Jacob Gottschalk Ascher (18 February 1841,

Plymouth, England Plymouth () is a port city and unitary authority in South West England. It is located on the south coast of Devon, approximately south-west of Exeter and south-west of London. It is bordered by Cornwall to the west and south-west. Plymouth' ...

– 12 October 1912,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

) was a British–Canadian

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

master. He was the son of Isaac Gottschalk Ascher, and brother to

Isidor Isidore ( ; also spelled Isador, Isadore and Isidor) is an English and French masculine given name. The name is derived from the Greek name ''Isídōros'' (Ἰσίδωρος) and can literally be translated to "gift of Isis." The name has survived ...

, Albert, Hyman, and Eva. Ascher twice won the

Canadian Chess Championship This is the list of all the winners of the Canadian Chess Championship, often referred to as the Canadian Closed Championship to distinguish it from the annual Canadian Open tournament. The winner of the Canadian Closed advances to the World Cup st ...

; the 6th CAN-ch at Montreal 1878/79, and (tied for first) the 10th CAN-ch at Montreal 1882/83. He defeated

George Henry Mackenzie George Henry Mackenzie (24 March 1837, North Kessock, Scotland – 14 April 1891, New York City) was a Scottish-born American chess master. Biography Mackenzie was educated mainly in Aberdeen, at the Aberdeen Grammar School and the Marischal ...

at Montreal in one of fourteen simultaneous games played by Mackenzie on January 14, 1879. He was a chess columnist at ''New Dominion Monthly'' published in Montreal.Canadian Chess
at web.ncf.ca He was Editor of the

Montreal Star ''The Montreal Star'' was an English-language Canadian newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It closed in 1979 in the wake of an eight-month pressmen's strike. It was Canada's largest newspaper until the 1950s and remained the dominan ...

and was president of the Young Men's Hebrew Association of Montreal, the first Jewish charitable organization in Canada. Ascher died in New York on 12 October 1912.

References

1841 births 1912 deaths Anglophone Quebec people Sportspeople from Plymouth, Devon English emigrants to Canada English Jews English people of German-Jewish descent Jewish Canadian sportspeople Canadian people of German-Jewish descent English chess players Canadian chess players Jewish chess players Sportspeople from Montreal 19th-century chess players {{Canada-chess-bio-stub