If you have not heard of all the craze behind the McDonald’s Monopoly Game in Singapore, you are either living in a cave for the past few weeks or is a tourist just passing through Singapore.  If you are the latter, technically you are not eligible to win the amazing Collect-to-Win prizes.

To play the Singapore McDonald’s Monopoly Game, simply buy any Extra Value Meal at any McDonald’s branch and you will be issued with game pieces (see picture below) which you peel to reveal either “Properties” or Instant-Win products e.g. burgers, fries, discounts at Toys ‘R” Us.

The biggest prizes are the Collect-To-Win types.  When you have collected all available “Properties” of the same color, you win the prize corresponding to the color.  There is a whole range of prizes from Toy ‘R’ Us vouchers to a cool $50,000 prize (see gameboard below for details).

Unfortunately, winning one of these Collect-to-Win prizes is not as easy as it seemed.  There are limited quantities of Key Game Pieces which are needed to complete your collection of properties.  These are listed below (also circled in red at the above gameboard):

• 100 pieces of Toa Payok (M114) to win the $200 Toys ‘R’ Us vouchers
• 50 pieces of Joo Chiat Road (M112) to win the 32Gb Touchscreen MP3 Player
• 20 pieces of Thomson Road (M118) to win the $400 Jetstar.com Travel Voucher
• 15 pieces of Tanjong Rhu (M121) to win the 2N Malacca/KL Cruise for 4 Persons
• 15 pieces of Scotts Road (M127) to win the 100,000 Esso Smiles Points
• 10 pieces of Shenton Way (M122) to win Courts Prizes worth $3000 each
• 1 piece of Orchard Road (M129) to win 7D Hawaii Fly Cruise for 4 Persons
• 1 piece of Sentosa Cove (M132) to win $50,000 Cash

Besides the above 212 Key Game Pieces, according to the McDonald’s Monopoly website, there are also about 2.2 million Instant-Win Game Pieces.  McDonald’s claimed that there is a 1 in 4 chance of a Instant-Win prize, thus that means there will be a total of 2.2 million x 4 = > 8.8 million Game Pieces out there -> The odds of winning one of the Collect-to-Win prize is estimated to be about 1 in 38,000.

Better than striking Toto plus at least you get something to eat and a 1 in 4 chance of winning a Instant-Win Prize which would hopefully subsidize your next meal.  However, there are also other hidden costs e.g. increased health risk, obesity which I shall not go further into.  🙂

It is quite easy to complete the Game Board minus the Key Game Pieces – it took me just about 4 upsized Extra Value Meal to complete 2 Game Boards (w/o the Key Game Pieces)!  I have also won a number of Apple Pies, Fillet-O-Fish, $5 off when you purchased $30 worth of Esso fuel and even a 3rd and 4th cruise free with 2 paying passenger prize.  It is estimated that for the 3rd & 4th cruise free prize, the total cruise cost for the 4 passengers will still come up to about $1600+.  It will be useful if you are already planning to go on a cruise, this prize might be helpful.  Let me know if you want this prize – I could trade you for a Burger.  🙂

Tips on How to Improve Your Odds of Winning the McDonald’s Monopoly Game

Let me share with you some tips on how to improve your odds of winning the McDonald’s Monopoly Game without breaking the bank.  These are not industrial secrets – just my personal experience and observation.  Use at your own risk.  🙂

• Upsize your McDonald’s Extra Value Meals – Get 4 additional game pieces.
• Avoid McDonald’s Extra Value Breakfast Meals.  You can’t upsize a Breakfast Meal to get the extra 4 game pieces.
• Don’t buy Student Meals or order through McDelivery – No game pieces for such orders.
• Buy McDonald’s Extra Value Meals during weekday lunchtime (12 noon to 3 pm) – with the ongoing promotion for McValue Lunch, you can upsize your meals and yet still pay less than if you buy a meal during other timings.
• Buy McDonald’s Extra Value Meal all around Singapore – Don’t confine yourself to one area especially the North.  A recent (Nov 10) tweet from McDonald’s Twitter account mentioned “Seems like most of our winners are from the North. Time to restrategize?”  This could mean a number of things – they are still in the position to shift around the game pieces?
• Related to the above point, spread out your purchases.  If I was part of the team doing this McDonald’s campaign, I would have hatch up the evil plan of manipulating the game pieces such that the big prizes e.g. $50,000 and Hawaii Fly Cruise will be distributed nearer the deadline of 2 Jan 2010.  This is based on the assumption that there could be a smaller number of McDonald’s meal purchases if most of the attractive prizes are already won.

For ease of reference, you can print out the gameboard below.  If you collected any of the game pieces circled in red, you are almost guaranteed of a win – the other pieces can be easily collected.

Note that there is a printing error for the Game Piece: Geylang.  It is printed as Geyland and according to McDonald’s, the typo version is still acceptable.

While non-Singaporeans are not eligible to win the Collect-To-Win prizes, they could still claim the Instant-Win prizes since they usually won’t check the person’s passport or NRIC for such claims.  Even if you are not eligible, there is also no stopping you from pairing up with another Singaporean to share the prize if indeed, you got one of the Key Game Pieces.  If you are looking for someone to pair up with to share the Collect-To-Win prizes, contact me – I have 2 full GameBoards (w/o Key pieces)!  🙂

For updates on which of the Collect-To-Win prizes had been won, check out: http://www.mcdwin.com/winners/winners-01.html.