Chess grandmaster running for CA insurance commissioner challenges voters to a game
Patrick Wolff, a candidate for California Insurance Commissioner, is aiming to reach voters in a unique way.
On Tuesday, surrounded by the Capitol Park’s rose garden, Wolff, with a thoughtful hand on his chin, approached a seated line of voters, selectively moving chess pieces on a chess board placed before each person. Wolff walked back and forth between the boards, making moves and seizing chess pieces from nine opponents simultaneously.
Some of his opponents lost quickly, while others held out for up to 30 minutes, but in the end no one was able to beat Wolff — who is a two-time national chess champion.
The speed-chess rout by Wolff is part of a seven-month chess tour in which Wolff is aiming to connect with potential voters through chess. Anyone who can beat him, he says, will win a paid month of home or renter’s insurance courtesy of himself.
The tour, which kicked off in coordination with his campaign launch in November, has so far been to stops in Southern California and Northern California.
“I’m a chess grand master,” Wolff said, “and so we’re having some fun by traveling all around the state to play chess with folks to bring attention to the insurance crisis in California.”
Wolff, a Democrat and Harvard graduate, has a background in finance.
After his chess career, in which he won national championships in 1992 and 1995, he worked as a consultant and project manager before becoming a managing director at Clarium, a hedge fund founded by Peter Thiel. He then left Clarium to launch his own hedge fun, Grandmaster Capital Management. Since then he has also held positions at Thiel Macro and JCPW Capital, according to his LinkedIn.
Wolff built an auto and home insurance business in the early 2000s while he was working as a business manager at Capital One, according to his campaign website. He also has a property and casualty insurance license which he earned in preparation for running for California insurance commissioner.
Wolff, who has not run for elected office before, says the 2025 wildfires in Southern California spurred him to run for the position.
“There’s a problem and it needs to get solved,” Wolff said. “I spent a number of years building insurance brokerages and working as a financial analyst and I realized I had the skills and experience to do this job and the people we’d been electing didn’t have the skills and experience to do this job. So I figured I should step up and put myself forward.”
Wolff’s opponents in the race, according to Ballotpedia, are Democratic legislators Ben Allen and Steven Bradford and Republican Stacy Korsgaden, a San Luis Obispo County insurance professional. The current commissioner, Democrat Ricardo Lara, is not running for re-election.
According to his campaign website, Wolff plans to “solve our state’s insurance crisis by holding insurance companies accountable, increasing choice and competition, and improving transparency.”
He says he aims to do this by grading insurance companies based on how well they process claims, mandate that insurance companies offer discounts to homeowners who have reduced their fire risk and increase controlled burns among other things.
Wolff says he has no plans to run for any other elected positions if elected, and until the election, he plans to keep playing chess to connect to voters. Wolff’s tour schedule can be found on his website.
This story was originally published January 20, 2026 at 4:00 PM.
