I’m a video game fan, and I’ve been one since I was tiny. During my life, I’ve owned an Atari 2600, a Nintendo Entertainment System, a Super Nintendo, a Sega Genesis, a Game Boy, a Game Boy Advance, a Nintendo 64, a PlayStation, a Game Cube, a Playstation 2, a Nintendo DS (and a DSi), and a Wii. It’s a hobby I’ve enjoyed pretty much my entire life, and I still enjoy it, even in my thirties.

About two years ago, I wrote an article detailing my Wii: how do I maximize my gaming dollars on it? This was a popular topic, one I’m often asked about by people my age who still want to play occasional video games but don’t want to break the bank. Many other readers have requested similar notes on a Nintendo DS, either for themselves or for a friend or a child.

What I’ve found is that for my gaming dollar, my Nintendo DSi is the best bargain I’ve yet found. The Nintendo DSi is a handheld console that easily fits in a pocket. Let’s walk through the details.

First, why a handheld console at all? If you’re a video game fan, why not buy an Xbox 360 or a Playstation 3? If you’re more into casual games, why not just play the games available on your cell phone?

The biggest factor that improves upon the consoles is portability, obviously. Most of the time, when I do actually play with my DSi, I’m out and about. I’ll play it on a long road trip. I’ll play it at the doctor’s office. I’ll play it whenever I’m in line. Although those situations make up the vast majority of my playing time, I can also play it at home on the couch if I so choose.

Why not just play the ones on the cell phones? Frankly, it’s the quality of the games. I’ve played a ton of different cell phone games and not many match up to the quality of even the worst games on the DS. The only cell phone that has even a few quality games is the iPhone, and if you’re looking at the iPhone because you want a cell phone that plays good games, it’s vastly cheaper to just get a low-end Verizon phone for your calls and a DSi for your games – and you’ll get both services better than you would with an iPhone.

Obviously, there is the option of simply not playing at all, which is completely worthwhile as well, but I’m fairly obviously writing to people who enjoy gaming and value it as a hobby.

Second, why a DSi instead of a DS Lite? A DS Lite is currently $40 less expensive, plus it has a slot that lets you play older Game Boy Advance titles – a feature that the DSi lacks. So why is a DSi a better value?

The biggest reason is the downloadable software. The DSi allows you to download very, very good games for just a few dollars each (more on them below), with more appearing all the time. Even better, you’re able to download two of them for free when you first get a DSi, and it comes with a free web browser, too (which I’m using in the picture at the top of this post).

The second reason is it functions as an mp3 player. All you need is an SD card loaded up with mp3s and headphones and the DSi functions as a portable music player – another solid argument for simply getting a dirt cheap cell phone in conjunction with this device.

The third reason is a bit of a knock against the old Advance games – the worthwhile games for the Advance are getting difficult to find. At the used game stores I frequent, it’s almost impossible to find any worthwhile Advance games for a reasonable price.

Finding a bargain on a DSi A DSi currently has a list price of $169.99. How can you shave a bit more off of that?

Suggestion one: trade in any older video games or consoles you don’t play with. I traded in my Nintendo DS Lite and several Advance games that I had thoroughly played to get my DSi for free. Another friend of mine traded in several old played-through games to get one. If you have any older games sitting around that you’ve already played through, gather them up, take them to the local gaming shop, and trade them in.

Suggestion two: wait for a sale on Amazon. If you’re interested, use this trick to automatically find a deal on a DSi at Amazon. You’ll have to be patient, but it’s a great way to dig up a deal.

Suggestion three: be patient. Do some comparison price searching yourself and decide if you really want one or not. Spending some time thinking about the purchase has a good chance of talking you out of it if you’re not truly interested.

Starting Out With a DSi
Unlike any other video game console I’ve ever tried, you can get quite a bit of enjoyment out of the DSi without buying anything else. Pick up the console, take it home, and fire it up. When you log onto the DSi Shop, you’ll automatically be given 1,000 free points, which you can use to download software. I strongly recommend spending those 1,000 points downloading the web browser, Art Style: Boxlife and Art Style: Pictobits.

