The Ruy Lopez (Opening Study)
Hello Everyone! As some may know, I deleted all my former blog posts, and am starting with a fresh new blog! Anyways, without further ado, let's get started.
This blog will contain:
- A short mini-lesson
- 2 Puzzles
- Additional Materials
The Ruy Lopez
The Ruy Lopez is one of my most favorite openings when I play with the white pieces. I enjoy this opening as it's simple with an idea of good development and possibly a quick advantage in material from the start. This opening takes a rather aggressive turn, with the idea of developing your knight and bishop and then castling kingside.
The opening goes as below:
As you can see playing the Ruy Lopez is easy and the main objective is to try to win a pawn, while still having the idea of castling. The line goes as, 1.e4, e5, 2. Nf3, Nc6, 3. Bb5. Now that we know how to play the Ruy Lopez for white let's see what black can do to counter this attack.
Oftentimes I'll see this variation called the Ruy Lopez Opening: Morphy Defense which often follows into Ruy Lopez Opening: Morphy Defense, Exchange Variation, and then into Ruy Lopez Opening: Morphy Defense, 4...dxc6. The idea of this line for black is to get the knight to take that "hanging" pawn and then go Qd4 attacking the pawn and the knight, if the knight does back, white loses positional advantage and a "tempo" as well as gives black a free check which can be harmful to white. Other times we'll see this line for black.
This variation is called, Ruy Lopez Opening: Berlin Defense. The Ruy Lopez is often played from the 800-1100 level but this variation for black is more often played for the 1000-1100 level. When this happens I either castle or go Nc3. When you play Nc3 the idea is to take the black knight with your bishop while having the knight on c3 defend the pawn on e4. This variation though falls into the Four Knights Game: Spanish Variation which we'll talk about another time!
A little bit of history:
The opening is named after the 16th-century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del Ajedrez, written in 1561. Although it bears his name, this particular opening was included in the Göttingen manuscript, which dates from c. 1490. Popular use of the Ruy Lopez opening did not develop, however, until the mid-19th century, when the Russian theoretician Carl Jaenisch "rediscovered" its potential. The opening remains the most commonly used amongst the open games in master play; it has been adopted by almost all players during their careers, many of whom have played it with both colors. Due to the difficulty for Black in achieving equality, a common nickname for the opening is "The Spanish Torture".
Credits: Wikipedia
Naturally, there are other variations but these are the most common ones you will usually see at the 800-1100 range this opening is usually played in. Now here are to simple puzzles for you to understand the idea of the Ruy Lopez Opening.
(That one was very simple let's take a look at a different puzzle with a similar idea as the Ruy Lopez but not exactly the Ruy Lopez.)
https://www.ichess.net/blog/ruy-lopez-spanish-opening/
https://www.chessable.com/blog/2020/12/15/chess-opening-basics-ruy-lopez-cozio-defense/
Hope you enjoyed this blog! See you next time!
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Xhive24
