Ruy Lopez for novice question

Hello,

I have been playing chess for years but up until now have avoided the Ruy Lopez.  I have mainly played closed and hypermodern games and there is a resonance of advice out there from good chess trainers that you should spend a great deal of time playing open games, and specifically the Ruy Lopez.  I have played open games before, but when I have, I have always went with lines such as the Scotch (as white) and Petroff (as black) in order to avoid the sea of theory (dubious, I know).  

There is an assertion out there that resonates amongst good chess trainers that the first serious opening you learn should be the Ruy Lopez, because of the instructive value of the middlegame positions reached.

I'd like to give it an honest shot, as it's such an important part of chess, and I know little about it; hopefully I'll make a lifelong friend, if not, at least I will be able to understand more about the games of the Capablanca era which are my favorite.

So, I want to start playing the Ruy Lopez as both black and white, starting from the ground up.

My question is simply, does it matter which Ruy Lopez lines I play?  I assume that choosing lines such as the exchange (as white) and the berlin (as black) would be missing the point, no?

Would the 5. d3  as white (I would really like to shortcircuit black's choice between the open/closed morphy, and certainly the breyer/chigoran/marshall), and the modern steinitz 4 ... d6 as black (Capablanca loved this) be an OK choice?  Or would this also be selling myself short?  Must I go into 5. O-O Be7 / 5. O-O Nxe4 in order to get the full learning value from the opening?

FWIW, I don't have any aspirations of breaking 2000 ever, really.  So I am really not looking for a theoretical advantage, just playable middlegames.

I started playing the Ruy Lopez a few months ago and I love it. Like you I used to play other openings like the Scotch and King's Gambit. Now that I've switched to the Ruy I haven't looked back. In fact it's become my favorite opening! I feel that with the Ruy Lopez knowing the ideas behind the moves are more important than memorizing specific lines. When you learn the about the Ruy you're also learning about chess. The book Lasker1900 mentioned is really good and is the book that got me started with the Ruy. I play the 5.d3 lines myself. Give it a try! If you hate it you can always go back to your old openings. At the very least you might learn something new along the way.

Thanks guys, I like Neil McDonald and I like the Move-by-move series; I ordered it.

I'll be honest: I still don't understand the Ruy Lopez... and I play it for both sides.

At the most basic level, I think I've got it.  White wants to make the strongest centre possible, and Black resists.  For most minor lines, that's all you really need to know.  In the mainlines, specifically the closed systems that used to be the mainline of mainlines until the Berlin stole centre stage, it's so much more complex.  You need to combine actions all across the board, and I honestly don't even know how to approach such positions.  I feel completely lost, and the more master games I study, the less I feel I understand anything... and yet there are also times I feel like I'm tapping straight into the heart of chess, and that's amazing.

I still remember my thought process the first time I played against the Closed Ruy as White.  Virtually every move I had a new idea, a new sudden realization.  My evaluation of the position shifted constantly.   I hadn't felt this way in a chess game in a long time, and it reinvigorated me to study chess more after.  It's not a special game, but here it is:

It is pretty rare for White to mate in the kingside or to have some direct attack on that wing so I dont know how I felt about Qh6, but what I can say is that your pawn sacs were brilliant, congrats on the game.

I'm in your same exact spot OP.

I used to play Scotch against 1...e5 and 2... Nc6, but I knew eventually, I would take up Ruy Lopez.

Now I play the Ruy Lopez with white, and I have no idea what white's plan is.

I only know vague ideas such as "keeping the spanish bishop", "Nc1-Nbd2-Nf1-Ng3-Nf5 maneuver", "a2-a4 to undermine b5"

It's a big opening, one of the biggest actually, and quite hard to play well imo, but I think it's worth getting into. You can get all sorts of positions chess can offer: positional, tactical, endgame, closed center, open center, mating attack, Q-side action, center action, K-side action, etc.

One thing about closed Ruy lopez is that very few pieces and pawns get exchanged in the first 20ish moves compared to other openings. So it emphasizes maneuvering and knowing where your pieces will belong best.

Interesting game Smithy.

I'm switching to the Ruy for the first time in my life. I played the Italian for a number of years. Switched to Queens Gambit then in the last four years the English.

I believe the last few years I've learnt to play on the queenside. I notice with the Ruy that here too white sometimes plays on that side of the board. One of the biggest strategic errors I made for about twenty five years was always to try and attack the enemy king no matter whether it was justified or not.

Bb5 attacks a piece that controls 2 central squares, and that defends the e5-pawn (the knight on c6).

This extra pressure forces Black to make some sort of concession.

Basically the idea is to apply extra pressure on the center with the bishop to force Black to give some sort of little detail White can bite on to get an advantage.

The Ruy Lopez is a big opening tho so if you want to understand it completely we can't help (impossible to explain the whole opening in a forum) so you may want to look for a book.

Neils McDonald book on the Ruy Lopez is nice, I liked it, you should take a look on it.

@interloperr

The centre of the chessboard is the most important part by far.  If you can control it better than your opponent, then you have the much easier game, and if you dominate the centre, you dominate the game.

White's general goal is to get your two central pawns to e4 and d4 as soon as possible.  If Black cannot prevent or neutralize this in some way, then he is in huge trouble, as the following example shows:

Notice how White's pawns completely robbed Black's pieces of any good squares.  That's the power of the centre.

White needs to be careful, though, because just playing e4 and d4 as soon as possible isn't ideal.

White played d4 too early, and as a result he didn't get the same foothold in the centre.  He's certainly not losing here, but notice how it's much easier for Black to put his pieces on good squares.

In higher level chess, then, the goal isn't just to occupy the centre as fast as possible but to do it as good as possible.  You'll hear how GMs will prepare a certain move to get maximum impact out of it.  The Ruy Lopez is considered the best way for White to prepare the central e4-d4 pawn centre, at least after 1.e4 e5.

I hope this helps explain the ideas behind the Ruy Lopez, at least as a general introduction.  That said, I wouldn't worry too much about it.  At your level of play, the small intricacies of the Ruy Lopez are completely lost.  Heck, at my level of play, most of them are lost as well.  The general idea of creating the strongest centre possible (or preventing your opponent from doing it) is an excellent thought to keep in mind regardless of opening, though.

Yes, thanks everyone.  I learned a lot going thru the moves depicted and understand a little more about the importance of the center and counteracting to the moves made in defense.

Hopefully, will be more interesting to my opponents in the future too.

5.d3 is fine to play. You learn the basic ideas before going into main line castling. I also like 5.d4 with the idea of opening up the center fast and getting your opponent out of his preparation.

Nigel Short losing very quickly on black side of Ruy Lopez. Quite something, since he used the Ruy successfully against Karpov  to get to the final of  the world championship: