So loaded was Argee that the few instances that the still-single female magistrate of the Court dreamt of marrying into money, she always thought about him (Well, if I dreamt of marrying into good looks, I certainly would never have thought about you!  Honey!). And if rumors are to be believed, Argee’s net worth was able to exceed the annual budget allocated for public works. Heck, Atty. Guevarra even had the horrible habit of bringing thick bundles of greenbacks whenever he rushed to the toilet to answer the call of nature. How’s that for cleaning something with dirty money?
But like all trips to the john, his streak with suwerte got flushed down the drain and his Midas touch was touched by malas. In short, his bastions of bucks went under one after the other. First, his electric company shut down after big fish in politics sparked a school of jellyfish to riot inside his power plant triggering a shutdown in operations  thus exacerbating a coup hysteria that swept across the nation. Then, he experienced severe liquidity problems when his water utility firm, his former fountain of funds, dried up after enemies dredged up various insider anomalies and consumers flooded his office with complaints of bad service. Thereafter, his railroad business got railroaded after Al-Qaeda operatives lined up his railway tracks with C4 explosives.
His chain of hotels soon followed and snapped as the weakest link in the cut-throat hotel industry after he blundered with his decision to introduce short-time rates at a prohibitively sinful thousand bucks per hour. In need of a fresh infusion of capital, he mortgaged his prime properties at 10 percent their fair market value and deposited the proceeds in Ogami’s Bank and invested the rest in the plunging stock market.
And these were just for starters, since Argee developed an annoying nouveau riche knack for bragging about his wealth to anyone who’d care to listen, a special team of undercover tax collectors investigated his financial activities and assessed him millions in appropriate back taxes. So desperate was Argee to settle his obligations with the BIR that he dared crawl out of utter bankruptcy through the fastest and foulest means  he sold Bahay Boracay to a clueless multinational company even if the entire country knew that the property belonged to Jose Velarde.
Worse, banks foreclosed all his mortgaged properties while private creditors slapped him with multiple-million law suits that frequently landed Argee in jail. Just to raise enough cash for his bail bond, he refitted his private luxury liner and transformed it into a passenger ship. As an ominous sign of more bad things to blow the way of your down-in-luck attorney, Argee stupidly re-christened the vessel HMS Titanic  hello?!!!  which, not quite surprisingly, sank to the bottom of the ocean on her maiden voyage.
Argee’s reverse roller coaster ride from riches to rags, from fame to infamy may sound fantastic and fictional if it weren’t for the fact that his tale of triumph and tribulation were all true and that it all happened quite regularly and after office hours, that is, every so often, Argee attends frequent meetings of a different kind of Board of Directors in order to play the enduring and endearing kiddy board game called MONOPOLY.
For the uninitiated few, Monopoly was invented in 1934 by Charles Darrow of Pennsylvania at a time of growing unemployment among American workers. Darrow was himself unemployed and whiled his time playing his creation until a bulb lit up in his mind and he decided to produce the game himself. With the help of a friend who bankrolled the initial 5,000 copies of the game, Darrow sold all to a local department store.
As the demand soared beyond his expectations, Parker Brothers stepped in and elevated it into a cult-like proprietary game which gathered faithful from around the globe. Since Parker Brothers acquired the rights to the game in 1935, it has been published under license in more than 80 countries and in 26 languages. There’s a Spanish Edition, a Star Wars Edition and the last Argee heard, a classic wooden version to commemorate 65 years of its continuous public patronage.
Too bad there’s no Filipinized version of the game as it would be a perfect diversion for racketeering businessmen and politicians to perfect the art of establishing monopolies through so-called "clearinghouses"  with the least inconvenience to the public. Monopoly consists of a board which appears like a funky color-splashed blueprint divided in four rows of real estate and commercial properties and includes two dice, 12 tokens, 32 houses and 12 hotels. There are Chance and Community Chest cards and Title Deed cards representing properties up for grabs.
There could be as many players as there are tokens who are each provided by the bank with $1,500 in start-up play money to be used by the player to buy, rent and sell property, the object of the game being to become the wealthiest player of them all. With the roll of the dice, each player moves his respective token corresponding to the number of spaces indicated in the dice. Once the token lands on a particular property, he either enjoys the option of buying the property, if still unencumbered, or paying the amount of rent to the owner thereof depending on the number of houses or hotels erected thereon. The more houses built, the higher the rent. Hotel rates fetch to as much as $2,000. All transactions are coursed through the bank.
In the Philippines, Monopoly has found a niche apart from traditional board games like Chess, Scrabble, Games of the Generals and Dama (note: subject of future Court decisions) and has commanded an increasing following among the populace of predominantly college students and young urban professionals. Those addicted to the game swear that Monopoly could very well be the yuppie version of mahjong,  double the thrill but minus the gambling.
Monopoly groups have even sprouted in campuses and offices as the game can get entire barkadas involved in a clean, competitive and cerebral marathon of fun and excitement. Unlike mindless partying, alienating network gaming and melanin-encrusting golf games, Monopoly can offer a crash course in financial and real estate development and provides players the hands-on dynamics of the Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest concept of capitalism which, for yuppies, has a lot of practical application; and for students, a graphic and actual simulation of the world of business outside the walls of a classroom. Negotiation skills are honed in the course of the game which likewise evolve for every player, whether novice or veteran, a buy-sell-hold-mortgage-unmortgage strategy.
The adrenaline highs and lows of Monopoly can best be approximated by the bulls and bears experienced by those engrossed with stock market trading. To be an effective player though, some role-playing and internalization come in handy to be able to enter the mindset of the astute businessman or a tycoon wannabe which may be helpful during game time. At least, while the game is in play, Monopoly transports the player to a rat race where each can pace his rise and fall and see oneself climb up and down the social ladder  all in good humor. And since it involves sitting down on the game for hours, Monopoly demands constant human interaction under turning and twisting tides of cooperation and competition.
As among friends, this environment provides a glimpse of each other’s subliminal thoughts and outward attitude towards the proverbial root of all evil and one’s instinctive reaction to one’s changing fortunes. Most importantly, Monopoly teaches its players the value of money  how to spend it wisely when awash with cash and how to stretch it to survive when on the brink of bankruptcy. Living within one’s means takes a new meaning even when one loses bigtime. Just bear in mind that though you have lost all your money and properties and though you’ve been proclaimed Lord of Liabilities, you still get to keep the one company that matters most  your friends, your board buddies.