Ruy Lopez Books

Vassily Ivanchuk played a rapid chess match against David Navara in Prague last week. In the sixth game of the match Ivanchuk chose to play the Ruy Lopez Exchange variation and won convincingly in 49 moves. The game has been published in the Chessbase web site.

Many players want to have shortcut at least in the early career of playing Ruy Lopez. There is no better way to achieve this, than adopting the Ruy Lopez Exchange as the main weapon to play with white. After all, even the late Bobby Fischer used to play this with white in order to win.

Playing the white side of Ruy Lopez Exchange involves having to play with B+K against B+B. On the other hand, white will have the superior pawn structure that will help him to play for win even in the endgame.

This is a good and recent book by Krzysztof Panczyk and Jacek Ilczuk about the exchange variation. The book uses a model game approach which is highly valued by club players.