Eigenpoll : Financial IQ Games : Rags To Riches

RAGS TO RICHES is a dice-based stock trading game where each player races to accumulate enough wealth to build his/her own luxury mansion and "retire" to a quiet life.

The mechanics of the game are quite simple. Players move around the board, buying and selling stock shares in hopes of creating a profit for themselves so that they can make even bigger investments later on. Stock prices are always determined by a dice-roll, so prices move up and down quickly and randomly. Certain "safe" stocks don't move around in price that much and offer higher dividends, while riskier stocks are much more volatile, but tend to offer higher returns. The challenge is for each individual player to determine how much money he/she can afford to risk in any particular situation since an unlucky dice roll can wipe that player out.

There is also a simple, yet elegant means of borrowing money in this game. Players are allowed to borrow money from the bank as long as they pay back double the borrowed amount by the time that his/her token completes two full turns around the board. This helps to make the game more strategic since players will often find themselves in need of extra cash which they can only borrow with a pretty high interest penalty.

Overall, RAGS TO RICHES is a nice blend of strategy and luck (probably 70% strategy, 30% luck). The games typically last around 120 minutes (depending on who is playing) and usually keeps everyone in the game until the very end.