PLAYING THE GAME. The deck of cards has a full set of individual properties that you can trade or discard after the initial deal. Although you don't roll dice, you can obtain additional cards and properties by drawing new cards as part of your turn -- or you can pick up the discards from your oppononents. There is no concept of 'rent', but the special cards (chance cards, the house/hotel cards, and the 'token' cards) allow you to accumulate the points that you need to accelerate your earnings to the $10,000 winning hand.

There is strategy involved with the game -- particularly around the deciaion of when you want to lay down your cards and managing the discard strategy. This makes it a reasonable thinking/educational game. We've played a few times as a complete family and have found that our 8 1/2 year old can generally think through the consequences well enough to be reasonable successful any given hand. I would question whether this is appropriate for any kids younger than that even though this is rated as being appropriate for 7 and up.

13 of 13 found the following review helpful:

More fun than the board game... and quicker!  Aug 01, 2000

We all love the thrill of getting a really powerful monopoly n MONOPOLY. but it can take an hour to get that far. In this cool card game, you can build several powerful monopolies in 45 minutes. The 60 cards are great - their graphics look dimensional and each depicts a property, token, house or hotel. There are some special cards as well that affect play (like the really good, or potentially really bad, "Chance" card). On each deal, you try to draw and trade your way to a complete "hand" of 20 cards. ("Trading" really means exchanging cards with the trading piles that each player builds during play). You need at least one monopoly (2-3 property cards), plus houses and a hotel (up to 5 more) plus token cards. The house cards are numbered, so you'll need a 1st house card before a 2nd house card does you any good. Likewise, you need all 4 house cards before a hotel card counts. The more built up your monopoly, the more its worth, just like in the board games. Token cards double your score. It's as if each "lands" on your monopoly. If you complete your hand first, you get a bonus of five cards from the draw pile and they might add further to the final value of your hand. How do you score? You get paid in Monopoly money (including new $1,000 bills) according to your score. Accumulate $10,000 first and you win. It usually takes a few hands. Oh, the "Chance" card? There are 2 of them. They're wild (and very good) if you complete your hand first. If not, a Chance card you hold wipes out your score for the round. Ouch! But it makes the game really exciting.

If you've played Monopoly, you'll really enjoy the portability, fast pace, and true-to-life Monopoly fun of this card game. - A Fan -

10 of 11 found the following review helpful:

Winning Moves is making some Winning Moves  Oct 12, 2003
By David M. Wilson "the preacher"
I'm a huge gamer and love all sorts of games. Recently, at our game club, someone suggested playing this card game as a filler game while we waited for other players to arrive. I agreed, although reluctant. After all, how could anyone make a true card game out of Monopoly? Needless to say, I came away rather impressed. In fact, the next meeting, I asked to play it again while we waited.

The Monopoly themed rummy type game did not work well in a five player session, I don't recommend it for that. I can also see how a 2 player version would be quite boring, but 3-4 and you've got a game worth playing.

Players must discard (in front of them) one card per turn. These are done in order. On a turn, a player must draw a card from the deck, or trade cards to get one of the cards in front of another player. If a player wants the bottom discard of a three card discard pile, he must give the other player three cards.

When a player has collected monopolies and bonus cards as sets, he can then "go out."

We also did not use the provided money, but rather just kept score. However, I can see how kids would prefer to have the play money in front of them to keep track of the score.

David "the preacher" Wilson

10 of 11 found the following review helpful:

Great Adaptation of the Longest Board Game Ever!  May 23, 2003
By Kelly A. Garbato "Go then, there are other worlds than these."
This condensed version of Monopoly might actually be better than the original. Playing time is usually less than 15 minutes per hand, and there's no cumbersome board to deal with. The spirit of Monopoly (capitali$m) remains intact, but the game goes much quicker - you don't need to set aside a whole weekend to actually determine a winner. I bought this last week and have hardly been able to put it down. If you buy one game, this should be it!

6 of 6 found the following review helpful:

Fun to take on trips!  Jul 29, 2003

We recently played the Monopoly card game on a vacation cruise we took. We didn't use the play money that came with the game, just kept a written score. The game was quick and very fun! Easy to pack too! We came right home and ordered our own copy of the game. We would recommend this game to all!

See all 17 customer reviews on Amazon.com