When I was younger my brother and I would often spend the weekend nights at my grandparent's house. I always looked forward to being able to spend the time with them, as a little kid I enjoyed the excitement of being away from my parent and home. I was excited when my parents would tell me that I was going to be spending the night there, because that meant seeing their dog, milkshakes, pancakes when I woke up, and of course my favorite, playing Monopoly.

Now that I am grown up and not over my grandparents house all the time, I hardly get to play my favorite board game. It seems that the "cool thing" to do is hate on Monopoly, the most common reason I hear from my family or friends is "the game takes too long."

The most extreme example of this is a 70-day straight game. That's not counting the thousands of unfinished Monopoly games that people simply just packed back up in their boxes without finishing.

So, why do many games not get finished or even started? Time. But why is time such a problem? After all, the game if played correctly, can easily be completed in two hours. The reason for the games extending an obnoxious amount of time is the game is not being played correctly.

Everyone who plays Monopoly with others know depending on where you play and who you play with there may be different house rules. These rules are not in the official instructions for the game, but people often add them so the game can be played to their liking. There is nothing wrong with adding house rules, I play with house rules, but you have to be careful because they are the reason a game can be slowed down.

I can think of a whole book of examples of what slows Monopoly down but for all our sakes, I'll limit to what I believe are the top three reasons.

1. Property Buying

One of the most common house rules is when you go around the board if you land on a property and do not want to buy it yourself people just use it as a free space and move on until someone who wants to buy it lands on it. I hate being the bearer of bad news, but this is not the proper way to play. It adds time and in my opinion it takes some element of fun out of the game.

What fun does this take out you ask, well it takes out the fun of an auction. I enjoy the fun and challenge of bidding up your friends while playing or trying to acquire the property for yourself in some master plan to get the first monopoly and start building houses.

2. Free Parking

The beloved safe space you hope to land on instead of those pesky hotels. When you land on the space, you take a sigh of relief while you are reaching towards the pile of cash in the middle of the board that you can claim as your own. Wait, what, there's nothing there?

That's right, putting money for collecting upon landing on Free Parking is a house rule that only extends the game. The point of Monopoly is to bankrupt the competition, if you are about to run out of money then collecting the jackpot is nice.

However, it just keeps players alive longer and if you are looking for a faster way to play Monopoly I would recommend eliminating this rule. Personally, I play with the jackpot and don't think it really effects anything because once hotels are built the amount of the jackpot isn't all that much compared to the cost of landing on a hotel.

3. Attitude

This one isn't really a rule, but an attitude of some of the players. Some people take more risks than others and this can be the case in Monopoly as well. Some people are risk takers and have no problems engaging others in trades, while others are more conservative and are hesitant to make deals.

First of all Monopoly is a game, I say go for it, take the risk, make a deal and try to win, if you don't then oh well, it's just a game after all. But the real reason you shouldn't be conservative on the trade front is it only delays the game if people are unable to get a monopoly and bankrupt the other players. Sure, you can be conservative on the trade front if you already have a monopoly and are tying to hurt your competition.

Fortunately for me, a group of my friends enjoy playing it so whenever we are all home from school we get together and can finish a game in less than two hours. Hopefully, this article has showed you ways your friends can cut back on the time it takes to play Monopoly or has given you ideas on how to alter other rules to make the game run more efficiently. Now, let's get out there and start rolling those dice.