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If a player draws the Chance card (US standard edition) that tells him "You have been elected Chairman of the Board. Pay each player $50", and his cash is insufficient (even after he sells hotels/houses and/or trade/mortgages properties), then whom is he bankrupt to? To whom must he hand over his remaining assets?

Ferdinand Liem
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There are indeed no instructions in the official rules on how to resolve multiple payments. A common mechanism in game design to handle such cases is to pay your debts in turn order. You go bankrupt to the player who you cannot pay.

Example: turn order is Alice, Bob, Charlie, Daniel and Eve. It's Alice's turn and she is instructed to pay $50 to each player. Her entire liquid assets are $149. She pays $50 to Bob and Charlie, respectively, but since she's $1 short of paying the debt to Daniel, she goes immediately bankrupt and turns all her assets to Daniel. Eve gets nothing.

Turn order is clockwise, as indicated by the rules:

THE PLAY... [...] After you have completed your play, the turn passes to the left.

Adama
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  • Well, an interesting solution. But the distributuon of assets is not equal to every player, whereas the original debt is equal to each player. – Ferdinand Liem Dec 26 '19 at 06:55
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The assets are sold off and divided equally among the other players

This actually situation occurred in a Monopoly Tournement

"Phil Orbanes, who wrote The MONOPOLY Companion and is the official Judge at the World Championships provided me with this answer when it came up in tournament play a few months ago:

  1. If you cannot pay a debt to ONE player due to a card, you go bankrupt to that player and turn over all asset (std. procedure here).
  2. If you cannot pay a debt to TWO or MORE players (after calculating any money you could get from the bank by mortgaging and selling houses) due to a card, you go bankrupt to them all. The issue then becomes: fairness. How do you divide your assets as evenly as possible? Procedure: after selling any houses for 1/2 price to the bank, the bank then rebuys your properties at face value if unmortaged, or for 1/2 value if mortgaged. You divide the resulting cash as evenly as possible, with the player(s) to your left collecting any odd dollar(s). The bank then auctions all properties it purchased to the highest bidders."

Source : Quora.com : Kevin Tostado, Director of "Under the Boardwalk: The MONOPOLY Story." MonopolyDocumentary.com

Conclusion. The players may get a lot more than the 50$ that they were originally owed.

Robert Miller
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  • It seems unlikely that players would get much more than the original debt of $50, as if a player has $500 worth of property, and owes $200, he should be able to raise $200 by selling the property to other players, rather than to the bank. In fact, if I was handling this situation, I'd cap the amount players could receive at $50 each anyway, and have the bank keep the surplus. – AndyT Jan 27 '20 at 12:26
  • @Pelotas : Assume that all of the player's properties are mortgaged. Then, it is to the other players' advantage to let that player go bankrupt and leave the game - that's the only objective of the game. All the mortgaged properties will be bought at half-price by the bank and that money will be redistributed to the creditors; that sale would probably represent more than 150$. Also, the repossessed properties will auctioned off by the bank. – Robert Miller Jan 27 '20 at 13:34
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My play group treat this as being bankrupt while owing the Bank.

The reason for this is that the player collectively owes every player $50. If the whole collective cannot be payed then the player is bankrupt owing everyone. There is no way to equally distribute the assets so handle the redistribution by Auction.

We don't pay the other players the $50. The only effect is that the Bankrupt player is removed and the new auction occurs.

LeppyR64
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  • Why "owing the bank" if the debt is to the players? 2. This doesn't answer the question "to whom must he hands over his remaining assets?"
    • – JBentley Dec 26 '19 at 00:34
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    @JBentley It does answer it indeed. You are not owing a single player therefore you can't distribute assets to a single player. Handle the redistribution by auction, same as if the player had gone bankrupt owing the bank. – LeppyR64 Dec 26 '19 at 00:37
  • You didn't put that in the answer... – JBentley Dec 26 '19 at 00:38
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    How if the Bank takes over both the assets and the debts? The assets are handed over to the Bank, but the Bank has to pay each player the $50. – Ferdinand Liem Dec 26 '19 at 06:51
  • @FerdinandLiem We don't pay it out. – LeppyR64 Dec 28 '19 at 22:14
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    This seems to be a reasonable interpretation where the rules are not clear. Each other player gets M$50 from the bank, and the player is bankrupt to the bank, so all of their properties are auctioned off. This seems the fairest solution to me. – Lee Jan 07 '20 at 18:48
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    It seems silly to have whom you go bankrupt to be dependent on the order in which you pay out the $50. The rule described in this answer makes good sense: You go bankrupt to the bank; the bank pays out the $50 to each player; the bank takes your assets and does the auction. Certainly it's within the spirit of Monopoly for a player to go bankrupt over a few bucks, but not to go bankrupt to one particular person when owing several players money simultaneously. – Kyralessa Jan 21 '20 at 16:49