Ruy Lopez: Morphy Defense

About this variation

Black asks the bishop's intentions with 3...a6. It is the most common reply and leads to the main lines of the Ruy Lopez.

The Morphy Defense is 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6, named after Paul Morphy, who popularized it in the nineteenth century. Black asks the bishop to decide: it can take on c6, giving up the bishop pair, or retreat to a4 and keep the pin on the knight. After 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O, the game reaches the starting point for most of the main lines of the Ruy Lopez.

The Closed Ruy Lopez continues 5...Be7 6. Re1 b5 7. Bb3 d6 8. c3 O-O 9. h3. From this position come famous systems such as the Chigorin, the Breyer, the Zaitsev and the Smyslov, each with a different way of regrouping Black's pieces. The positions are slow and rich: White builds up with d4 and a knight maneuver from b1 to d2, f1 and g3, while Black looks for counterplay on the queenside or in the center.

Black also has more active choices. The Open Variation, 5...Nxe4, grabs the pawn and leads to sharp, open play. The Archangelsk and Møller set-ups place the bishop on b7 or c5 for more dynamic piece play. And the Marshall Attack, a gambit with ...d5, arises from the Closed Ruy Lopez after 7...O-O and 8...d5.

The Morphy Defense is the foundation of the whole Ruy Lopez, and most of the opening's deep theory starts here. Players who study it learn long-term planning, maneuvering and the art of slowly improving pieces, which is why players have long studied it to learn positional chess.

Because the Morphy Defense leads to so many different systems, players usually choose one main line to learn first, such as the Closed Ruy Lopez with ...Be7 and ...b5, and add others over time. The typical plans of both sides, including the knight maneuver Nb1-d2-f1-g3 and Black's queenside expansion, appear again and again across these lines.

It is one of the main lines of the Ruy Lopez.