherwise, if someone offers me Monopoly Tunes for Melodic Haul, I tell them that Melodic often trades 1:1 and Monopoly Tunes 2:1 and I let them know they are trading the rarest card in the album for a common one. They usually do not trade after that. 

Monopoly Go is Not Just a Game

I am chess player. In chess, my only goal is to crush my opponent. I do not look for a win / win in chess. Each player goes in knowing this, wanting this and expecting this. Why? Chess is just a game. 

Monopoly can be played the same way, but not with the same effect. I am not competing with you in Monopoly. It is a game where you build and you are not expected to crush others to do it. We expect shutdowns, heists and such, which are all parameters that define the game and have little psychological effect. 

Predatory trading does not define the game. It can hurt the other person, make them feel duped, violated and victimized. 

At the extreme, if you scam someone,  you did not just win. They experience real loss of assets, something that meant something to them when scammed and continues to mean something to them a week later. It was not just a game event, but left them with a true sense of violation. Many people will cry and nearly all of them will lose trust, both in the game and in humanity. 

While basing play purely on greed is not scamming, it does have some of the same effects. Exploitation is not a con job, but it also is not pan-deterministic. No one playing monopoly has any obligation to play with altruism. It is a capitalist game with a fundamental design of dog eat dog built into it. When I started, I told people that my intention was to "be ruthless." I thought it was only a game and I intended to win.

So, why then, do I try to avoid being the dog eating the other dog? Because it harms the other dog and it did not have to happen for me to feel victorious. I do feel victorious. I can win without eating a dog, and for me that is way more fun than winning the other way. 

I have had well over 100k dice across accounts several times (I don't at the time of this writing). I have never exploited anyone. I have never used airplane mode or dice boosting (though I love, love, love trading with those who do and I am very happy they are on Discord). I got them by studying the game and cooperating with other players. 

I don't play to win. I play because I love the strategy games, and I came to realize that Monopoly Go is one of the most strategic games out there. I have found that cooperating with a network of people can be just as powerful as competing with them. So when you trade with me, I am not playing against you, but with you. 

Epilogue 

Now, while I don't engage in predatory trading, I do enable others who do, so I am mostly a hypocrite. I guess I am at peace with that. I just wanted to make the argument against predatory trading because I don't like it.

An example of enabling would be this: I have a trading partner that routinely gets five star cards for fours star cards. I give her 40 stars for five star cards. She ended up needing vault stars really badly. I donated a large number of stars to her. However, I also donated multiple four star cards because she needed those. I knew what she was going to do with them, and I still did it. Keep in mind, even if my ethics are somewhat hypocritical, the arguments I make in support of them stand on their own. They are either valid or they are not. 

Trading Network Plan

Here is an actual visual example of what I am about to discuss:

Problem: I have people constantly coming to me wanting to buy cards for stars or to put them in contact with someone who will sell cards for stars. I have contacts for this, but if I put them in touch, then I will have to compete with them for trades and with the current vaults only giving purple packs, these trades are hard to find. Additionally, the majority of them cannot pay stars in a single day, and because stars for cards trades are in such high demand, almost everyone requires you pay all the stars in a single day.

When I do find someone who has only golds and wants to sell fives, I recruit them as a trading partner. I send them 40 stars, which is currently about 10 stars above the market rate, and they send me fives. I don't have to find these rare trades. I tell them that I want a trade relationship, not a one time trade. This benefits them, as I pay above standard and it benefits me, as I have trusted and reliable trading partner. Once you have this, you can trade on credit and do not have to both be on Discord at the same time to trade, and no one has to worry about being scammed. They don't have to find a bunch of trades, which is time-consuming. I am there bunches of trades. It is convenient in many ways. 

However, sometimes there are no trades to be found, and sometimes there are more partners than I can take on, so I lose the potential partner. 

So, 

Problem A is: I cannot easily help people needing to trade stars for a five star card.

Problem B is: I lose potential partners because I do not have capacity to trade with them and then when my current partners albums close, I am left with no trades available. 

Solution: 

I establish myself as a trade bank. In my case, the bank's goal is to break even, not make stars or cards. 

It would work like this: 

When I find someone who is a potential trading partner, if I don't have capacity to get them in my network using the method I described above, I would pull them in anyway. I will call this potential partner Paul.  I would tell Paul that I am going to start sending him stars, and when I get to 40, the next five star card he gets is mine. I am prepaying for it. If he agrees, then  I would contact someone who wants to trade stars for cards. I will call this someone Peter. I would asked Peter to send Paul 15 stars.

