'It's just chance,' says student crowned Australian Monopoly champion
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Version 0 of 1. A student from Brisbane has been crowned Australia’s Monopoly champion after beating 23 other players from around the country. After revealing that the secret to winning the famous board game is to buy up the orange and red properties, Tony Shaw said he felt “giddy like a schoolgirl” following his win at Sydney’s Justice & Police Museum. Shaw, a 26-year-old business and media communications student who had never played Monopoly competitively, won a nail-bitin, hour-long final against three other opponents. The climactic game began with a tense 40-minute standoff, Shaw said, in which no player had a full set of any value. This was broken when he traded in five property cards for just one card: Trafalgar Square. With a full set of red-coloured properties and more than a handful of luck, Shaw was able to dominate the board and blast his way to the winner’s podium. “I wasn’t expecting to come and win! It was just a bit of a laugh. I thought it would be a lot of fun and it was,” said Shaw, who was a wildcard entrant to the event. Earlier in the tournament, a two-decade rivalry between two former champions saw a judge conclude that one of the players, who had failed to qualify to the final, deliberately sabotaged his last heat in order to bring down the other. While there was no cash prize, Shaw will be flown to Macau, China to compete against 24 other nations in the world championships come September. Australia has only once held the world title, when Greg Jacobs from Perth took out the prize in 1983. The former world champion’s day job? He was a real estate agent. The game has taught Shaw “there’s bad winners, as well as bad losers”. In recent practice games with his flatmates, he said they often enjoyed giving “blow-by-blow recaps of how they won”. Shaw said he was the “only person who brought food” to the tournament and perhaps this gave him the winning edge. “I was eating protein bars and drinking Up and Go.” He had never had a favourite figurine, until this tournament. “Now it’s the cat. I won my first game with it, so I kept choosing it for the rest of the day.” Winning Monopoly is “definitely mostly luck” with a player’s fate determined by the roll of the dice, Shaw said. “You’ve got to know what you’re doing, but at the end of the day I got very lucky.” Here are five Monopoly tips from the 2015 champion of Australia, Tony Shaw: Buy anything you land on and put your eggs in one basket Shaw said the addition of a “speed dice” radically changed the game of Monopoly, and it’s become more important than ever to quickly snap up properties and strive for a full set. “Get almost any set you can except for the cheapest one [brown]. Once you have a full set mortgage everything you’ve got to put houses on them.” Railways are good early in the game Especially if you can get all four, Shaw said railways are a quick way to generate $200. “This isn’t enough to win, but it can be a real bonus when you’re trying to buy up properties.” Utilities, on the hand, don’t make enough money to be considered valuable. The orange and red are the best sets Which sets are the best value for money? “The orange and red by far”, Shaw said. “Because players are more likely to land on them after jail, and you go to jail a lot.” Having the dark blue set is “better than nothing”, but there was a smaller chance of players landing on them than other sets, he added. Sometimes you want to stay in jail Once all the properties have been purchased, you’ll want to try and stay in jail, Shaw said. “It’s absolutely the safest place on the board.” Don’t reveal how much money you have Shaw said according to official rules, no player is obligated to tell the others how much cash they have. “Mixing your money up makes it harder for other players to count.” |