It starts out like any other night of family-friendly fun with the casual suggestion of a game of Monopoly. Excitement ensues, a themed game board is acquired, teams are selected (if you're playing with a larger group), and the customary $1500 is distributed to each. At this point, as is tradition, a copious amount of trash-talking is dished out. In a game that often emulates the most sinister elements of capitalism, the question is begged, what could possibly go wrong?

The game begins and things are looking pretty civil- or at least so far. A few properties have been acquired and perhaps a house or two has been bought. Suddenly, Suzy A. has become livid. Bobby B., you see, has just landed on her property and slyly passed the dice along to the next player in an attempt to skip out on paying the rent. Rookie mistake, Bobby. Suzy isn't about that. Not. One. Bit. Everyone around the board is looking at you to pay up, Bobby.

Now he's forking over that cash along with twelve years of summer camp bonding and trust. Oh, the dangers of Monopoly. It gets worse, though. Suzy is plotting revenge in the worst of ways. She sees that orange property that Bobby has been sitting on for a few rounds. When the dice come back around, Suzy does something truly maniacal. She trades her orange property to Jenny C. for a much less valuable yellow property. Now Jenny has two orange properties. Why would Suzy do this? Everyone knows that Jenny doesn't like Bobby. He's never getting that full set of orange properties now. The wheel of fate has come back around, and Bobby can't believe it. He is not amused.

And so the game proceeds, with each player looking for an opportunity to get back at one another, forgetting all notions of friendship. There is shouting. The banker is accused of being a corrupt sell-out. Underhanded alliances are made and exposed. The game just keeps getting dirtier and dirtier. Somehow Bobby's mom got dragged into it, proving there is no such thing as an innocent bystander in Monopoly. By the two-hour marker, this game is looking like a precursor to a third world war. Players are more concerned with screwing each other over than they are with winning.

All the while, no one had been paying attention to Justin C., who had quietly been acquiring all of the green properties. While everyone was bickering, Justin had purchased hotels for each green tile. Then, Suzy, relieved to have just escaped the "go to jail" tile, fell right onto Pacific Avenue and about $1000 of debt. Boom. Done. Bobby was quickly felled when he rolled a double six and landed on one of the two utilities owned by Justin, amounting to a $240 bill. Bobby had wasted all his money on sabotaging Suzy, and thus was eliminated by this. Jenny had rage-quit the game two rounds earlier when she landed in jail for the third time in a row. Thus Justin was crowned the winner.

What's the takeaway here? The Monopoly board is a graveyard for friendships. If you have to play Monopoly, though, be like Justin. Play it cool, wait until the very end to screw your friends over, and make it count.