Later, when I need to send Paul or another trading partner more stars than I have capacity for, I would call Peter again and ask for 15 more. 

The deal with Peter is that once he sends 40 stars (per my request), I owe him a five star card, payable immediately. Also, if he decides he wants to end the relationship, I would immediately have to refund any stars he had banked with me. 

In this way, I am trading well above my capacity, but I am not keeping the extra cards. They are just passing through me. I get all the contacts and I only pull Peter in when I am overloaded. I don't lose potential trading partners, which is good for me and Peter gets to trade stars for five star cards, even though he is not able to send all of the stars the same day, and may not be able to find the trades himself. It is a win/win/win. I win / Peter wins / Paul wins. 

If you want to trade stars for cards, for you, it is this simple: 

1. I would periodically ask you to send 15 stars to someone (or 12 or 9, or whatever you have when asked). 

2. you would take screenshots of the sends with the OK button to prove they received.

3. I would keep record of all stars sent, and you should as well. 

4. Once you reached 40 stars sent, I would owe you a five star card, payable immediately. 

5. Any left over stars would apply to the next card. 

6. You would never have to send anything when requested. How much you send would be completely up to you.

7. I would NEVER make profit on the stars. I am giving you a card for 40 stars and it cost me 40 to acquire the card. If, for any reason, I violated my standard (which is I pay 40 stars for a five, regardless of what the seller is asking for it), then I would discount the card to the person who received it. Of course, you would have to trust that I am actually doing that, but think of this way, if I were buying and selling at a higher price, you would still be getting what you wanted, a five star for 40 stars. I will tell you, though, I would never buy a card and sell it at a higher price, as that violates my personal monopoly ethics. 

One more thing: any trade I execute, initiate or broker, I insure. If I am involved in any way and anyone gets scammed or finds themselves in a dispute, I will make both sides happy with the transaction, even if I have to cover both sides. If you trade with me, you are happy with the trade, both now and in the future, which is another one my monopoly trading ethics. 

Addendum

I executed on this today. I owe someone 200 stars. Two days ago, I owed someone else 170 stars. Obviously, that is more stars than I can supply(though paying in three star cards, with a 50 card per day receive limit allowed, a person can only receive 150 stars per day). 

Their album is about to close and they are offloading their cards. They sent them to me, and now I have to pay for them. The trading network is allowing that to happen. These were prestige cards, hard to come by, and I paid 50 stars each. The in network trading partners are getting regular cards for 40 each, the 40 I paid. If not for them, I would have lost the trading resource getting me the prestige cards. 

Expectations: 

After starting this, I got more contributors than I expected. Some days, 15 IGNs will pay one creditor for a bulk trade. I have to have checks and balances so in case there is a discrepancy in what I believe was sent and what the creditor believes they received. In the event of a dispute, I insure the trade, so if it cannot be resolved I will go with whatever the creditor believes, even if I know it to be inaccurate. 

I log the date, the IGN, how many stars were sent and how many cards were sent. 

I need screen shots of the sends, as a second validation. 

After every send, I will send you a current log of all of your activity, so you have a proof of what happened, and I have proof that I told you what I thought the status was. 

From the spreadsheet above the contributor can see that I owe him a five star card and once paid, he will have a credit of five stars toward the next card. At any time, he can require a refund of any remaining stars. 

And I send something like this to the creditor (this is a real ledger): 

Why to Adjust the Multiplier with each roll

Assuming the rolls are random, or if not random, pre-rolled, but randomly so, then probability matters. You have a 1 in 36 chance of rolling a 2 or a 12, so you should never assume one of those will be rolled. However,  you have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling a seven, the most likely number. In addition. you have a 5 in 36 chance or rolling a 6 and a 5 in 36 chance of rolling an 8, so if you are seven away, and there are good things on squares 6 and 8, then you have a 14 in 36 chance of getting them. 

You rarely have a 50% chance or better of getting rewards (you can, in token events). However, you want to increase your multiplier when the odds are in your favor. 

Here are the statistical odds, assuming random rolls (a big assumption, I grant you): 

Note: with token events, it is critical that you adjust multiplier. With Railroad events, where you get 5 points in the main event for a railroad hit, it is critical that you adjust the multiplier. It is less critical with other events. For example, with corner square events, it may not be vital (though I adjust to 100 for a corner square seven away and I adjust to 1 most of the rest of the time. I do not target railroads in corner square events (unless I am starved for railroad hits). 

Note the accumulation. If you are 7 away from a point making square, then you still only have a 6 in 36 chance of a good hit, but ...

