“An average game lasts 2.5 hours”

Cam and Melissa co-opted movie-night last night by inviting Jeff, Kemp and I over for a game of Monopoly. But not just any old game of Monopoly. Dot-com Monopoly! Every square was the name of some dot-com company back in 2001. It was in both French and English, as he bought it while still in Canada.
Being that it’s been something like 12 years since I played last — and even then, I never finished — all I could remember of monopoly was that it took a long time to play. So when Cam invited me, he was spot on to explain right up front that it could be played quickly.
So it just sorta figures the game would end up lasting 5 hours. As Kemp observed before we started: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game of Monopoly end. Usually a cat or dog comes along and wrecks the board.” Not this time, but things started off very slowly, with no one of the five of us obtaining all properties of a certain colour (and hence, no-one being able to develop the land with houses). It wasn’t until Cam, Kemp and I negotiated a three-way property trade (with me trading Monster.com to Kemp for Lycos, and then Cam trading one of the — Utilities? not sure — for Kemp’s Monster.com) that the game really got anywhere. Jeff would bankrupt first, then me, then Melissa, then finally, it came down to just Cam and Kemp, each with a single monster-sized property. Eventually Kemp would destroy Cam, doing so by avoiding Cam’s properties by one or two squares, and landing himself in jail instead. Eventually Cam landed on Kemp’s property (the so-called “Mr. Kempie’s Neighbourhood”), the 20-second stay at which cost him 1700 (million) dollars. The second time it happened, that was all-she-wrote for Cam. Kemp ended the game with 8.5 billion in 500-million dollar bills, and probably another billion in smaller currency.
Indeed, by the end I had been watching for an hour with heavy eyes. But the game was a lot of fun, and wasn’t nearly as complicated as I remember. I’d love to try out the short version, which Cam tells me plays out much more quickly. Maybe it would end before 1:30am? Hee.