Jacob Gottschalk Ascher was a British–Canadian chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

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

Isidor Gordon Gottschalk Ascher

Isidore Gordon Gottschalk Ascher was a British-Canadian novelist and poet. He was born in Glasgow in 1835, the eldest son of Isaac Gottschalk Ascher and brother to Jacob Ascher. His family moved to Canada in 1841 and Isidore received his education at Montreal High School then attended McGill...

, Albert, Hyman, and Eva.

Ascher twice won the Canadian Chess Championship

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 next stage of the FIDE World Chess Championship cycle...

; 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

George Henry Mackenzie was a Scottish–American chess master....

 at Montreal in one of fourteen simultaneous games played by Mackenzie on January 14th 1879.

He was a chess columnist at New Dominion Monthly published in Montreal.
He was Editor of the Montreal Star

Montreal Star

The Montreal Star was an English-language Canadian newspaper published in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It folded in 1979 following an eight-month pressmen's strike....

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.