Monopolistic pursuits

This is my 100th post. I was hoping to be able to write something poignant, witty, thought-provoking, and/or otherwise brilliant but I'm too tired. Instead you get monopoly.

I stayed at Liz's last night and we stayed up till 4,15 am playing Monopoly: Stock Market Edition. I lost abysmally. We're talking millions of pounds here. It was pitiful really. In my defense, I think my tragic loss was due not only to my abject lack of strategy and technique, but also to the fact that Liz is a very skilled player. After growing up playing monopoly with her two brothers who lied, cheated, and took no prisoners in their monopolistic pursuits, she has developed a pretty savvy attitude towards monopoly. But mostly it was me.

Unlike regular monopoly, the stock market edition has companies in lieu of streets and offices in lieu of houses. What makes it really cool is that is has a little computer doo-dad that you use to do all the transactions on. So when you buy a company, you buy 5 shares. Each company has 9 share options, so by having 5 shares, you have the controlling interest. This way you can buy shares in companies that are run by opponents which serves to lower your rent when you land on them. It also means you can sell part of your company to the bank for some quick cash without forfeiting the entire company. The rent too is a little more complex than in the vanilla version, and a good deal steeper! Liz took pity on me waiving countless amounts of rent that I owed her, letting me move one more space than I should have in order to avoid landing on expensive companies, and forgoing purchases that would ultimately be costly to me. And I still lost!

This morning we had a rematch. I lost again in much the same fashion.