free passes and immunity.
a skilled monopoly™ player is creative.
The official rules of Monopoly™ indicate: "The owner may not collect rent if he/she fails to ask for it before the second player following throws the dice." Many Monopoly™ players interpret this rule to mean that a player may promise another player not to collect rent under certain agreed-to conditions; in other words, a player may promise to give another player a free pass, a number of free passes, or even immunity from rent, on a particular property.
It should be noted that, under official Monopoly™ rules, such agreements are unenforceable. This is not to say, however, that players ought not be allowed to make such agreements.
Because Monopoly™ is a game, all of its aspects are, in essence, unenforceable. There is no real recourse, for example, against a player who fails to follow ever a basic Monopoly™ rule, other than refusing to continue playing. The same can be said for any other agreement players might make. The only limitation is that all players must agree on the type of agreements that can be made.
The official rules, for example, explicitly forbid players loaning money to each other. Relaxing this rule would allow an element into the game that, presumably, the creators believed would be incompatible with the essence of the game (even though debt is a critical element of real-life real estate transactions).
The critical question for any "house rule" is whether it skews the game's outcome so completely as to render any eventual win as meaningless, or at least less meaningful. If the purpose of the game is merely to provide the players with a pastime, to which none of them will ascribe any particular meaning, then almost any house rule that gains general acceptance among the players should be acceptable.
The purpose of Ultimate Monopoly™, however, is to identify the player in any particular group who, in fact, possesses superior knowledge of the game, higher-level strategy and preeminent negotiating skills that he or she will most likely be the game's winner. Ultimate Monopoly™, therefore, allows the players to enter into agreements that include free passes and immunities, under the belief that including these options should not interfere with determining who is the best player.
