The Priest, the Manuscript and the Wall: How the Ruy Lopez Became Chess's Most Enduring Opening
By Cameron W. · Tue, 27 Oct 2026
Three moves. That is all it takes to start one of the longest-running stories in chess.
Three moves. That is all it takes to start one of the longest-running stories in chess. Play 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5, and you are walking a road that players have been walking for more than 500 years. This is the first in a series on the stories behind chess's most popular openings, and there is no better place to begin.
It is older than its name
Here is the first surprise. The Ruy Lopez did not start with Ruy López. It first turns up in a Latin treatise on the modern game called the Göttingen manuscript, and nobody can say for sure when it was written. Scholars have suggested dates anywhere from about 1490 to 1505. The text sits close to the Spaniard Lucena's work from about 1497, and the two share material, which tells you how early the chess world was already circling this idea. The manuscript covers twelve openings, and one of them is 3.Bb5, with Black answering 3...Bc5.
The priest
Then comes the man himself. Rodrigo "Ruy" López de Segura was a Spanish priest, born in Segura de León in Extremadura around 1530, and he was a serious chess player. In 1561 he published the Libro de la invencion liberal y arte del juego del axedrez, a four-part book that gave him a reputation as a father of opening theory. It holds 66 games, and 24 of them come from the earlier book by Pedro Damiano, the very author López spends pages taking apart.
The opening carries his name because he studied it in that book. One summary of the book adds a delicious irony: López used the line to argue that Black should simply avoid it by playing 2...d6. The man who gave the opening its name was, in effect, telling you not to walk into it.
He had his bad days too. Around 1574, the Italian masters Paolo Boi and Leonardo di Bona came to Madrid and, in front of Philip II, beat López and his partner Alfonso Ceron. Some historians call those games the first international tournament. Imagine being Spain's best-known player, in front of the king, on the wrong end of that.
Why the pawn is poisoned
The beauty of 3.Bb5 is in what it does not do. It attacks the knight that guards e5, yet it cannot win that pawn by force. Try 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.Nxe5 and Black gets a strong reply in 5...Qd4, hitting the knight and the e4 pawn at once. White has to be clever, which is exactly the point. Everything in the Ruy Lopez is pressure, and nothing in it is a threat you can see coming.
A legend named Marshall
Every great opening has a legend, and this one has the Marshall Attack. In 1918, at the Manhattan Chess Club in New York, Frank Marshall unleashed 8...d5 against José Raúl Capablanca. He lost the game, but the line lived on. The popular story says Marshall had been saving it for years, ever since Capablanca beat him in a match in 1909. Reference accounts call that unproven, and the historian Edward Winter has found earlier uses of the idea, but a good story is hard to kill, and this one is a favorite of anyone who loves chess history.
It is far from a museum piece. Levon Aronian and Ding Liren have both played it, and the draw rate at the top level tells you how well Black can hold. White has ways to sidestep it, including 8.h3 and 8.a4, the latter made popular when Kasparov beat Nigel Short with it in 1993.
The wall
And then there is 2000. Vladimir Kramnik sat down in London to face Garry Kasparov, a famously fierce attacker, with the world title on the line. Kramnik reached into the Ruy Lopez and pulled out the long-neglected Berlin Defence. It appeared in games 1, 3, 9 and 13, and Kasparov never found a way through. Kramnik won the match and the crown. ChessBase notes that the choice neutralized Kasparov's attacking style and his computer-assisted preparation. In a single match, a defence ChessBase calls long forgotten became a serious weapon of modern chess.
Why it never goes out of fashion
So why has it lasted? Perhaps because it asks questions without forcing the answers. White threatens nothing immediate, and Black still has to find the right move, again and again, move after move. Beginners meet it early and world champions still battle over it. Few ideas in chess can claim that.