Boxlife is a puzzle game in which you are given a piece of “paper” with tons of squares drawn on it, like a piece of graph paper. You cut the paper along the edges of the squares, then fold the pieces you cut out into cubes – which means that the pieces you cut out have to be of certain shapes. It also features an amusing simple storyline detailing your rise through the employee ranks in a factory. This is a highly addictive puzzle game.

Pictobits is another addictive Tetris-like puzzle game where you have to match up colored pieces. When you do, the pieces disappear and then reappear above, filling in colors automatically in a picture.

Both of these are great ways to spend five minutes juicing up your brain while you’re sitting at the doctor’s office or on the bus, and since you can get them both for free with the purchase of a unit, why not?

Before I discuss any other purchases, I should point something out: I don’t think a video game is a worthwhile purchase unless you get the cost of the purchase down to $1 per hour of playing it. Ideally, I can do better than that, which I’ll discuss below.

If you decide to make an additional purchase with your DSi, I’d recommend getting a single Nintendo points card (SRP: $20), which gives you 2,000 more points with which to download games – and there are plenty of additional worthwhile games to download. I recommend Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again (800 points), Dr. Mario Express (500 points), and Art Style: Aquia (500 points), then just hold onto the other 200 points for the future.

What about the DS cartridges? There are a ton of games available for the DS, many of which are awful and many of which are incredibly worth playing. My strategy for maximizing my gaming dollar is pretty simple: I buy and trade used games. Occasionally, I’ll receive new ones as gifts (because my wife and my family know what kinds of games I enjoy) and I’ll cycle them in as well.

Here’s how I do it. Let’s say I go to the used game shop and buy two used games which together cost about the price of one new game. I play through both of these thoroughly until I’m truly tired of both games. Along the way, my kids get me another game for my birthday and I play through that one, too. I’ll then take those three games to the used game store and trade them in for two others that I haven’t played. I’ll play through those two thoroughly, then I’ll take those into the used game store and trade them in for two more. Along the way, I might stumble upon a huge bargain (like recently, when I found a game I really wanted to play for the DS, Fire Emblem, for $5 new) and add that into the mix.

I recently calculated that I’ve invested an average of $6 out of pocket per game I’ve played through for the DS (and that includes the cost of the console averaged into each game) – and I’ve played some games nearly to death. That drops a game down into the used paperback range, since I’ll spend much more time on a game than on a single book.

If you’re looking for games to pick up that really maximize bang for the buck, the six best values I’ve found in DS gaming are Advance Wars: Dual Strike (war strategy; I’ve spent more hours on this game than any other, ever), Elite Beat Agents (rhythm tapping game, often inexplicably available for $5-10 on the discount rack at Target), Mario Kart DS (kart racing with a lot of variety, plus this is a must-buy if you have multiple DS owners in the household), Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (distinctive and very fun adventure), Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift (adventure/strategy mix, a HUGE game), and New Super Mario Bros. (if you ever enjoyed playing a Mario Bros. game, this will be tons and tons of fun). All of these were well worth the price, especially if you can get them used.

I’ve had tons of fun with my DS Lite – and now my DSi. The best part is, if you’re careful, it can be a real bargain.

If you have a spouse or a close friend and you’ve both recently made a commitment to saving money, why not try making it into a competition?

First, a big disclaimer: my wife and I are naturally competitive with each other. We compete at the most absurd things – who can blow up a bigger balloon without it popping, who can win the most in a series of twenty five board games (yes, seriously), and who can eat the most “El Gordo” burritos in one sitting.

I lost that last one. My wife has a hollow leg, especially for such a small woman.

Anyway, the point is that if you can turn frugality into a mutual challenge, you can turn something that you might otherwise view as drudgery into something quite fun.

Five Examples of Frugality Competitions

1. Starting from zero, who can have the lowest credit card balance at the time of the next statement?
This challenge forces all competitors to not just bust out the plastic for all of their needs and instead carefully plan their purchases.

