Ruy Lopez 8...Na5 by playing 8.a3 (8.c3 or 8 a4 are perfectly playable as well) and after 8...0-0 (the immediate 8...Na5 is also feasible) 9.Nc3 we have reached a modern tabiya of the Ruy Lopez. This position was first reached in a high-level encounter between Viswanathan Anand and Michael Adams, Grenke Chess Classic 2013. 6.d3 has gained wide popularity among the top players and has almost supplanted the Ruy Lopez main line with 6.Re1. Peter Svidler has dedicated an entire video series to the fashionable 6.d3 line. In the Averbakh Variation (C87), named for Yuri Averbakh, Black defends the threatened e-pawn with
Roderigo Lopez Roderigo Lopez Roderigo Lopez (also called Ruy Lopes, Ruy Lopez or Roger Lopez; c. 1517 – 7 June 1594) served as physician-in-chief to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 1581 until his death by execution, having been found guilty of plotting to poison her. A Portuguese "converso" or New Christian of Jewish ancestry, he is the only royal doctor in English history to have been executed, and may have inspired the character of Shylock in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice", which was written within four years of his death. The son of a Portuguese royal physician of Jewish descent, Lopez