If you are 7 spaces away and any of the rolls 6, 7, or 8 are beneficial:

• Total probability = (Probability of rolling a 6) + (Probability of rolling a 7) + (Probability of rolling an 8)

• Total probability =  5/36 + 6/36 + 5/36 or 16/36 chance of hitting is highly favorable. 

One Last Thought:

For those of you who never adjust you multiplier, but just auto roll on max: 

You are using the same multiplier on this: 

Something that has no tokens and no shields is not likely to hit anything. If instead, you role with a multiplier of 1, and move to max when you have scenarios closer than this, you will lose dice far less often. Note that I used a token event to demonstrate this concept, not because I think it is standard, but because it is the most pronounced example. 

Note: If you have a possibility of striking three squares and get good things and two are shielded, then sum the odds of striking the three and then subtract shielded squares. That will tell the odds that the roll will go well. 

Remember: targeting 6, 7, or 8 alone is usually a losing roll.  If something good is on 6 or 8 only, then there is a 31 in 36 chance it will miss (terrible odds).  If something is only good on the 7th square, but bad elsewhere, there is a 30 in 36 chance it will miss, again, terrible odds. You have to add to the safe squares together to get the odds and see fi they are good.

Also, if two good things happen at once, such as a corner event that also has free parking dice on the corners (making this up), and if a corner is at 7, then that square counts as two hits, because though you will miss it, when you do hit, it pays twice, once in reward points and again in free parking dice. 

Partner Challenge Philsophy

Basic Philosophy

I am going to speak from the perspective of having a single account, but if you have an alt (or many alts), the same philosophy for me applies. I am also going to assume, for the sake of the discussion, that you can find partners after the challenge has begun. If you don't use Facebook groups, discord groups or wiki groups. then what I am saying here may not apply. 

I am also going to assume that you are seeking someone who will do 50/50. In my case, I am sometimes content to "full carry" one or more of the slots. There are definitely win/win reasons to do this, but that goal is a different discussion. 

Typically, I would not take on more than two partners at a time. Once I have done close to my part, or it is evident to both sides that I will, on the two partners I have, then I take on a third. I do this because I don't want my partner thinking "he is not doing anything." It is likely to make them feel bad about the partnership, and I don't want that. In my case, I think everyone has complete confidence that partnering with me is a guarantee that at least 50% of the work will be done by their partner. That is the spot you want to be in. 

You can be very good intentioned and loyal and take on four partners, but most people do not have the resources to work all four at once, so you inevitably leave someone hanging. So, when would you take on four partners:

• You have loyal, reliable and consistent partners, and you don't want someone else to gobble up the slots. Everyone trusts everyone and delays in productivity is not a concern. 
• You took a chance on two partners (because you had no choice), and there is no indication that one of them has any intention of doing anything. In that case, he may have not gotten around to it yet, or he may have no intention of ever contributing. You should then do some of your part, maybe 20,000 tokens, or 25% of the total, and then move on and take another partner. 

When would you not take on four at once: 

• When you are taking on people you do not know will do 50/50. Unless you are OK with that, you never take a chance on another partner and leave them hanging.
• If you do this, it becomes a game of wits, where each of you is using your resources on other partners, waiting on your chance partner to do his part. Even when both partners end up producing, the approach does not engender confidence, and usually one of the two will run out of resources in the end if you use this approach. 
• When you get in games of wits with partners,  you are both burning up the clock through inaction. 
• Or, you are taking on reliable partners you know, but  you cannot communicate with any of them. They are just past monopoly partners. This is a risk because if you take them on and do not work, they make take it very personally. 

There is no need to fill are four slots up, some with strangers. This just leads to angry strangers. It is better to fill two and then once they are in control, carefully fill a third. If you are adding strangers anyway, you will not run out of them. They are everywhere. 

Note: my basic rule is no more than two partners at a time. However, I will sometimes break the rule and take on more if I am in daily communication with partners 3 and 4, for example. In that case, I simply tell them I am going to do at least 50/50, but not immediately. I verbally let them know and they understand. The reason I would do this is so they do not partner up with others instead, people who may not take care of them. 

One last thought about partnering: if you have the resources to full carry slots and if you intend to go deep into the main events and the side tournaments, then there is little reason not to do it. It helps those carried quite a bit and costs you very little, for reasons I explain below. 

