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Games people play

Pandora Melly
Saturday 29 November 1997 00:02 GMT
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James Dyson, 50, inventor and manufacturer of the Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner

I play Monopoly, but without much enjoyment. It's a bit tedious going round the board and acquiring things. More fun when everybody's going bankrupt and you start borrowing money or negotiating properties with people in lieu of rent. When you're doing something with another person, it stops being a matter of luck. I'd like to get straight into that, and forgo throwing the dice and moving round the board.

I think Monopoly is a game you play in your late teens and early twenties, and it always mirrors later life in some way. There are people who haven't looked at the long term. They accumulate, then run out of cash because they haven't bought any buildings, and they land on people who've mortgaged themselves to the hilt to build hotels.

Some people like trains and always buy the stations, but they're just being romantic, because it's an hotel on the red or yellow squares which will crucify the other players.

I've always thought it's a mistake to buy Mayfair and Park Lane because they're frightfully expensive and you've only got two to land on. Whereas if you've blocked off a corner with the red and orange sets, people will land on you every single time.

That's the fun of it for me: getting the strategy right and thinking for the long term. I've always done that, and I'll mortgage myself to the hilt in order to get something valuable. The stations will get you a little money in the short term, but the winners are always the people with the swanky hotels.

In a way, I dread playing. I have to make investments and negotiate with people in my everyday life. In the evenings, the last thing I want is a kind of repetition with Monopoly.

Loose Monopoly money may be swept up with a Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner. Read all about it, and its inventor, in James Dyson's "Against the Odds" (Orion Books, pounds 18.99).

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