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.