2. Over alternating weeks, one person is in charge of the meals for a week. Which person can spend the least preparing enjoyable meals for everyone?
Want to learn how to cook cheaply? Doing this will teach both of you how to shop for inexpensive foods and prepare them in a delicious fashion. It’s through competitions like this that my wife and I have discovered the delicious and inexpensive nature of the humble bean.

3. Who can go the longest without spending a single red cent on entertainment?
My wife and I went for months doing this. We read through our entire book collections, watched every movie we own, and devoured the contents of the library like ravenous wolves. I finally broke down and spent money to re-subscribe to a magazine, but it taught us both how little you really have to spend on entertainment to enjoy yourself.

4. A great competition to have with someone else: who can make the most homemade stuff to save money?
Homemade laundry detergent, homemade oatmeal packets, home-grown food – doing stuff yourself saves quite a bit of money. Start a friendly competition with a neighbor or a friend to see who can find the best home do-it-yourself savings. Share ideas with each other and see who can come up with the best stuff.

5. Who can make the most at their yard sale?
A yard sale is a great way to spend a weekend, clean out unwanted clutter, and earn a few bucks from the stuff you don’t want. Why not make it a competition? Make it a challenge with a friend of yours: have yard sales on alternating weekends and see who can earn the most? It’ll challenge both of you to clean out your closets and take a serious look at downsizing those unwanted possessions – plus put cash in both of your pockets.

A race for the prize? If you want, you can add some sort of prize to the competition. My wife and I have competed for book store gift cards before. Perhaps you and your yard-saling friend can agree to ante up a portion of your yard sale earnings in an effort to make you both try a bit harder.

The key thing here is to make saving money fun and interesting by turning it into a social situation. A friendly competition where you both end up with extra money in your pocket and perhaps a better idea of ways to save money is something that benefits everyone involved.

Even better, you might discover how cheap and tasty beans actually can be.

The photo above depicts Warren Buffett and Bill Gates at a bridge event in Omaha, Nebraska in 2006. They were spending an afternoon playing bridge, an intellectually challenging and quite enjoyable card game that only requires you to have a deck of cards, three friends to play with, a pencil and a pad to keep score, and a sharp mind. It’s also been a closet passion of mine for many years, though I rarely have as many opportunities to play as I would like.

What’s Bridge?
Bridge (short for contract bridge) is a trick-taking card game like countless others out there. It’s similar in a lot of ways to games like hearts, spades, pitch, 500, euchre, and so on – any of those can be a great substitute for bridge, but bridge is the most widely played game of the lot and perhaps the most interesting from a strategic standpoint. Rather than just explaining the rules in my own language, take a look at Wikipedia’s detailed entry on bridge, or you can try playing bridge online at Yahoo! (I play on there occasionally as “trenttsd,” especially on lazy afternoons when the kids are napping, but I’m not exactly a strong adept and I’d rather play it face to face so I can read people).

Bridge is usually a game best learned from someone who already knows how to play, but in most social situations, you can just choose any trick-taking game that at least a couple people at the table know. For instance, with my own family, a pitch variation is often played, and my in-laws play a version of 500 (which is only a slight variation on bridge), and in each case I learned from playing with and against family members and friends.

Five Reasons to Spend an Afternoon Playing Bridge (or Another Card Game)
A card game like bridge is one of the most frugal ways you can spend a lazy afternoon. Here’s why.

It’s practically free You just need a deck of cards and a pen and pad to keep score on. No equipment, no anything – just the cards, the score pad, and the people. That’s almost no cost at all.

It makes you think Trick-taking games are deeply mentally engaging. You have to keep track of the state of the game, read other players, formulate a strategy, try to understand your opponent’s strategy (and often your partner’s), and make a play that takes into account all of this. That forces you to be mentally sharp to play well at all.

It’s inherently social Four people sitting around a table playing cards is a social situation. You get to interact with people and can often develop interesting conversations while the game is being played. Once, over a card game, my partner (who I didn’t know well) taught me a great deal about the business of building an organic farm – fascinating conversation.

It can take as little or as much time as you want You can just play one quick game and be done with it in just a half an hour, or you can burn the entire afternoon and evening playing, keeping it fresh by rotating partners and players. It can expand or contract to fill the time as you need it.

