"As a longtime judge of Monopoly championships, I've figured out a prime reason for the game's staying power. For most of us, it provides one of life's first opportunities to handle money and practice the art of negotiation. Monopoly puts you through a financial wringer without real-world loss. Once you get the hang of how to win it, you can apply the game's "secrets of success" to real life—sometimes quite literally, always in principle."
Philip E. Orbanes is an American board game designer, author, founding partner and former president of Winning Moves Games in Danvers, Massachusetts. Orbanes is a graduate (CIT'70) of the Case Institute of Technology (now Case Western Reserve University). He was a Senior Vice President for Research and Development at Parker Brothers until the 1990s. Orbanes has also served as Chief Judge at U.S. National and World Monopoly tournaments. Orbanes has written three books about the board game Monopoly (his book The Monopoly Companion has been printed in three distinct editions). His Monopoly: The World’s Most Famous Game and How It Got That Way is consider the definitive reference book.[1] He also wrote a book about the history of Parker Brothers from the 1880s to the start of the 21st century. His book about the card game Rook, however, is only found packaged along with the game's cards, published by Winning Moves Games. Orbanes also authored articles for The Games Journal on acquiring the rights to out of print games, and the card game, Canasta. [Source: WikipediA]
Mr. Orbanes was the Kelvin Smith Library's Homecoming event speaker in October 2016. In discussions that the library would be starting game nights, Mr. Orbanes so generously provided board games and other games that were used as start-up for our initial board game nights!
Since 2017, game nights have been held four times each semester and the April game night has included over 40 or more CWRU perspective students.