Madrid Man Wins 2004 Monopoly World Championship

Antonio Zafra Fernandez, 36, from Madrid, Spain, today won the 2004 Monopoly World Championship in Tokyo. Fernandez emerged as the top player in a two-day tournament that featured national champions from 38 countries, according to a press release from Hasbro, winning the $15,140 first prize -- the amount of money included in a classic Monopoly game. U.S. national Monopoly champion Matt McNally of Irving, California, finished twenty-second.

Fernandez won the title with a final round victory over Norway's Bjorn Andenaes, Ireland's Anthony Redmond, and Poland's Bartlomiej Korczak. Redmond was the first player to go bankrupt, followed by Korczak. Andenaes was soon to follow, landing on Fernandez's St. James Place, which had one hotel on it and a rent of $950.

"The game was marked by good fortune for Spain, followed by very skillful play to capitalize on his early advantage," said Phil Orbanes, chief judge of the tournament and author of The Monopoly Companion, in the release. "He never made a misstep that would have allowed the other players back into the game."

The turning point in the game came early on, when Fernandez acquired a "natural monopoly" on the orange properties. A natural monopoly occurs when a player acquires all of the properties within a color group without needing to trade for them.

"The game was played by four players of equally high skill," said Orbanes. "But in this particular case, good fortune -- meaning the role of the die -- made the difference."

Yumiko Suzaki, from Standard Chartered Bank, was the game's banker. SCB was the official bank of the 2004 Monopoly World Championship.

Today's final competition, held appropriately on one of the richest areas of real estate in the world -- Tokyo's prestigious Roppongi Hills -- was the culmination of national Monopoly championships held in countries throughout the globe during 2003 and 2004. The four competitors in the final round played for the title after earning the highest point totals among all players over the course of three preliminary rounds.

The Monopoly World Championship was first held in Washington, D.C., in 1973. Since then, there have been 10 subsequent World Championships.