Ever since McDonalds started their Monopoly promotion, I’ve been a fan of McDonalds every time they run the promotion. Like the McRib promotion and the Whataburger A1 Thick and Hearty promotion, I tend to visit these establishments more often during promotional periods. That’s the whole point of the promotion. They want to sell more burgers, not give away money. And I realize the odds are long, but I get the thrill (minor as it may be) of pulling that ticket off to see what I got.
In any case, McDonalds has this online Monopoly game as well. You get a 10 digit code on the bottom of the game piece that you punch in to play. If it’s valid, you’re allowed to "roll the dice" to advance your token around the board.
Now, I’m a Monopoly Crack Addict, so I’ve invited the family to McDonalds, bought McDonalds for other people, and even raided discarded cups for game pieces (it’s true, I admit it). In all, I’ve played about 40 pieces on the online game, and recieved about 10 doubles allowing another roll. Naturally, I didn’t think until today to record my roll results, more is the pity.
Now, I rarely expect anything to come from the actual collecting of the game pieces. Odds are in the millions to one range for ever winning those (not that I don’t keep them just in case). But this online game actually interested me, for I am also a Real Monopoly Addict. I’m the guy that refuses to play any gimmick set (Star Wars Monopoly!) out of superstition that the property MUST be named "Oriental Avenue" to actually have an effect. I’m the guy who counts with the banker to make sure correct bills are passed around. I’m the guy that moans about cash on free parking. I’m the guy that once played 4 hours with nothing but $50 and 10 mortgaged properties because the point of the game is to Monopolize me, not bore me to tears! In other words, if it was the McDonalds "Sorry" promotion, or the McDonalds "Snakes and Ladders" Promotion, I wouldn’t be impressed. But this is McDonalds French Fries AND Reading Railroad.
In any case, after all the codes I have entered, this is my game board:
There are two anomalies readily apparent in this board layout:
- I own 3 of the 4 railroads, 2 out of 3 of every property block of three, 1 out of 2 of every property block of two, except…
- I only own 1 out of three of the light blue block.
In my years of experience playing Monopoly, I’ve never seen a board look like this, even with multiple tokens, after fifty die tosses. There is not one single complete block anywhere on the board. As I have to go through the hassle of punching in a 10 digit code, they’ve allowed me to get almost complete blocks but never actually complete one. It’s like the meatspace ticket game… you always almost seem to have a block, but never get the right piece to finish it. The two other pieces are very common, the completion piece is the rare bit.
It’s become quite obvious that the dice are not fair. (Again, I wish I had a log of dice throws to analyze).
Before I made a fool out of myself (but AFTER I tossed 50 pairs of dice), I decided to read the official rules to see if I could find any mention of fair dice. For I expect when I’m told to "roll the dice" without conditions, that they are fair dice (unless I’m playing against a guy on a table in an alley in New York with three cups and a ball barring on the side). Sure enough, I find this in the rules (Summary below blockquote):
6. ONLINE GAME PRIZES / ODDS / DETAILS. The time of successful Code submission will determine whether a participant is a potential winner in the Online Game of a prize. The first person to execute a successful Code submission that is received and recorded by the Promotion computer on or after a randomly designated potential winning time (each a "Winning Time") may see their game token automatically move to a potential winning space on the virtual MONOPOLY Game Board. Prizes in the Online Game are randomly seeded to be available to be won at designated Winning Times throughout each Day during the Online Game Play Period based on projected traffic patterns. As a result, more of some prizes for any Day are allocated between 12:00:01 p.m. and 7:59:59 p.m. when user activity is expected to be the highest. Twenty eight (28) $100,000 daily prizes are seeded online 10/7/08 – 11/3/08. One per Day (12:00:00 (midnight) to 11:59:59 pm ET). The odds for winning any prize in the Online Game depend on the random Winning Time selected for that prize to be available to be won, and the time any participant’s play is received and recorded by the Promotion computer. For Online Prizes (excluding the $100,000 daily prize and prizes corresponding to the Community Chest or GO positions on the Game Board), if no plays at the designated Winning Time are received and recorded by the Promotion computer, the prize will remain available until it is awarded or the next Winning Time occurs, whichever is sooner. If the prize corresponds to the $100,000 daily prize, Community Chest or GO positions on the Game Board, it will expire if no plays are received and recorded by the Promotion Computer at the designated Winning Time. Daily, hourly and quarter hourly prizes may be available at any time during the applicable Day, hour or quarter hour and, once won, will not be available again until the next Day (for daily prizes) or hour (for hourly prizes) or quarter hour (for quarter hourly prizes).
It doesn’t matter what the die roll comes up to; the bit that counts is the time that the correct code entry is made. If you make a correct code entry at the time that a prize is to be won, your token will be advanced to the winning game location. The rules state that we "may see [the] game token automatically move to a potential winning space on the virtual MONOPOLY Game Board." The game is actually smarter than that, and I witnessed this, but didn’t realize it at the time.
I got a string of four doubles, which ended on a Chance? space (earning me a whopping 25 Coke points, which will get me a free 20oz bottle of coke if I jump through all their hoops to redeem the points). There are two discrepancies here:
- Monopoly rules require you to Go To Jail if you roll three doubles in a row. You don’t even get to complete the move of the third double.
- The odds of rolling a single double is about 17%. 17% of 2 D6 rolls should end up with doubles. I forget how you calculate the odds of a series of die rolls, but the odds of rolling 4 sets of doubles in a row as one move seem qite high. High enough that I’d expect a more lucrative landing spot. This is of course perception, but if the odds are in my favor to roll 4 times, I wonder why my luck is so bad with every other roll?
Simple fact was that my die roll "won" me 25 coke points, and the game had to get my token to a Chance space. So I got an awesome run of dice to little end.
I’m just a bit upset and wish I would have read the official rules instead of assuming that I knew the game mechanics because it said to "roll the dice" (a randomizing instrument) on a simulated game board that looked familiar. Then I would have expected unfair dice, and the actual landing on any property that didn’t win me something wouldn’t have excited me. About the only thing I have to look forward to (crack addicts know crack is bad for them but they still keep going for another hit…) is that by the phasing "potential winning space" above, the game still requires you to have a property set to win the game. So my 50+ rolls have not been for naught, they’ve just paved the way where I can win in the future, before the game ends.
However, I’ll be modifying my strategy. Instead of playing all my pieces at once (a strategy that anyone expecting fair dice would think works in their favor, but which (according to the timed-win-hold-prize-until-won) strategy is actually a loser), I’ll space my game pieces out throughout the day, at random intervals. I’m not a game theory person, so I might not be getting it right, but it seems to me that you have a better chance of landing on a randomly chosen time by spreading out your times than by bunching them up.
Then again, anything with randomization has non-intuitive outcomes. Hence why Casinos make such grand profits.
(It still has a few glitches; I’m working on it.)
