Ruy Lopez : Engine's Top Choice ...

Spanish Opening, commonly known as the Ruy Lopez is one of the oldest and most analyzed openings ever in chess. Most of the world's prominent chess players have adapted this prosperous opening as a part of their repertoire. Even though it has a bunch of theories, Ruy Lopez is very playable for both White and Black and an opening that players of all levels can enjoy.

Pros
It is inclined to give White an advantage of a long term-pressure.
White develops rapidly, and castles quickly.
This is very playable for both tactical and positional players.

Cons
It has a bunch of theory which is hard to study
Black has plenty of options to choose from

History
Ruy Lopez's Bb5 Book
As I have mentioned above Ruy Lopez is one of the oldest openings in the game of chess first analyzed by the Spanish priest Ruy Lopez de Segura back in 1561. However, it wasn't until the mid-late 1800s that the world's top players played this opening regularly. From that moment on, Spanish never went off fashion. It kept becoming popular and being a part of the world's most prominent chess players' repertoire. Alright so, with that being said we will head onto Main lines and variations.

Ruy Lopez
Ruy Lopez begins with 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5
3. Bb5
After that, Black has plenty of options such as a6, Nf6 and f5!?. From this blog post, I'm going to only talk about 3. ...a6.
If you want to study other replies as well, follow the following study.
Ruy Lopez Fully Analyzed

3. ..... a6
This move straightaway attacks our bishop which just landed on b5 square. After this move, Bxc6 is inaccuracy as 4. ... dxc6 5. O-O Bg4 6. h3 h5!? and black has something known as the Fishing Pole trap. 7. hxg4 hxg4 8. Nxe5 Qh4 and it just Mate in 3 for black. 9. f3 also won't work as Black has this devastating 9. ... g3 move and it just mates in 1 with Qh1# for any move white plays in the next turn.

Due to this matter, we should retreat our bishop back to a4 maintaining the attack on Black's c6 knight. After this move also, Black has several options such as Nf6, Nge7 and d6. We will discuss all the options for black from this blog post.

4. ... Nf6
By this move, Black just developed its knight to f6 while attacking our e4 pawn. After Nf6 we hang our e4 pawn and Castles to Kingside!?. Nxe4 won't work here as we have 6. Re1 Nc5 7. Bxc6 dxc6 8. Nxe5 and even though the computer says that black has a very slight edge here, the position is more likely to be equal with the development of White's pieces.

Due to that, the main line in Ruy Lopez is 5. ... Be7 preparing to castle Kingside. We will place our rook on the "e" file for future purposes by 6. Re1. Black will simply castle by 6. ... O-O or most probably attack our Bishop by 6. ... b5. This very tricky line for White is done after Black moves 6. ... 5, but after he castles, you can do a waiting move and ask him to play b5 (not physically :D ). After 6. ... b5 you will simply retreat your bishop back to b3 square. And then after he castles by 7. ... O-O you will do a pawn break by 8.d4 and turn this boring position into an exciting one. You can play c3 and then d4 but, after c3 Black can play a gambit called Marshall gambit by 8. ... d5. I will show you the main computer line here. 8. ... d5 9. exd5 Nxd5 10. Nxe5 Nxe5 11. Rxe5 c6 preparing Bd6. 12. d4 Bd6 13. Re1 Qh4. The computer says that this position is defendable but, it looks very scary. So to avoid this Marshall Gambit, we straightforwardly play d4.

Here, most probably he will take with Knight aiming for 9. Nxd4 exd4 10. Qxd4 c5 11. Qd1 c4 and your bishop is a goner! But, ruining all his plans, after 8. ... Nxd4, we perform a beautiful Bishop sacrifice with 9. Bxf7+!. And then, yeah he will probably take with Rook as taking with king doesn't make any sense as 10. Nxe5+ and then 11. Qxd4. Due to this reason, he will take with the rook and we will then simply capture his e5 pawn by our knight. Here if he retreats his rook back to f8, we will take his knight and the engine says that this position is equal but, as a human, I would like to say White is slightly better in this position. If he tries to keep his knight on the board by 10. ... Ne6? We can take his rook on f7 and after 11. ... Kxf7, we have this beautiful e5 move attacking his knight and forcing it to move and if it moves Here comes the master! Qf3 forking King and Rook! And the game is just over!

If he takes 8. ... exd4 we can play 9. e5 attacking his knight and he can't go for g4 square as we will trap his knight by h3. So, after he moves 9. ... Ne8, we will gambit a pawn by playing c3 and after 10. ... dxc3, we will take it with our knight. And, even though we are down a pawn, we have a huge lead in development and Black's pieces are super passive. White has a slight advantage in this position.

If he plays 8. ... d6 after we play 8. d4, you can dully study it by the following study.
Ruy Lopez Fully Analyzed
Alright so, 4. ... Nf6 is over and we will head onto 4. ... d6.

4. ... d6
If he plays d6 giving protection to the e5 pawn, we have two options here. If you are playing a player of a higher level, you will probably go for a d4 pawn break. If you play 5. d4, the game will continue like this. 5. ... b5 6. Bb3 Nxd4 7. Nxd4 exd4 8. c3! Here Qxd4 is a mistake as Black can play 8. ... c5 and then in the next move trap our bishop by playing 9. ... c4. So due for this reason, we should play c3 here. Then, 8. c3 exc3 9. Qd5 hitting both on f7 square and his rook. The point is that even though his rook is defended after 9. ... Be6, we will play Qc6+ forcing him to cover with his bishop and go for a draw or super weakening his position by playing Ke7. If he plays so, we will simply capture the c3 pawn with our knight and we are better in this position as his king didn't have the right to castle and we can launch some devastating attacks on him.

However, you can go for c3 against the opponents of your level or lower, and the game will go like this. 5. c3 Nf6 6. O-O Be7 7. Re1 b5 8. Bb3 O-O and then you have to play normal chess :D. Okay then, now let's move on to our final reply for Black after 4. Ba4.

4. ... Nge7
By this move, Black is aiming to play passively, but white has some cool tricks in this line. In reply to Nge7, we will play d4 and then g6, and 6. Nc3 exd4 7. Nd5!?. And so yeah we are looking to launch an attack on f6 square with our two minor pieces. If he plays something like b5, the game is just over with a beautiful checkmate by knight after 8. Nf6#. So, Black will play B7 here and then we will play Bg5 pinning his g7 Knight to the Queen. If he attacks our bishop by b5, we will take his pawn on d4.