Are All Winners Created Equal?

Bjorn Halvard Knappskog, a 19-year-old student from Norway, won the 2009 Monopoly World Championship. Players from 41 countries participated in the 2-day tournament. The games were played in English, with interpreters to help with Monopoly negotiations in different languages. Based on the streets of Atlantic City, more than 275 million copies of the ever-popular real estate game have been sold in 106 countries since being introduced in 1935. Knappskog won $20,580 - the amount in the bank of standard Monopoly games. No American, however, has won since 1974. That could be due to Americans worrying about foreclosures on real estate.

Joe Cada, a 21-year-old professional poker player from Shelby Township, Michigan won the 2009 World Series of Poker. With winnings of $8.55 million, he became the youngest winner in the tournament's 40-year history. What does Cada want to do next? He wants to win the tournament again in 2010. Considering his mother is a dealer in a Detroit casino and considering Cada chose cards over college and considering he regularly plays about a dozen poker tournaments at a time online or plays 3 tournaments at a time in heads-up cash games, back-to-back wins might be in the cards.

Terry Herbert, 55, member of a British metal detecting club, found more than 1,345 gold and silver artifacts in a freshly plowed field in Staffordshire in July 2009. Referred to as the "Staffordshire Hoard", it's the largest collection of Angle-Saxon relics ever discovered. Mostly war items, many pieces have lettering on them dating back to the 7th or 8th century. Because the treasure is expected to be worth millions of dollars, it's likely to be bought by a British museum. The money will be split between Herbert and the farmer - who now has his own "field of dreams".

Professor Oliver Williamson of the University of California, Berkeley won the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics. In honor of that, Berkeley gave Williamson - as well as the 7 other Nobel laureates on the faculty - a free, lifetime, parking permit. The $1500-a-year spaces are between the physics and economics buildings and behind the chemistry building - the departments of the present laureates. Unfortunately, the parking permits have to be renewed yearly; and more than one Nobel Prize winner has gotten parking tickets for forgetting to renew - something we should remember when feeling dumb for forgetting to put money in parking meters.