Full Carry

We recently finished the Hot Rod challenge. I will speak in those terms. Some people think full carry means someone has four accounts and they will complete all four of your cars, one on each account. However, if you look at full carry posts, they are all promising a single car, not four. This makes sense. Almost no one on planet earth has four fully functional and fully funded accounts that could fully carry a partner. Therefore, I will assume that full carry means your partner does your 50% of a single hot rod. 

People who offer full carry service on Facebook, discord or wiki's charge different amounts. I will discuss in terms of the common fees. I will discuss them in today's currencies, based on the Hot Rod Event and Valentines Partners Event (Cakes) that preceded it. 

• Two Five Star Cards
• This is the standard fee if the grand prize is 5000 dice and a Wild Pack (or galaxy pack), and the prize for completing a hot rod is a purple pack.
• One Five Star Card
• This is the standard fee if the grand prize is 5000 dice and a purple pack, and if completing a cake gets you a Blue Pack or a purple pack if very lucky. 
• Free
• This is sometimes offered in the final hour. Many of these offers are scams, but not all of them and the same scam detection logic applies to these offers as applies to sticker trading. 

For bullets one and two above, the offer is usually a win/win. It is better to find a full carry partner than it is to partner with a stranger because you are likely not to complete the event, and the event completion has grand rewards. I will use the One Five Star Card example to explain why it is a win/win:

• As the carried partner, you pay a Five Star Card. You are guaranteed one five star back in a purple pack, plus a ton of dice. It is true that you may get a duplicate five star golden in the bullet one scenario above, but even then the dice you get is worth a five star card. At worst, you break even, and at best, you make out like a bandit. 
• The carrier cannot use your "help" completing hot rods. It does nothing for him at all. He has tons of resources and he is going to finish the main event at the top and the side tournaments, and those will give him more tokens than he needs to complete the hot rods. Once they are complete, he continues to collect tokens, tons of them, and they end up getting converted to cash or dice at the end of the event, and not many. He has no reason not to carry you, as for him carrying you is virtually free. If you pay him a five star card for the carry, then he got a five star card, and he finished the event, whereas he would have nearly nothing if he just hangs on to the tokens. 
• When someone carries for free at the end, it is because they need a partner and have no time to find a paying partner. Again, they don't need your help. They have already collected a surplus of tokens that are about to be wasted. They do need partner, though, or they cannot build a hot rod. Again, it is a win/win to carry you for free in this scenario. 

I Request the Following Features to Be Added to Monopoly Go!

• Allow you to claim a mini game/feature by clicking a button, not automatically when the game loads. 
• Do not close an album automatically. Have the user click a close button to close the album.
• Allow some form of chat. 
• Allow a reward to be declined, such as the cash grab, even for less. 
• Allow you to throw away progress and abandon a partner in a challenge. I understand why you should not just allow a challenge to be transferred to a new partner. This would be potentially unfair to the existing partner and also would allow people to use the transfer method to get new partners to each do a little, while they contributed nothing. 
• Allow safe exchange of stars for stickers. 
• Allow a safe exchange request to be aborted. The abort button could lock both sides and abort five minutes after the request if there is concern that it will be in progress as it is aborted. 
• Allow you to decline to heist a friend. I generally would not do this, but there are times when I would. 
• Allow dice transfers. 
• Allow transfer of unused Peg-E tokens, Pick axes, etc. 
• Allow you to share  a list of duplicate stickers you have with other users. 
• Currently if I send five stickers to George and George has already received 50 stickers today, my cards will be returned to me. However, my sends (trades) are still burned. This is not fair because I had no way of knowing that George was maxed, so I request that you can see how many cards someone has received so far when you send. If you don't want to do that, at least give people a buffer, perhaps fives trades, that can bounce and you don't deduct sends for them. 
• There should be a log of what stickers you sent recently and who you sent them to. This would help resolve disagreements and would help people recover from mistakes. (Me and Fenechka)
• There should be a log of what stickers you received recently and who sent them to you. This would help resolve disagreements and would help people recover from mistakes. (Me and Fenechka)
• Do not control my max dice rolls. It should be limited to the number of dice I have. (Fenechka)
• Do not auto open sticker packs. Allow them to be saved and opened as desired (Fenechka) 

Winning Tournaments

I  do not try to win tournaments. You almost always lose dice when you try to win a tournament. If you don't lose dice, the best case scenario is usually breaking even and the worst case scenario is running out of dice. I don't play monopoly to break even. Therefore, I rarely care about first or second place in a tournament. I do sometimes care about third place, because you sometimes get purple packs for that. 

I do, however, care about getting resources out of a tournament, and this can create the illusion that I am trying to win it, as I coincidentally take first place. 

