(293) Two players learn from Tim Krabbé about Salvioli´s rare g4! response to ...g5? Each then encounters it
I gave chess lessons 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 was trying 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 from a tournament game of 1978 in Kiev between GM Hans Ree and IM Lyubomir Ftacnik. 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 played 56...g6-g5?? to be stunned by Ree's 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+ Kh4 68 Qh8+ Kg3 69 Qg8+ Kg2 7...