Tips and Tricks for Winning at Monopoly, Scrabble and Jenga

As the holidays arrive, so do the inevitable holiday gatherings with family and friends. While seeing the loved ones certainly brings a level of joy and excitement, too often the initial excitement passes and events take a turn toward the "What do we do now?" direction.

Enter family game time. These are the moments that games like Monopoly, Scrabble and Jenga were made for, to fill in the lulls that would otherwise leave monotonous gaps in what should be times of fun and fellowship.

If you're one of those people who are headed to a gathering this year, holiday or otherwise, and have a competitive chip on your shoulder to go along with your dedication to family and friends, here are a few tips for how to win a some of the more popular household games.

Monopoly

Lifestyle site Lifehacker offers some simple advice on how to get an edge on what may be the most recognizable board game in history in their post "Winning Monopoly strategies." In the post, "board game expert" Erik Arneson offers some valuable tips, including the importance of knowing the odds (did you know, for instance, that Short Line Railroad is the least valuable railroad to own because it is visited least often?).

Also valuable is Arneson's suggestion to get to three houses as quickly as possible when building on a property, as the rent on Illinois Avenue, for example, jumps from $300 to $750 when you have two versus three houses built on it, respectively.

The Lifehacker post links to another valuable post on the subject titled "How to Win at Monopoly," posted at About.com and including a number of additional tips and tricks, including "Get out of jail quickly early in the game, even if you have to pay the $50. Later on, when moving around the board is more dangerous, stay in jail as long as you can."

Scrabble

In a feature called "How to Win at Everything" from the October issue of Men's Health magazine, writer Joe Kita gives advice on how to win at, well, just about everything, including games of Scrabble and Jenga.

For Scrabble, Kita suggests using the words "za" and "qi," words that are, respectively, slang for pizza and a variant of "chi," the Asian life force. As the letters "z" and "q" are among the hardest letters to actually use in the game, they also are the two highest scoring letters in the game, garnering 10 points apiece.

As Kita notes in his article, you can score big using them in a location that grants you double or triple points for the letter or word.

Jenga

To win at Jenga, Kita advises paying heed to a little-known fact about the blocks the game is played with: They're actually made in three subtly different thicknesses.

"By tapping different blocks with your fingertips," Kita writes, quoting Matt Donie, a manager of design and development for Hasbro Games, which manufactures the products, "you can eventually identify the thinner (and looser) blocks. Remove them from the tower to lower your chances of knocking it over."

Whether you play or not at your holiday gatherings this season, remember: It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game. Though if you follow the tips and tricks noted above, how you play the game may be the key to you winning after all.