Tournaments rarely, if ever, yield enough rewards to pay for the dice rolls. I see them as vehicles to support the main event. Therefore, I rarely, if ever, try to get rewards from a tournament on its own merits alone. I try to pair the tournaments with rewards in the main event (the top event), and have the tournament help pay for the rolls I am spending on the main event. 

Also note that early in the main event and tournaments, they will often return more than they cost. However, later, near the middle and the end, the rewards become "inverted" and they cost more than they return in dice. The reason one would keep going is to get the more valuable sticker packs we find near the end of main events. Whether it makes sense to go for those is a judgement call. 

The Power of Levers - Why You Should Not Spend Your Cash

I am maintaining this blog primarily for me. I have not told people about it and I don't think anyone has stumbled upon it. However, I am sure if it were read by others, this would be a controversial post. 

I use the term "pulling a lever" to mean something you can do to get resources when you find yourself in sudden need of them. 

I used to spend cash as soon as possible, so it would not be heisted. Now, I estimate as much as 25% of my cash is heisted and I do much better than previously. It is fine if 25% of your cash is heisted, so long as 75% is spent well. If you get below 10% heisted, but the other 90% is spent in such a way that it yields few returns, then overall your cash was not that valuable, but at least you got to keep the cash you rendered useless.

What good is cash? I will list my opinion in order of importance

• It provides the ability to get resources when you need them.
  
• Once spent, it increases your net worth. However, whether or not an increase in net worth is valuable is a whole subject unto itself. I will assume it has some value here, though, for the sake of the discussion. 

The main use of cash is to support getting resources when you need them. You can only do this if you have not spent it until a good opportunity arises. When it it good to spend cash?

• When you need resources. For example, a sticker season is about to end and you need 200 stars to open your vault and close your album. You have one day to get them. You are probably screwed if you don't have cash. If you have cash, you can build. After building your second map, hotels will start coming off your board and they will be converted to Wheel Spins. The wheel spins give you tons of stickers. I saw someone actually do this. It seemed impossible for her to get the stickers she needed on the last day of the sticker season. She did it with ease. She knew how to use cash. 
• When you can get tons of dice or stickers. This happens when combinations of the following happen at the same time
• Landmark Rush (generally gives you 50 extra dice for each map you finish).
• Board Rush (generally gives you 30 extra dice for each map you finish). 
• Sticker Boom - Gives you 1/3 more stickers for each sticker pack opened. 
• Wheel Boost (gives you 2x Wheel spins for each hotel set you clear on your monopoly board. 
  

I either wait until I need dice or stickers to spend cash or I wait for an opportunity where two or more of the above situations are in play at a time. 

Having Cash on Hand has saved me over and over again. It has allowed me to keep third place in tournaments and get the purple pack, helped with partner challenges and gave me dice when I deemed that to be important. If you spend cash as you get it, so it will not get heisted, it is basically near useless. 

Additional Notes

Closing sticker sets is similar, but not the same exactly. You should not close sticker sets that will close just to get them closed. It is better to have lots of sets that could be closed, and then close them when you need resources, such as the scenarios I discussed above. If you close them all immediately and spend all your cash, then when something comes up, you have no levers to pull. 

I do not use cash to try to win tournaments. You almost always lose dice when you try to win a tournament. If you don't lose dice, the best case scenario is usually breaking even and the worst case scenario is running of dice. I don't play monopoly to break even. Therefore, I rarely care about first or second place in a tournament. I do sometimes care about third place, because you sometimes get purple packs for that. 

Power of the Prestige Album From a Dice Perspective

Update 11/17/2024 

The below analysis was written before Scopely made the albums gold-heavy and also took away useful vaults, replacing them with purple back vaults. Unless Scopely fixes those two issues, the best strategy is to not attempt to close your album, but instead only roll under favorable conditions. If you do this, your first album will probably close, but closer to the end of the season. You will get 15-20k dice on top of what you already had, and your account will be almost guaranteed to grow by 15-20k dice per season with no real effort on your part. It is a more boring way to grow dice for sure. 

If you try to close the album, you will be chasing cards and each one will cost a thousand dice here, four thousand there, and you will end up paying 50k dice for an album with sets worth 11k and a grand prize of 15k. This is a very good way to always be out of dice. 

Original Summary

In Monopoly GO the Prestige Album is the one you get once you complete the first album. It has more sticker sets than the first album had. It has all of the original sets, but each with a higher dice reward, plus it has new sets that have very large dice rewards.

