If you saw the Hellmuth Seven Card Stud blowups earlier this week, you might have noticed old school poker figure Jack McClelland (also at the final table) wearing a hat with a "Chess Roll" logo.

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But what is Chess Roll, and why is he promoting it?

It turns out that there are now competing chess-with-dice games on the internet, and I'm hearing about some bad blood between the principal men involved.

In 2014, British poker pro Peter Costa filed for a patent for "chess game with specialized dice":

CHESS GAME USING SPECIALIZED DICE
Publication number: 20150011284

Abstract: A method of playing a game where two players use a checkered game board, three specialized dice, and traditional chess pieces. More specifically, the checkered game board can be a traditional eight-by-eight chessboard, or it can be an expanded ten-by-ten board. Additionally, the three specialized dice each display one traditional chess piece per side of the die. Therefore, each die will have one king, one queen, one rook, one knight, one bishop, and one pawn depicted on it. In its most basic sense, the game involves making movements each turn based on the depictions that show ‘up’ when the three dice are rolled.
Over the past 7 years, he has filed for various other patents similar to this one.

The game is called "Chexi", and Peter has been soliciting investors to it for at least a few years now.

Here is a presentation about Chexi from 2019:





Fortunately for Peter, chess itself got a huge boost in 2020, thanks to the tremendous success of Netflix miniseries "The Queen's Gambit". Costa got guys like Phil Hellmuth interested enough to invest:

https://twitter.com/phil_hellmuth/status/1324848081335037953


However, I still can't find Chexi anywhere. Its website playchexi.com seems to be down.

I was told that Jack McClelland invested in Chexi at one point, and while I haven't verified that, he was definitely in thier list of officers at one point.



So you might be asking, "Wait a minute! I thought Jack was wearing a Chess Roll hat, not a Chexi hat. Why would he be promoting a competing chess company?"

I wondered that, too.

Apparently Jack is no longer involved with Chexi, and is one of the main guys involved with a directly competing company called Chess Roll, which is essentially offering the same game.

Your move is dictated by the roll of dice. Each player has a set of three dice. If the dice show a pawn, a rook, and a queen, you are only allowed to move one of those pieces.

The results of your dice roll will appear on these highlighted bars that are located on the upper right and left corners of the screen. Similarly, the pieces that you are allowed to move are highlighted on the board for easier visualization.

If you click on the link above, you'll see it's the same Chess Roll logo as the one on Jack's hat, so it's definitely the same Chess Roll company which is competing with Chexi.

So what happened here? Was there some kind of falling out? Did Jack decide to take the concept and start his own chess-with-dice game?



And why haven't we seen anything with Chexi in all this time?

At least Chess Roll has a functioning website.

Both of these guys are/were respected in the industry. Neither is young. Mclelland is 70, and Costa is 65.

I have a feeling there's a lot more to this story...