Partly. In this kind of property trading game, the first buyer of a city is the player who lands on it first, and the dice decide that. What the dice cannot tell you is whether buying early wins. Players often reach for a long run of simulated dice to settle the question, and that run measures something narrower. The question is who goes first, and what the opening dice odds do to that seat. This piece separates the two.
What a million simulated rolls measure
The data comes from Property Rush, an independent Monopoly alternative whose board holds 22 world cities spread over eight countries. Its repository includes a computer-played test of one million dice throws, run on the live game code. Two seats took part, each set to refuse every unowned property, with a starting balance so large that nobody could go bankrupt. The file states its own limit in one sentence: it measures movement, not ownership, bidding or rent paid.
Three numbers come out of that design. The landing frequency on an even board of 40 tiles would be 1 in 40, or 2.5% for each tile. About 9.19% of the throws (91,887) advanced no piece, since the piece was parked in Prison, so landings are roughly 90.8% of rolls. And the square that sends you to Prison was never occupied, since you leave the moment you arrive.
Why trust a long run at all? Wikipedia's page on Markov chains states that a finite chain with the right properties has one stationary distribution, and that repeated steps converge to it (opened 10 Oct 2026). A piece moving round a board behaves much like that kind of chain, though prison and the card squares make it less tidy than the textbook case. So the file estimates where a piece spends its time in the long run, after the start has been forgotten.
Why the first lap is a different question
"Early buyers" live in the first lap, and the first lap is not the long run. The dice odds for the first roll are easy to write down. Everybody starts on Start. Two dice add up to between 2 and 12, so the first roll cannot reach the square right after Start. Totals of 2 and 12 can each be made one way, 3 and 11 two ways, 4 and 10 three ways, 5 and 9 four ways, 6 and 8 five ways, and 7 six ways, out of 36 combinations.
Now lay those totals over the board. Rio is 3 steps away, Rosario 6, Córdoba 7, Buenos Aires 9 and Venice 11. Their chances are 2, 5, 6, 4 and 2 out of 36. Add them up and 19 of the 36 outcomes put the first mover on a city. The other 17 land on card squares, an airport, a utility, the Prison corner or another square that is not for sale.
The same sum shows something sharper. Rosario, Córdoba and Buenos Aires are Argentina's three cities, and 5 + 6 + 4 = 15 of the 36 outcomes land on one of them. That is 41.7% of opening rolls, so about two opening rolls in five put the first mover in one country. Pure dice give the first lap that shape.
The engine those rolls went through belongs to the game I build, Boardit, where you can open a table online and play with friends.
How long is the first lap?
Two dice average 7 steps, so a 40-tile lap takes about 40 ÷ 7 = 5.7 rolls. After six rolls a typical piece has walked a little over one lap. That is the window in which most first purchases happen. Doubles stretch it a little: a double earns a bonus roll, and a third double in a row sends the player to Prison without moving. The chance of three doubles at 1 in 6 each is (1/6)³, which is 1 in 216, or about 0.46%.
So the first-lap picture is built from five or six rolls. A long-run table needs thousands of them to settle, which is why the two answers should not be mixed up.
Who goes first: luck, or the seat?
Every player starts on the same square, so every player has the same opening-roll odds. No seat gets better dice on the first roll. What the first seat does get is the first claim: when the second player lands on Córdoba, it may already be taken. The edge of going first is availability, which is a separate thing from luck.
Landing on a city only opens a decision. Whether the player buys it, trades it or builds on it is a different layer of the game, and a movement file cannot see that layer.
What the file cannot say
The two simulated seats bought nothing, so the file knows nothing about which cities were worth holding. It cannot say whether a player who bought on turn one beat a player who waited, how an auction pays out, or what a completed country earns in rent. Anyone who quotes the landing table as proof that early buying wins has moved from movement to ownership without evidence.
Three questions to ask of any simulation
Whoever shows you a dice table, ask these three things first.
1. What moved? In this file only the pieces moved, and only two of them.
2. What was held fixed? Both seats declined every property and nobody could go bankrupt, so ownership never changed.
3. What was measured? Landings. Nothing about money, winning or buying.
If the claim is about something outside the third answer, the file has no evidence for it.
One question to test at your own table
Before the next game, work out the odds for your own opening. Write the cities by their distance from Start, then add the dice chances for those distances, as above. Then watch whether the first purchase really lands in the zone the arithmetic predicts, and whether the buyer holds on to it.
Boardit is not affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro.
By Boardit's maker, Ahmed Moaz.