Counting the scores

So as the late great Larry Grayson might have said, "What are the scores on the doors?" and providing he was referring to the black and white statistics about the Monopoly Tour then lucky I'm in a position to don a black bob wig and do my best Isla St Clair.

The tour lasted for almost exactly a year, 367 days to be absolutely precise and it covered a total of 39 of the 40 squares on the Monopoly Board, this included all properties, all stations, all chances, all community chests, all utilities and even jail, go to jail and free parking. As hinted in the last blog post, we are still yet to cover "GO" but that will be done as a grand finale to the whole shebang and won’t be covering any new pubs.

During those 39 square we (or I) visited a grand total of 137 different pubs, one of which, the Artillery Arms was covered twice; once for Community Chest #1 and once again for Super Tax. The most pubs ever covered by one square were 6 but we did this 4 times when we visited Bow Street, Fleet Street, Leicester Square and Oxford Street. The least amount of pubs was just the 1 when I started the whole thing off in Old Kent Road on my own.

The tour (or maybe it was my charm and charisma) managed to attract a total of 43 different tourists (even I was surprised by that!) and a huge 60.5% of those came back for a second visit. The most tourists we ever had on a single square was 13 when we rolled up to Super Tax and the least, discounting any tours I made on my own, was 2 when it was just me and Spikey Haired Ed who conquered the WaterWorks square.

In terms of Cask Marque statistics, which I know Alistair will be greatly interested in, I started the tour with a total of 34 scans and now at the end I'm at 208. Obviously that includes other pubs I've been scanning outside of the tour, so maybe I (and Cask Marque) should be more proud of the scanners we introduced to the delights of the Cask Finder app; Micky, Charlie both have enough scans for their bottle openers. Ed should be cutting a fine figure of a bloating young man in his Polo Shirt (Pul-low - oh how we still laugh!) and Aussie Pete has been promoted to the dizzying heights of Cask Marque Ambassador with his brewery tour prize just around the corner! 

The longest run of consecutive scans was 7 which again we did on 4 different occasions; From The Savoy Tup (Chance #1) to Euston Flyer (Euston Road) – Ye Olde Watling (Change #2) to Ye Olde Cock Tavern (Fleet Street) – Nellie Dean of Soho (Oxford Street) to Spread Eagle (Bond Street) – Coach and Horses (Bond Street) to Sir Christopher Hatton (Chance #3).

 

Well done to all those pubs for getting the certificate out for the lads! Unfortunately that does mean that 28.5% of pubs for some reason or other did not have their certificate out for display and scanning, but I'll go into that in more details in a future post. 

The pubs we covered have been dominated by 4 major pub chains, in order of number of pubs that appeared on the tour Taylor Walker ran away with 1st prize chalking up 26 pubs, this was closely followed by Nicholson’s on 22, Fuller’s and Greene King coming in 3^rd and 4^th on 19 and 15 pubs respectively. 

None of this I guess is really surprising as all 4 have a traditional presence in the capital or the south of the country (ok maybe not so traditionally Greene King but they're never slow in seeking an opportunity)  - What I guess is most disappointing is to see so few truly free houses on the tour. 

But of course numbers never tell the true story, although geeky people like me love to crunch them in a thousand different ways, and of course how could one sum up the experience of 137 different pubs by numbers alone. So there is of course a human story behind these facts and figures. And for that we need another post.