What is in it

Most Monopoly Deal advice is folklore passed around a kitchen table. This book is what happens when you build an exact copy of the game, play it more than thirty million times under the official rules, and test every piece of advice the internet has ever given — 717 claims, 393 of them testable. Most of it loses. Here is what wins.

• The single most-repeated piece of Monopoly Deal advice on the internet, and why it costs you 14 points of win probability every time you follow it.
• The card you must play the moment you draw it, that almost nobody plays right.
• Why the player who goes first wins 57% of two-player games, and the one-sentence fix for your regular game.
• The “safe” habit of banking money before laying property, and the exact amount at which it turns into a losing habit. It is lower than you think.
• With one card left in your hand and a play remaining: the counter-intuitive rule that is right every time, even when the card is a Just Say No.
• The worst Forced Deal mistake we solved, where giving the right card instead of the wrong one turned 42% into 79%. It is about what you give, not what you take.
• Whom to charge rent: the one seat at the table that should get your rent cards first. It is not the leader.
• The free move you are allowed to make before charging rent that most tables never use. Worth two points at a full table, and nothing head to head.
• Why “wait for the perfect moment” is the most expensive Deal Breaker strategy there is, and the one situation where holding it is right.
• The two-card combination that wins the game outright when you have two sets down, which even a computer that beat every public Monopoly Deal bot was missing until we found it.
• Why card counting is worth about a point, and the thing that is worth seven at a four-player table.
• Two-player and five-player Deal are different games. The two playbooks, and where they contradict each other.
• When you are behind: the three plays that flip a losing position more often than any other. When you are ahead: the one thing to stop doing.
• What Hasbro has actually ruled, by date, on the rules your table argues about, and the finding that none of them changes who wins.

Free with the book

Every chapter ends with a code that opens its extras here: the full experiment tables, the complete catalogue of tested claims, decision tables by standing and player count, and the coach that reads your table. None of it is behind a purchase.

Today's puzzle Your coach Every experiment The paper

How it was built

An exact engine for the printed 106-card game at two to five players, cross-checked against an independent engine written by someone else. A folk player coded from the community's own advice. A harness that turned that advice into rules and played each one for forty thousand games at every table size. A policy evolved by nothing but winning. The code and the data are public at github.com/AnthonyDavidAdams/mdeal, and the method is written up in the paper.

Reviewing the book, or writing about the research? The press page has cover art, the numbers with their sample sizes, and a contact address.