You're Playing Monopoly All Wrong | HuffPost Impact

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A typical Monopoly game is meant to last around 60 to 90 minutes. So why does it always take so freakin' long?

Because we don’t actually read the rules, and because basically all of us are playing the game the wrong way, according to a 2005 blog post by Johnny Nexus that’s been going viral and getting picked up by the likes of BuzzFeed.

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So what's are we doing wrong? Whenever someone lands on a property and doesn’t choose to buy it, we're simply moving on to the next player's turn, rather than auctioning that property off. Duh!

From Hasbro’s official rules:

Whenever you land on an unowned property you may buy that property from the Bank at its printed price. You receive the Title Deed card showing ownership; place it face up in front of you. If you do not wish to buy the property, the Banker sells it at auction to the highest bidder

Played correctly, the game goes a lot faster and relies far more on how players interact, according to Nexus. (It also sounds a lot more fun.)

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One wonders how those participating in the longest Monopoly game ever played -- which lasted 70 days, according to Hasbro -- would feel about this revelation. Or what about the four Pittsburgh college students who allegedly played a game that lasted five days in 1961? What of them and their lives?

(For the record, The Guinness World Book of Records puts the longest board game-playing session of any game at just 61 hours.)

Yet maybe, just maybe, the quiet death of the auction rule was a bit more intentional than we think. As Nexus points out in his blog post, Monopoly has been played by families with small kids for generations, and the rule's omission may well have kept many of them from unwanted confrontations (read: family fights).

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(Hat tip: Yahoo)

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