World champion Monopoly winner crowned at Caesars in Vegas

The top Monopoly player was crowned at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Thursday. Bjorn Halvard Knappskog, 19, from Norway won because he owned some prime real-estate that his final opponents could not afford to pay rent on when their dice rolls left them on two high-cost properties. When 25-year-old Geoff Christopher landed on Pacific and North Carolina Avenue consecutively he could not afford to pay a total of $1,600 in Monopoly dollars, which gave the 2009 World Champion title to Halvard. Today, Monopoly is the best-selling board game in the world, according to Hasbro. It is sold in 103 countries and is produced in 37 languages. Monopoly was created in 1934 during the Great Depression by Charles B. Darrow of Germantown, Pennsylvania, who introduced the game to executives at Parker Brothers. They actually rejected the game on the basis of 52 design errors. He then, with the help of a friend, produced 5,000 hand made games and sold them to a department store in Philadelphia and the people loved the game. Its popularity grew so fast that he could not keep up with the demand so he went back to Parker Brothers in 1935. Today about 500 million people of have played Monopoly and is the number one board game in the world. Over 200 million Monopoly games have been sold worldwide. More than 5 billion little green houses have been built since 1935. The longest Monopoly game in history lasted 70 straight days. Monopoly is now online and you can play on the Harbro website or you can start you own tournament and download a kit to get going. Knappskog won $20,580 for becoming the Monopoly World Champion which reflects the total amount of money available in the standard Monopoly game bank. In an article from the UK Guardian Knappskog said, “I was really happy to be here whether I won or lost, but I’m also very happy to have won. I’m the most surprised you could ever be. I think this was a really good final. It was the best game I played in the whole tournament.”