Perhaps something helpful could be found in A Spanish Repertoire for Black by Mihail Marin (2007).
https://web.archive.org/web/20140626195205/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/hansen102.pdf
Ruy Lopez--General plans for black?
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Hi,first of all against the Qe2 lines you should never play d6 bwfore castling! After you played d6 your opponent could have played a4 while b4 is not possible cause of Qc4. Better is first castle and then d6. Your move Bg4 is also wrong in this position. You should never give away your ls bishop! The right plan is following: you play c4 and bring your knight to b7, your bishop on d7, your Rf to b8 or c8, and then you play the very nice manouvre Ne8, Nd8,g6,f6,Nf7,Ng7.you play on the queenside then with b4. Normally when you manage to get this plan through whites attack on the kingside is non existent. When white plays f4 the normal reaction is to take and put a knight on e5.sometimes you can just do nothing against f4 as long as f5 is not dangerous. When white plays a move like Bg5 you still try to play N to e8 and hope to exchange the dark square bishops. This plan is a very principal concept which you can play in nearly all Ruy Lopez lines. it might seem slow but the Ruy is a manouvering opening anyway and its inportant to find good squares for your pieces. Tell me if you have more questions, i play this opening on 23 level since many years.
Sep 5, 2015
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#4
I-AM-YOUR-GRANDPA wrote:
Hi,first of all against the Qe2 lines you should never play d6 bwfore castling! After you played d6 your opponent could have played a4 while b4 is not possible cause of Qc4. Better is first castle and then d6. Your move Bg4 is also wrong in this position. You should never give away your ls bishop! The right plan is following: you play c4 and bring your knight to b7, your bishop on d7, your Rf to b8 or c8, and then you play the very nice manouvre Ne8, Nd8,g6,f6,Nf7,Ng7.you play on the queenside then with b4. Normally when you manage to get this plan through whites attack on the kingside is non existent. When white plays f4 the normal reaction is to take and put a knight on e5.sometimes you can just do nothing against f4 as long as f5 is not dangerous. When white plays a move like Bg5 you still try to play N to e8 and hope to exchange the dark square bishops. This plan is a very principal concept which you can play in nearly all Ruy Lopez lines. it might seem slow but the Ruy is a manouvering opening anyway and its inportant to find good squares for your pieces. Tell me if you have more questions, i play this opening on 23 level since many years.
Wow thanks for all of that. I don't mind positional maneuvering chess at all so this seems to suit my style which is one of the reasons I am trying to learn 1...e5.
Sep 6, 2015
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#5
The Ne8,Nd8 etc is the Rubinstein plan, described very well in Marin book. Normally play bg4 to put pressure on d4, to induce white to close the position with d5, or in someway change ideal centre d4,e4. So Bg4 was pointless when you played it. Can maybe consider nc4, and possibly to nb6 too.
So I am in the process of switching to 1.e4 e5. I plan to play the Chigorin variation against the Ruy Lopez.
However, in this blitz game my opponent played Qe2 (never seen this before) and I tried to continue as in the Chigorin variation and lost. My minor pieces were terrible and this led to a horrid ending. This was played in the 5 minute pool on ICC.
I just had no plan at all in the middlegame. The knight at a5 was stranded and the g6 bishop is bad as well. I guess in the future this means do not develop it to g4 in this line?