It can be played in pretty much any situation with any four people (provided they’re willing to learn) All you really need are the cards, the score sheet, and enough space to lay the cards down. Thus, it works in countless situations: lazy afternoons at home, camping, family reunions, or about anything else you can conceive of.

The next time you’re bored and itching to do something, call up some friends and bust out a pack of cards. You’ll have a fun afternoon and it will scarcely cost you a dime.

As an owner of a Wii and a Nintendo DS, as well as a fairly frugal person, one of my biggest challenges is to figure out how to maximize my dollar – and my time – with a video game system. To this end, I use a wide array of tactics. These tactics also work if you’re buying video games for others as well, so keep them in mind if you’re a parent or a grandparent buying games.

My goal is to reduce the cost of the system and the games to a dollar per hour. This means that over the lifetime of the system, the total dollar cost of the system and all of the games is less than the number of hours that I’ve played with it.

Let’s look at my Nintendo DS, for instance. The system itself cost $129, and I own six games which cost me an average of $20: Advance Wars DS, Brain Age, Tetris DS, Planet Puzzle League, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Mario Kart DS, and Picross DS. Thus, the total cost here is $269. In order to get the value out of this system that I want, I would have to invest 269 hours in playing these games. Now, I’ve owned my DS for quite a while and I play it quite a bit while traveling, in waiting rooms, perking up my mind with puzzles, and so on, but has it added up to a total of 269 hours? I’m not sure, but I feel like I’m close enough to that number to be unsure about it.

The only way to get to that “dollar per hour” rate is to seek games that you can play over and over again. For me, that’s puzzle games and rhythm games, and that’s almost every video game that I own. I like games that are quick to pick up and offer a lot of replay value – a huge number of puzzles or a lot of songs to play.

For example, I was able to find how much time I’d sunk into my most played game of all, Advance Wars DS. It was a close companion of mine on many, many trips and many, many office visits. All told, the game reports that I’ve played it for a total of 105 hours. That’s replay value – for an original cost of $20, that’s quite a bargain, actually. Much of the value of owning the DS itself comes from this one game. On the Wii, the most played game of all is Guitar Hero III, which my wife and I both play regularly in the evenings and which has been played at countless social events at our house by a huge variety of people.

The aspect of video game ownership that makes it expensive are the “lemons” – games with very little replay value. Sadly, most games fall into this category – they don’t offer much repetitive gameplay, making them very expensive for the enjoyment and time that you get out of them. Almost all “crossover” games – ones that are tied in to a movie or other media brand – fall into this category, for starters.

The best way to find highly replayable games and to avoid lemons is to do the research. The best way to do this is to look at a wide variety of online video game reviews. Visit Metacritic and read a wide range of reviews. Although the reviewers talk a lot about graphics and such, one of the real consistent “make or break” factors is replay value – does this game have enough interest to keep people coming back for more? Gaming store advice is usually solid – they have no reason to point you in a bad direction and the people working there usually have a good grasp on what the “best” games are in most genres.

The biggest key, though, is knowing what you like (or what the person you’re buying for likes). The only way to find that out is to pay attention. If you enjoy doing puzzles in the newspaper, you’ll probably enjoy the surfeit of puzzle games for the DS. If you like playing strategic board games like chess and such, games like Advance Wars would be right up your alley. If you constantly find yourself drumming your fingers in time to music you hear, try out a rhythm game like Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero (or try learning your own instrument, though that’s a very long slog).

Buying used is one good way to reduce the cost… Many game shops have a large used game selection, usually at a pretty good discount below the new price. Usually, the games are there because someone strapped for cash liquidated their video game collection. These games have been pre-tested to make sure that they work and they usually have a return policy, so if you do get a faulty game, you can often return it.

… but the best way is to buy old. My Nintendo Wii plays GameCube games. I can find most of the top GameCube games for just a few dollars by looking around. Similarly, my DS plays Game Boy Advance games where the same rule applies. Gaming reviews often refer back to the “cream of the crop” from earlier generations, so if you read a review of an exciting game and find that there’s a predecessor out there, try seeking that one out first. I found the original Advance Wars (for the Game Boy Advance) for just a couple dollars and played that one to death before getting the newer one for the DS.

