4 knights vs rui Lopez games

I mean... just the Ruy alone is pretty broad. There are so many choices... are you playing the exchange Ruy? Are you playing an early d3? An early Qe2? And black has choices too, like an open Ruy, Steinitz or Cozio, or crazy stuff like a Schliemann or Siesta.

Are you aiming for the main closed lines as white? In that case black has half a dozen defenses not to mention the Marshall.

4 knights there's less stuff to learn.

Anyway, in general I'd say, I guess... the Ruy is harder to understand. The 4 knights is not at all a bad choice. Maybe it has a reputation of being more dry, but still plenty of winning chances. Both openings are a very decent choice for practically any level.

And don't be scared by the amount of theory in the Ruy. Your opponents aren't going to know much either. Basically everyone you meet will be playing into the main lines of the closed Ruy (9.h3) where you can pretty much always go for Nbd2-f1-g3 and kingside play.

I started playing the Ruy, and other theory intensive openings, without knowing anything, and it's fine. The nice thing about chess is our similarly rated opponents are about as ignorant as we are.

Thank you so much for all this info.  I normally play my knights first but I’ll start trying Ruy.