Jim West On Chess: Asa Hoffmann in Newspaper Ads

Monday, October 22, 2007

Asa Hoffmann in Newspaper Ads

In addition to his appearance in a television commercial for HIP (Health Plan of New York), Asa Hoffmann is also featured in their newspaper advertisements as well. Yesterday, at the Marshall Chess Club, one such ad was hanging on the bulletin board. Players told me that the ads can be found in the Daily News and the Post.

One player mentioned that he saw Asa Hoffmann's TV commercial during the 5 o'clock news on Channel 7. In that commercial, the position on the chess board is one that occurred in analysis to Hoffmann's victory against Bobby Fischer in blitz chess. The moves of the game can be found in Hoffmann's book Chess Gladiator, which also contains one of his wins against me.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov