MANY of us have sat around a Monopoly board passing Go' to collect our £200 or building hotels on Mayfair trying to bankrupt friends and family.

But a man from Kendal reached the final of the British leg of the World Monopoly Champ-ionships despite rarely ever playing the game.

David Atkinson, of Heron Hill, decided to enter on the spur of the moment after seeing a web link on the Internet and beat off stiff competition from over 60 budding property moguls to make it through to the final.

He had to answer ten questions and after getting at least eight of them correct he was then invited down to HMS Belfast in London where the event was held.

"I just thought why not I'll give it a go. It's not something I play that often we probably get it out at Christmas time, it was just something different, a bit of a novelty", he said.

The tournament was split into three, 90-minute knockout rounds with four players to a table.

In the first round Mr Atkinson thought he was out after coming second but managed to make it through after getting one of the three highest second place scores. Round two was negotiated in 45 minutes after a bit of hard bargaining and managing to put hotels on everything very quickly. After a slow start in the final followed by some bad luck, as no-one landed on his properties, he was bankrupted by the eventual winner, Adrian Prince, of Derbyshire.

The 48-year-old, who works for South Lakeland District Council, revealed there was no secret to his success: "It's the luck of the dice for the first half and then you try to deal with the other players by buying, building and bankrupting.

"I was elated with getting to the final. We played on an executive board and I chose to be the wheelbarrow because I have an allotment.

"It was a one-off and if it came up on the notice board tomorrow I wouldn't enter it."

Mr Atkinson received a plate glass memento for reaching the final and the winner received £5,000 prize money and a place in the world final in Tokyo.

MONOPLY FACTFILE

The World Monoply Championship was first held in Washington DC in 1975 Jason Bunn from Leeds is the only Britain to have claimed the world title (1985).

Since launched in America in 1935, more than 200 million Monoply game sets have been sold across the world and it has been played by an estimated 500 million people.

Inflation has never affected the values on the Monoply gameboard they are the same today as they were in 1935.