I used to tell people that no matter how many dice I have, I will always spend down to zero (note: I never run out of dice anymore). Historically, that has always been true. Once my main account had 26k, and within a week or so, I had spent down to zero. I also claim, for better or for worse, that stickers are the most powerful currency (then dice, then stars, then cash). 

At the time of this writing, I have been playing fully for two sticker seasons. The first, Heartfelt Holidays, was basically a bust. I closed my first album, but did nothing with the second album, the Prestige Album. The Prestige Album, it turns out, is the money maker. 

For Monopoly Origins, the second season I played full time, I closed the first album, closed the Prestige album and pulled tons of dice out of the second prestige album. Once I was fully engaged with the Prestige albums, I never "spent down to zero dice" again during the season. 

So, I did an analysis of the relative values of the albums. Here it is: 

Monopoly Origins First Album

• 17,200 dice
• The total dice you earn from closing all the sets in Monopoly Origins Original Album was 17,200. 
• 15,000 dice
• You get 15,000 dice for closing the album. 
• 32,200 dice
• The value of the original album is a little over 32k.

Monopoly Origins First Prestige Album

• 51,125
• The total dice you earn from closing all of the sets in the Monopoly Prestige Album
• 20,000
• You get 20,000 dice for closing the first Prestige Album. 
• If you close the second album, you get 30,000 dice for that. 
• 71,125
• The value of the first prestige album is a little over 71k dice, which is well over twice the value of the first album. 
• The value of the second prestige album is 81,125k dice, because the grand prize goes from 20k to 30k. 
• The total value of the last six sets alone in the Prestige album is 30k, even if you do not close the album. This is roughly the total value of the entire original album when you do close it, and closing an album is difficult. Again, if you do not close the first album, then its value is capped at 17k dice, making the last six sets of the Prestige Album worth nearly twice the total value of the first album. 
• I found that my reckless spending down to zero stopped when I was well into the prestige albums. Too many dice were thrown at me. 

References:

• Monopoly Origins

Discord Monopoly Channel - How to Spot a Scammer

This post will discuss things as it relates the main Monopoly Server, the one with over half a million users. There are more than a half a dozen servers. They are all similar, but not identical. 

This article applies to trades that primarily involve trust. Safe Exchange is "usually" safe. There are exceptions. I will go over those in a separate post later. I usually trust a Safe Exchange. 

Generally speaking I use three main red flags to detect a possible scammer. If a trader has any one of them, I will typically avoid them unless we are doing safe exchanges. If they have the first one, or more than one, I will usually avoid them, even if they want a safe exchange. 

I believe I have made over 200 trades now, probably more than half involving me trusting the other person in some way. So far, I have not been scammed. I am sure I will be, but it has not happened yet. 

Many of my trades are "stickers for stars." For example, I will pay 12 stars for the four star card you have that I want. In this case, the one giving the stars is generally expected to send first. Some servers have "rules" that say lowest rep sends first. However, people are not going to send the one card you want in hopes that you will then send four three star cards (and I don't think they should). 

Here are the Red Flags That May Indicate a Scammer

• A new Discord account. The is the worst red flag. 
• If you message them, "Hi," and then click on right click on their avatar and go to their profile, it shows you the age of their discord account. Most scammers accounts are less than five days old. They get reported, and open a new account. Do not trust anyone with a new discord account. I know we all had to have a new account at one point, but most people trading stickers for stars on a new discord account are scamming.  
• I generally give them a 'red flag' for any account that is less than a month old. If the account is less than five days old, I will not even do a safe exchange with them. 
• They make an offer that sounds too good to be true. 
• When Spot Rebel was trading for 60 stars or 2 fives, scammers were offering it for 25-30 stars. Invariably, if you checked the age of the Discord account, it was almost always new. They make the offer for the rarest card about half the time, another red flag. 
• There were a few occasions where someone offered a five star card for half its value or for a four star and they did not have a new discord accord. In the case of the four star offer, I usually gift them the four star and get them to promise not to do that again. The future them will look back on that trade with deep regret when they have the four star cards they need and they are then trying to get five star cards. While they are not scamming, I do consider it exploitation and a little unethical to make the trade with them. It would feel very scammy on my part to trade under those conditions. 
• They do not have legitimate rep. (Just Checking Rep is Not Enough)
• I consider around 30 points to be safe; however, I will trade if they have less than 30, but the other two red flags are not present. 
• Not all rep is legitimate. They can have 30 rep. but mostly from the same user. This is a scam. 
• To check rep. do not enter "-rep" on the server and check the number. That is exactly what many scammers are hoping for. Instead, search user mentions and you can verify that the reps are coming from different users, not one or two. Additionally, if someone has accused them of scamming recently, that too will be in mentions. 
• Correct way to check mentions: 
• Right click the user's avatar and go to their profile. You see the users display name. Under that, you see their discord ID. Double Click the ID, and then copy. 
• Then go not to direct messages, but to a main channel, such as five star trading. Once there, if there user id is tuenis_soref, for example, enter this in the search box:
• mentions:tuenis_soref

• Once you are satisfied with mention, if you double click the most recent rep in user mentions, it will take you the reputation channel where the rep was given, and that will show you the number of reps they currently have. 