If you think you’ve truly played a game to death, don’t be afraid to trade it. Since I’ve defeated all of the cases in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, I’m considering trading it in to get a discount on the next game in the series, reducing the cost of that game. Since I picked up the original for just $15 and played it for 15 or so hours, I feel like I got a good deal out of it and I’m eager to play through more cases (it’s a detective/courtroom drama game), and by trading in the original and getting the next one, the cost of the next one in the series is reduced, improving the value.

What are my “best buys”? In terms of value for my dollar, I feel that the Nintendo DS is the best bargain out there. It has a huge library of titles (since it can play older Game Boy Advance ones as well, the total count is several hundred) with a lot of gems in there. I’ve played the following games for at least 40 hours each for the DS: Advance Wars DS (perhaps my single most-played game of all time), Brain Age (because it includes a ton of sudoku puzzles, which I often do in the morning to limber up my brain), Picross DS (another puzzle game that I use in the mornings to limber up), and Planet Puzzle League (perhaps the easiest pick-up-and-play-for-three-minutes game ever made). Those four games, plus the DS, cost me less than $200 total, and I’ve gotten at least 200 hours of play out of the set – it’s entertained me on flights, in the doctor’s office, at the DMV, in the mornings when I’m trying to get my thinking cap on, and so on.

Ever wanted an opportunity to play around with individual stocks with no risk, just to see how good your stockpicking skills are? CNBC is running a contest called the Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge which basically amounts to a fantasy stock market. You can spend one million fictitious dollars buying stocks, and the person with the most valuable portfolio at the end of the contest (mid-May) will win $1 million. Also, the person with the most valuable portfolio at the end of each week until then will win $10,000.

It’s a lot of fun, and I myself have entered the contest. However, if you enter it actually playing to win, it won’t teach you a thing about individual stock investing, and here’s why.

If you’re playing to win, you have to be absurdly risky. My portfolio in the game is made up of three stocks, two of which are in overlapping industries. They’re all small cap stocks, too. (Curious as to what they are? Here’s one of them – it is obscene that this is under 4). I would never, ever invest this way in real life because of the risk factor. How so? First of all, all of my investments are in rather small-cap stocks, which can be really volatile. Second, my portfolio isn’t diversified at all. Third, I’m invested in these companies only because I suspect them to go really big in the next month or two and that’s it – I’m not even picking ones that I think will provide a great gain over the next six months or a year.

You’re not competing with the market. In reality, people do individual stock picking to try to beat the market, so they can make choices based on cycles and such. Here, you’re competing directly with other people: you don’t really care about anything other than this tiny timeframe, and you only really care about beating the people that are ahead of you. Thus, your choices aren’t really based on any normal fundamentals – you’re only looking for things that can go to the moon really quick – and that’s a complete crapshoot.

I’m not discouraging anyone from entering – by all means, get in, because it can be a lot of fun. I’m merely stating that if you’re playing to win, you can’t play as if you are investing real money (unless you’re absurdly rich and view it as a game). That’s because it is a game above all else.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use it as a learning experience. It can be a great opportunity to effectively practice simplified daytrading and get a taste for the fluctuations and speculation that goes into individual stock trading. Just remember that if you follow this contest and look at the leaderboard, those people are doing things that toss all fundamental stock investment logic out the window – using them as an example will do nothing more than bankrupt you if you attempt doing such things with real money.

Now go sign up and have some fun.

To celebrate the week before Christmas (and give you a few great last minute gift ideas), The Simple Dollar is reviewing five board games that not only are a blast to play, but teach valuable financial lessons as well. All of these games should be easily found at a department store or a gaming specialty shop (check your local yellow pages). Other games in this series include The Game of Life, Monopoly, Modern Art, and Acquire.

Puerto Rico
Rio Grande Games

Here it is, the ultimate financial board game. Many of you have probably never heard of it, and that’s a true shame, because it may be the most elegant board game ever created. It is a complete simulation of a nation’s economy packed into an incredibly fun and easy to play game that takes about an hour or so to play.

