ruy lopez

any tips on the Ruy Lopez opening im in the tourny and never played the ruy lopez b4 thanks

Here's a good webpage on opening principles. If you follow that religiously, and double-check each move to ensure neither of you is hanging a piece or pawn, you should do fine against competitors around your level.

The Ruy Lopez tournament starts all games at 3.Bb5 and gives black 1st shot at deciding what kind of game is to be played.  Of course, white gets to say whether the morphy defence a6  is countered with exchange variation or the main Ba4 lines.

opening based tournaments are the best training ground for learning what's good and bad about these openings for your play style... or at least for me it has been for me.

if you're unfamiliar with an opening, you should definetely sign up for the tournament and make sure you try out a few different variations using wikipedia.org "ruy lopez opening" or any other references you have available

 another good thing about these opening theme tournaments is that you can watch other tourney players games too to see how others respond to situations....maybe even how your opponent responds. beware that they are learning too

You could use Ruy Lopez.....Exchange variation

1.e4 1.e5 2.Nf3 2.Nc6 3.Bb5 3.a6 4.Bxc6 4.dxc6 5.Nxe5

That way the captured pieces are:

White: Pawn,Knight

Black: Knight   

And white is one pawn up:D 

This line is bad for white after either 5....Qd4  or 5....Qg5 , which is why this is never played by strong players.

Why would you want to enter a Ruy Lopez tourney if you know nothing about the opening and have never played it before? Spock would certainly say "it's not logical".