[Sohcahtoa82]

> If the game hits a lock due to no one trading and no one getting a natural monopoly, the game can go pretty much indefinitely.

Yeah, I once played with someone whose strategy was "Never trade". In an act of desperation, I offered him $1,000 for a light-blue property, and he refused. The game lasted for nearly an hour before I quit out of extreme boredom.

A typical 4-player game of Monopoly should only last around 30 minutes, but people often have terrible strategies or play with ridiculous house rules that constantly inject money into the game, prolonging it. A lot of people don't even know that the house rule they're playing is even a house rule because it's what they were taught when they first learned to play.

[JoshTriplett]

> Yeah, I once played with someone whose strategy was "Never trade".

That's the right strategy for strong play. You should never trade property for mere money. If you absolutely have to, trade property for property if the trade gives you a monopoly, or if (in a more-than-two-player game) doing so gives you a net increase in the number of groups for which you hold at least one property (so you can block anyone from getting a monopoly in those groups without trading with you).

It's not an especially fun strategy, either for you or the people you're playing with.

[Gibbon1]

My friends and I tried the rule that you could loan other players money. We had to stop playing after that.