How the game works Each player is a capitalist on the island nation of Puerto Rico, back in the days when the island was first discovered by Europeans. The goal of the game is simple: collect the most assets before the island runs out of workers, the capital is completely civilized, or the market has geared up to full capacity. Sound complicated? It could be if the game wasn’t so elegant and enjoyable. The best part of the game is that there’s basically no “downtime” for anyone; all of the players are always involved in making decisions on every turn. No more waiting twenty minutes for Uncle Bob to decide whether or not to put another house on Park Place.

What can you learn from the game?

A successful business always has some cash on hand. In order to develop your city, you need to have cash to invest in buildings, but if you invest everything in a new building and things don’t go well, you might have to wait for a very long time before being able to build again. Thus, keeping some cash on hand ensures that you aren’t just running in place.

A successful business invests in itself at the right time. At different stages in the game, it makes sense to buy different buildings. Early on, you want to build buildings that will support your farms, such as the hacienda; later on, you’ll want to build buildings that are valuable assets on their own. Figuring out how to manage these changes in the marketplace is genius.

A successful business knows who to bribe. The players take turns fulfilling various roles on the island; each turn, a player selects a role to play out of several. The selected role affects all players; for example, if someone chooses to be the mayor, all of the players are allowed to bring in more workers to their farms and move workers to other farms (in order to produce crops, you must build a farm and have a worker on it). So part of the game is choosing which role to take on – and deciding whether or not other players can be convinced to take roles that benefit you.

A successful business knows how to game the market. You can monopolize the market on various crops and basically lock everyone else out of selling crops for a turn or two if you plan well. On the other hand, you can also lose all of your crops if you plan poorly. When do you sell and when do you store crops for the future? It’s another tricky balance.

Besides Acquire, this is probably my favorite board game of all time, and it’s more educational than Acquire because it is a stronger depiction of a full economy at work. The lessons that Puerto Rico can teach about the flow of money through an economy are countless, but what really matters is that it is a lot of fun. Very rarely do I enjoy a game so much that I want to play it four times in a row, but I’ve done that many times with this one.

To celebrate the week before Christmas (and give you a few great last minute gift ideas), The Simple Dollar is reviewing five board games that not only are a blast to play, but teach valuable financial lessons as well. All of these games should be easily found at a department store or a gaming specialty shop (check your local yellow pages). Other games in this series include The Game of Life, Monopoly, and Modern Art.

Acquire
Avalon Hill

While yesterday’s choice was a fine example of a market at work, it didn’t capture the elegance of true competition, mergers, and acquisitions, the kind of moves one expects to see from a large scale market. Thankfully, the number two choice turns the magnificent beauty of an open market into a really compelling game.

How the game works The board is a grid of 120 squares. Upon these squares, players take turns laying tiles out of their “hands”; this is all much like Scrabble. Each tile has a letter and a number in it that refers to a specific square on the board, so you choose the tile from your hand that best improves your situation on the board. Tiles that are next to each other represent corporations, and players can buy stock in these corporations. Over time, as more tiles are placed, corporations grow (a group of adjacent tiles has another tile added) or merge (a tile connects two corporations). When corporations merge, the larger one swallows the smaller one, and so the smaller one can cash out their stocks or receive stocks in the larger one. The game ends when the market is full (i.e., no more tiles can be placed). The player with the strongest portfolio of stocks and cash wins.

In other words, the game represents a market, with corporations merging, investors capitalizing, people holding insider information (like in Scrabble, you know what your tiles are, but the other players don’t), and people diversifying their portfolios. It’s an incredibly enjoyable simulation of the wild ride that is Wall Street.

What sorts of lessons about finance does this game teach?

Buy low, sell high You win the game by doing this well. If you know a corporation is going to grow in the future, you can do very well by buying stocks in it.

The only kind of information is insider information The tiles you hold for yourself are your insider information; you know some elements of where the market is headed that other players do not, and you can choose to guide corporations in these directions. For instance, a handful of tiles that can help one corporation means you have a ton of information about that company, and thus buying stock in them early means you’ll turn a nice profit.

