How to Play by the Rules of Monopoly

Check to see that you have all the equipment. This includes a board, two dice, tokens, houses and 12 hotels. In addition, there are 16 chances and 16 community chest cards as well as 28 deed cards. Instructions should be in the box also.

Set up the game. Shuffle the cards for Chance and Community Chest and place them face down on the spots where they go on the board. Each person playing gets $1500 in cash: two $500's, two $100's, two $50's, six $20's, five $10's, five $5's, and five $1's. Pick a token and place it on the "Go" space. Roll the dice to see who goes first. The player with the highest number goes first.

Select one person to be the banker. The banker collects the money you pay to the bank, provides change to players and sells the deeds, houses and hotels.

Roll the dice and move your token the required number of spaces. Follow the instructions on the space you land. If you hit chance or community chest, pick a card and do what it says. This could be "Go to Jail," "Go" or a specific property. Alternatively, it may say you have won money or have to pay it. If you land on a property that nobody owns you can buy it. If somebody owns it, you need to pay the player who owns it the amount of rent the deed specifies.

Get out of jail by one of three methods. You can pay $50 on your next turn and get out, you can roll doubles and get out or you can use a "Get Out of Jail Free" card. However, you can only stay in jail for three turns. On the third turn you must pay the $50 to get out.

Land on "Free Parking." Although the official rules of Monopoly say that nothing happens when you land on this space, many people use it to collect money. The way you do this is that whenever you have to pay money to the bank for income taxes, to get out of jail or for any penalties, rather than paying the bank this money it goes into a pot in the middle of the board. When a player lands on "Free Parking," he collects this money.

Buy houses or hotels when you get a monopoly. A monopoly is when you have all the properties of one color. For example, "Boardwalk" and "Park Place" are a monopoly because they are dark blue. You have to buy houses equally. You can't buy two houses and place them both on "Boardwalk." One has to go on "Boardwalk" and the other on "Park Place." After you have bought four houses for each of the properties, you can than buy hotels. You can only put one hotel on each property.

Collect rent from the properties you own. Every time a player lands on a property you own, you collect rent. The amount depends on several things. If you have just one of the color group, you collect the rent that is on the deed. If you own all the properties in the color group, then you collect double the rent that is on the deed. If you have houses or hotels on the property, then you collect the rent that is on the deed for the number of houses you have on the property.

Win the game. When all the other players go bankrupt, you win the game. However, there are other ways to win. You can set a time limit and the player with the most money wins. Alternatively, when the first player goes bankrupt, whoever has the most money wins. If you are playing the game and counting who has the most money, you need to include properties, houses, hotels and get out of jail free cards.