An eight or a 10 and it’s over. I’m sitting pretty on my homeland, good ol’ Marvin Gardens, but profits are down and my fiercest competitor (the Race car) has hotels up on Park Place and Boardwalk — a $2,000 price tag I can’t afford.

A lucky seven puts me on Chance. I’m in the clear. Advance token to Boardwalk …. OK, maybe not.

Monopoly. The most complex board game ever.

A game so fascinating it can be played three times in one night and have three completely different results.

Every Tuesday night this summer, three friends and I gather for a long night of boasting, begging, trading and manipulating. Similar to the New York Stock Exchange, it’s a no-holds-barred, every-man-for-himself battle for bragging rights.

On opening night, we played three games in seven hours, an amazing feat to the millions who have never even finished a entire game.

By the end of the summer, we will have played over 20 games of Monopoly. We are so obsessed with the game that each of us have the exact amount of every piece of property memorized, including the mortgage values and costs of houses and hotels ($450 for hotels on Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues).

We each have our signature styles. I am partial toward the Dog, but have also found luck in the Shoe. Yellows are my favorites, and I always pass up the blue-collar utilities.

The Hat likes the greens and the Race car will trade anything for the tans. The blues are Big Dogs and can put your competition out of the game with one land but take a lot of investing to build up and often scare away the smart thinker.

Like any hobby, there is a certain lingo to go along with our play. The purples and light blues are the slums. Virginia Avenue is nicknamed Virgin, Community Chest is Community Breast.

Our rules are a little advanced. If a player chooses to pass up purchasing a property, it is put up for auction (but must be bid on in multiples of five). A $500 bill is always kept in Free Parking with all Chance and Community Breast fees going in the pot.

Trades make the game exciting and anything is acceptable (but favors from players’ moms are usually discouraged). Free stays can be used in trades, but stay with the player and not the property.

Players must do all purchasing before they roll. If a player fails to ask for their $200 after passing Go and before the next person rolls, no money is awarded.

If someone lands on your property and you don’t catch them before the next person rolls, they do not have to pay. If you point out someone else landing on another player’s property, you have to pay the fine.

And last, but not least, each player must pay a $50 fine toward the Free Parking pot after every third passing of gas. This rule is strictly enforced. In fact, so much so that the Hat was put out of the game for this violation a few weeks ago.

The best games usually come down to the wire and involve one or more players handing over their assets with tears.

Although many argue Monopoly is a game of luck, the members of this particular league are convinced the game is 75 percent skill, 25 percent luck.

Of the 75 percent, 40 percent is the ability to talk your competitors into doing trades that will, of course, benefit them more than it will you.

So how do you know when your Monopoly addiction has gone too far? My high school buddy Brian, the Race car, has two boards, an extra set of money and houses and carries around the Parker Bros. 1-800 number.

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Corey Moss is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.