The market is complicated Once you get into the game, many layers of strategy begin to reveal themselves. How long do you hold onto certain tiles? Should you force a merger now? Do you cash out or take valuable stock in a huge corporation?

Startups are insanely lucrative but very risky It is this aspect of the game that so effectively parallels the stock market. When companies start up in the middle of the game, there’s a chance that the holders of the stock will get very rich. There’s also a chance that they’ll barely be worth the paper they’re printed on. Does the investor have inside information?

Mergers often pay off better for the acquired than the company that acquires. Quite often, it is the investors in the smaller company that gain the most in the long run with a buyout. This is true not only in this game, but in real life.

Acquire is deliriously fun and a great abstraction of how the real market works. If you want the challenges and the joys of stock investing in a board game form, Acquire is a wonderful choice. Plus, it may be my favorite game of all time.

So what could possibly top my favorite game of all time on this list? Tune in tomorrow to find out.

To celebrate the week before Christmas (and give you a few great last minute gift ideas), The Simple Dollar is reviewing five board games that not only are a blast to play, but teach valuable financial lessons as well. All of these games should be easily found at a department store or a gaming specialty shop (check your local yellow pages). Other games in this series include The Game of Life and Monopoly.

Modern Art
Mayfair Games

I first discovered Modern Art during a “game night” held in my college dormitory. There were all the usual games there: Monopoly, Risk, and so forth, along with a few others I hadn’t seen before. One of these involved people staring at each other intently, then participating in an auction. As I moved closer to that table, I began to be sucked into one of the best games I’ve ever played.

How the game works Each player has a handful of cards that represent paintings by one of five different artists – you can think of the “artist” as being much like a suit in a normal deck of cards. The players go around the table and auction off the paintings, with the highest bidder collecting that painting. At the end of the round, the paintings are sold: the most popular artist has the most valuable paintings, followed by the next most popular artist, and so on. This gives the players money with which to bid the next round. It’s worthwhile to note that artists maintain their popularity into future rounds, so artists popular early on will always have some value to their paintings. The winner is the player with the most money at the end of four rounds.

In essence, the paintings are like any free market, and that’s what makes Modern Art so interesting: it’s the best game I’ve ever played for teaching the concepts of a free market. What can be learned from it?

Relative values change over time As the game goes on, some artists stagnate in value, while others suddenly skyrocket. If you keep betting on the same horse over and over, you’re going to lose out to people who diversify their investments.

You win by finding bargains and riding their escalation The real key to success at Modern Art, just like in the stock market, is looking at the game situation in front of you and determining which artist is going to make the biggest value jump in this round, then buying that artist’s paintings. The best investor will be the one that picks right.

Bubbles will always burst Whenever people start bidding like crazy for one artist, a good player (and investor) will hold off on investing and will look for something else to invest his or her money on. After a round or two, the bubble will burst and those paintings will be too expensive at auction to turn a strong profit on.

The art of negotiation A big part of this game is knowing how to negotiate with other players, mostly in terms of convincing them to not participate in auctions that you are hoping to corner. This usually ends up with various types of negotiations, including manipulating auctions on some paintings. It’s up to you to determine how much of this to allow, of course, but it can get very interesting.

Aesthetics versus the bottom line Another interesting aspect of this game is how many players seem to bid in relation to their personal feelings about the paintings themselves, even though it really doesn’t matter in the game. This can cause some players to train-wreck their own game, much like investors who bought into sexy stocks like Enron.

Different forms of auctions mean different strategies The game allows several different kinds of auctions, from a “once around” auction to a double-painting auction and several other variants. Each one requires a careful evaluation of what’s actually for sale and what other players are doing.

Aside from some very complicated (and often boring) board games, this is the best version of an open market I’ve ever seen in a game – plus it’s incredibly fun to play. If you want to teach (and learn about) the open market to someone, this is easily the most enjoyable way to do it. You might even find yourself playing it again and again – it takes only about an hour to play, and it gets very interesting as the players gain more skill at the game (i.e., they understand the market better).