(293) Learning from Krabbé 's Chess Curiosities site about Salvioli´s break of g4! in response to ...g5? and, very shortly afterwards, encountering the idea
On April 29th 2020 I was giving a chess lesson via Skype to a Mancunian girl, Bryony Eccleston. Her mother had requested I teach something about endings so, over the previous couple of lessons, I had been working with her on pawn endings. On April 29th 2020 I tried to teach her about a rarely encountered tricky breakthrough in a pawn ending of the answering of...g5? with g4! by showing an example of it in a game from a tournament in Kiev 1978 between GM Hans Ree and IM Lyubomir Ftacnik. (Although, since I did not have my signed copy of Ree´s The Human Comedy of Chess in front of me, I had not arranged the pawns on the queenside precisely as they were in the actual game.) Ftacnik thought he was winning and had played 56...g6-g5?? But he was stunned by the response of 57 g4!. All other moves lost for white. But 57 g4! won. After an hour´s thought, Ftacnik continued 57...hxg4 58 h5 Ke6 59 Kf2 Kf7 60 Kg3 Kg7 61 Kxg4 Kh6 62 Kf5 Kxh5 63 Kxf6 g4 64 e5 g3 65 e6 g2 66 e7 g1=Q 67 e8=Q