Note: here is an example of someone who had decent rep if you just check rep, but if you check mentions you find that he got it all at once, mostly from a single user, probably himself under a different name.

Which Stickers in the Next Album Will Be Rare?

What I Think I Know So Far

I started playing in October 2023. There have only been two albums that I was a aware of. 

These are the rarest stickers in the Making Music album if the prior pattern continues.

Set 9, Karaoke Night, has Sweet Duets.

Set 13, Music Festival has Monopoly Tunes.

Making Music (starts in two days)

Four Star Sweet Duets

• This will appear in Set 9, karaoke Night.
• It will be the first four star to appear in the album. 

Five Star Monopoly Tunes

• This will appear in Set 13, Music Festival 
• It will be the first five star to appear in the album. 
• Finishing this set will earn you Rock Star Mr M. Board Token.

Monopoly Origins

Four Star Room to Rent

• This appeared in Set 9, Maximum Occupancy.
• It was the first four star to appear in the album. 

Five Star Spot Rebel

• This appeared in Set 14, Free Parking.
• It was the first five star to appear in the album. 
• Finishing this set earned you, the Fancy Duck Token.

Heartfelt Holidays

Four Star Farewell

• This appeared in Set 6, Nutcracker Dreams. 
• It was the first four star to appear in the album. 

Five Star So Proud

• This appeared in Set 7, Sweet Home.
• It was the first five star to appear in the album. 
• Finishing this set earned you, Mr. Frosty, the snowman token.

References: 

• Making Music Album Sets
  
• Monopoly Origins
  
• Heartfelt Holidays
  

Events - What Rewards to Target (Inverted Rewards Concerns)

We are currently in the middle of a Partner Challenge. You collect steering wheels. If I land on a wheel with a 100 multiplier, I get 100 wheels. 

Early in the main event, I hit an electric company, which gives rewards in the current main event. Here is a screenshot: 

Notice that I got 650 steering wheels. 

Near the end of the tournament, the points / reward change. It could be that I would spend 800 points and only then get 300 steering wheels. They cost far more than the 1:1 dice/wheel ratio that you get when you land on a wheel. They cost significantly more than than they did when I was in the early stages of the tournament. 

Generally speaking, the further you go in the tournament, the more "inverted" the rewards. In other words, you get fewer rewards at higher cost as you advance into the tournament. 

So why do people go past the middle of an event or tournament? That is where the blue and purple packs are, and stickers are best of the currencies in monopoly. 

So, if I have the funds to go get those packs, I do. However, if I don't, I take the cheap goods and wares near then front of the tournament, and then go into a time out. 

You Tube Tutorials

 I have watched a ton of these to learn from them. Here is what I have learned:

• I estimate upwards of 90 percent of these tutorials are published by people who have no clue what they are talking about. The data they give is not useless. "Useless" would imply that the effect is neutral. The effect is not neutral. If you listen to them, you lose at monopoly. 
• Of course, I could be just like them, only with different bad information. How would I know? Do not believe anything anyone says about monopoly without confirming it. It is hard to come up with a larger body of people spreading misinformation. 
• All of that said, I have come across a few really good tutorials for a beginner/intermediate level. I will start linking them on this site when I encounter them again. 
• And also, if you are a rank beginner, then the data they give may be of value. Even though it is largely bogus, the 20 percent that may be accurate is 20 percent more than you have now. 

