Venture Beat – Deck of Dice, a startup with a product of the same name, has a clever idea. It puts an entire deck of 54 playing cards (jokers included) on a set of nine six-sided dice. So it’s like combining dice and playing cards in a new kind of game.
If it plays its cards right, or maybe gets a lucky dice roll, it could create a brand new entry among the 100-year-old casino games that collectively make up a $391 billion gambling business worldwide. It’s a potentially disruptive idea, and could lead to the creation of multiple games across many different sectors of the gaming and gambling businesses, its creators say. and the idea is so simple that a lot of people are going to say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”
“We have the most overdue game invention of all time,” said Tom Donelan, chief executive of Cleveland, Ohio-based Deck of Dice, in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat. “We will use it to create a new casino style gaming venture. We have the opportunity to reinvent the thrill of chance games.”
“There was an inventor who had a chocolate meets peanut butter idea,” said Bob Lindsay, chief operating officer of Deck of Dice and a 25-year game industry veteran, in an interview.
Deck of Dice is the brainchild of 57-year-old Carmelyn Calvert, an empty-nest grandmother in rural Illinois. She loves games and had a great idea one night to combine two of her favorites. She began cutting some wood dice and figured out the right combinations of the playing cards to put on each die. For instance, she decided that any time you need an Ace of Spades, you don’t also need a Six of Spaces. So she put those on the same die.
