Do you move forwards or backwards on the King's Cross Chance card?

Question

If you draw the "Take a trip to King's Cross Station" Chance card, do you move your piece forwards or backwards? The logical answer might be forwards because most Monopoly Chance cards say "advance". However, in the case of this card, it says "If you pass go"; you would always pass go when moving forwards from a Chance space to King's Cross, so what’s the use of the word "if"?

Note: This is London Edition Monopoly; this space and card are the equivalent of Reading Railroad and the "Take a ride on the Reading" Chance card in standard edition.

Answer 1

Movement in Monopoly is always forwards (in the direction of the arrow on the Go space) unless otherwise specified (such as the "Go back three spaces card"). The only exception in regular monopoly is going to jail, which is usually written as "go directly to jail" to signify the difference.

Some older editions of monopoly had a much clearer version of this card (noting that Reading Railroad is the equivalent of King's Cross):

Take a ride on the Reading. Advance token and if you pass Go, collect $200.

It is impossible to get to King's Cross/Reading Railroad from a Chance space without passing Go. It says "if you pass Go" because that's the way all the other Chance cards are worded. This card would be clearer if it said "when you pass go, collect $200" or "collect $200 for passing go".

Answer 2

Movement is forward in Monopoly, so you'll always pass Go (and collect 200). There is a Community Chest between Go and King's Cross Station, but this is a Chance card.

I think that it's printed this way to match the other 'Take a trip' cards, which all have this wording (except for the Mayfair card, when it's not possible to pass Go). Introducing a third variation like 'You pass Go, collect 200.' would increase the cognitive load.

Answer 3

Basically when you draw any card which tells you to go to a specific place just ignore the "if you pass Go, collect $200" and go to that place, moving forward,and if you pass Go, collect the $200.

This will make the instruction on the card less confusing.

Note that if the card is "Go back 3 spaces", or "Go back to Old Kent Road/Mediterranean Avenue", then you go back and since you do not pass Go, you do not collect $200.

Answer 4

Hasbro owns the copyright on Monopoly and have the final word on Monopoly rules. Concerning the movement of tokens following a Chance card instruction, the answer provided to me by Hasbro's customer service is the following:

Answer 5

It says "If you pass Go" because it does not know where your piece is on the board and is standard text included on all movement cards except jail in order to remind the player of this rule redundantly.

You are moving forwards when you move to the space because there is literally no indication or mention whatsoever that one might move backwards.