These are topics I intend to discuss in the future

• More advanced topics
• What rewards mean:
• The point value of the rewards
• The cost of rewards in the event. How inverted to they start out? 
• The likelihood of scoring points when you roll (adjusting multiplier. 
• Examples
• tokens usually give on 2 points, but a railroad event can give as many as 7 (2 for chance + 5 for railroad). However, the rewards in the railroad event are more inverted, so
• If you have a 14 in 36 chance of scoring, what does it mean? If they rewards are tokens and already inverted somewhat, then if you get the best scenario, score every time, you still may lose dice. Therefore you lose even if you score. it is time to time out. 
• If you have a14 in 36 chance of scoring on a railroad even (if that is even possible), that would be huge. You should always use the highest multiplier possible, because even if the rewards are inverted, and even with the misses, you will gain dice on average so....
• Don't worry about whether you will lose dice on the next roll, or on the next several rolls. It hardly matters. What matters is that your play matches a winning strategy. 
• Also, discuss how to weight and calculate odds. 
• Adding odds of strikes together. 
• Factoring in point values, which really matters on partner event and utility events. 
• Factoring in partner tokens, which I treat as shields as they are worth less than 1 die to me. 
• Factoring in sheilds
• Factoring in the jail, which has a 42% breakout rate, but what does that mean? If you breakout with double ones, it is way different than if you break out with double sixes. 
• Intro. Who I am
• A relative novice. 
• A Strategy buff 
• Discord
• What it means to be banned. 
• How to detect and avoid scammers. Three Red Flags
• Account is less than a few weeks old. 
• Offering hells of deals. 
• Has low rep, not rep, or recent rep given by a few users. 
• When to avoid someone.
• There are thousands of options. If I am doing stars for stickers or any other non safe exchange, I reject anyone with a single red flag. 
• I have done over a hundred trades at the time of this writing, most unsafe, and I have never been scammed. 
• I believe as many as 25% percent of unsafe offers are scams. 
• Trading Ethic
• Each person, when they learn more, do not look back on the trade with regret.
• The reasons this matters. 
• The power of Trading Partners and Relationships.
• 1:1 vs 2:1
• When it is logical to get stars vs getting fives. 
• Favors, why it is OK to ask and perhaps good. 
• Granting or receiving a favor engenders trust. 
• I often say, if you agree to this, it will establish mutual trust and create a trading partnership that benefits us both in the future. 
• Monopoly Strategy
• Peg E
• Multipliers. 
• They DO NOT increase your odds if you auto roll. They make it go faster and make it more likely that you will
• A. Bust and get nothing or 
• B. Get a big win. 
• Odds - 6, 7, 8, etc. 
• 
  
• Tournaments
• Inverted rewards
• Roll of 100 at the top of an event
• 730 tokens in partner challenge. 
• 350 dice
• 4 sticker packs
• cash 
• Why competing to win is almost always a mistake. 
• And why those you think are you competing with you likely are not. 
• When to time out. 
• How do know what is in them? 
• How to know if it makes sense to pursue the next milestone. 
• How to live with time outs. 
• Why Winning does not matter, but, if ego matters, 
• How to win
• How to play
• Token based
• Railroad / tax / community chest based
• Four Corners 
• Currencies
• Stickers
• Dice
• Cash
• How to not lose opportunities. Levers you can pull. 
• At least two accounts
• 
  
• Shut down relationships and partnerships. 
• Altruism
• Pay it forward
• How it self servers. 
• The ego/feelings. 
• The connections
• Cash
• Why it is good 
• Why should you allow it to be heisted. 
• Shut downs
• Why they are OK
• Friends List
• Why they are OK, the more the merrier. 
• Community Chest
• Why you should open immediately 
• Partner Challenge
• How to finish 
• Required ethics for success. 
• Who should you "help" first? Those you cannot communicate with. 
• How many should you take? 
• Full Carry and why it is mutually beneficial. 
• Levers. I need dice. What do I do? What did I do that got me in this pickle?
• Spending Cash I should have saved. 
• Cash Spending
• Heists e
• Board Rush
• Landmark Rush
• Wheel Boost
• Sticker Boom
• The Vault
• When to open. 
• Why opening early throws away your stickers. 
• Why opening at the next sticker boom is useless and throws away your stickers. 
• Multiple accounts
• The best options: 2Accounts
• The worst Options. Blue Stacks. 
• Golden Blitz
• What people want
• When it begins
• In the middle
• When it ends. 
• What I think is a fair approach. 
• Altruism
• Mutual benefits 
• trading relationships
• antidote to greed: you have completed your prestige album. Why are  you trying to complete another? 
• Ethics
• Transparency and honesty
• Admission of mistakes and making it right. 
• The benefits to you. You don't want to have to remember something or feel like you are going to get caught. It is not worth it. Feel good about yourself and others will feel good about you. 
• Reputation. 
• Always look for win/win. You can win and the other person lose, but that hurts you also in other ways, trading partnerships, reputation, and the chance that someone will take care of you in the future when you need it most. 
• Ethics are good for others, feel good and are also self-serving. 
• References
• Contacts