An American entrepreneur has challenged billionaire Peter Thiel to a $1 million Series A chess game. If Thiel wins, the entrepreneur loses an amount of his equity. But if he loses, Thiel will invest $1 million in the startup.

Allen Steigman (l.) challenges Peter Thiel to a million dollar chess game

Allen J. Steigman is the founder and CEO of Soletron, a social commerce site for the street wear, urban apparel and sneakerhead community. He's also a strong chess player. This week, he came up with an original attempt to raise Series A funding for his startup.

Steigman challenged billionaire Peter Thiel, who plays quite decent chess himself, to a one million dollar game. If Thiel accepts the challenge and were to win, Steigman would lose a pre-negotiated amount of Soletron equity. If Steigman were to emerge victorious, Soletron would receive a $1 million investment.

Both Steigman & Thiel are strong players. Steigman is USCF Master and holds a FIDE rating of 2274 while Thiel is 2199 on the FIDE list. 

Peter Thiel is a legendary venture capitalist and hedge fund manager. He co-founded PayPal and was also the first outside investor in Facebook. (Incidentally, Thiel is also the co-author, together with Garry Kasparov and Max Levchin, of a book called The Blueprint: Reviving Innovation, Rediscovering Risk, and Rescuing the Free Market which is yet to be published.)

In the press release it says that

Steigman has always been a fan of Mr. Thiel’s chess and business careers, and has the absolute most respect for him. He wishes to partner with Thiel for the match with the event focusing on entrepreneurship and the positive influences of chess.

By challenging Thiel to a game of chess, Steigman hopes to raise more capital by using an unconventional tactic. So far Thiel hasn't responded yet, but if the game becomes a reality Steigman intends to donate all sponsorship capital from the match to charities.

The news already appeared at VentureBeat and Business Insider. The latter recently did a feature on chess players in the business world, listing "29 Executives who are exceptional at chess".

At Chess Life Online, Steigman explains why he thinks that chess can be beneficial to budding entrepreneurs.

The strategy element is so important in business with forecasting and predicting outcomes in a structured way. You have to see the variation trees. (...) You might be in a bad chess position for hours in a tournament, and you have to train yourself to fight through the mental pain. Conversely, if you are winning in a game, you might have the tendency to become overconfident, and blow it.  The game isn't over until its over is the bottom line.  This mental precision that comes from chess preparation is extremely applicable for business deals. Until the deal is signed, the game isn't over.