Tree path 7 levels King's Pawn Game › King's Knight Opening › Normal Variation › Ruy Lopez › Morphy Defense › Ruy Lopez: Morphy Defense › Ruy Lopez: Closed
- Chess Codex
- King's Pawn Game C20
- King's Knight Opening C40
- Normal Variation C44
- Ruy Lopez C60
- Morphy Defense C70
- Ruy Lopez: Morphy Defense C78
- Ruy Lopez: Closed C84 you are here
Ruy Lopez: Closed
Overview
Ruy Lopez: Closed is a variation within the Open Games family, indexed as ECO C84.
The Open Games group covers open games — classical 1.e4 e5 openings where both sides contest the centre directly with pawns.
It begins with 10 plies and takes 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Be7 to reach the canonical position.
It is a variation of Ruy Lopez: Morphy Defense, which itself descends from the root opening King's Pawn Game.
It is the root of 7 named variations, with Ruy Lopez: Closed, Averbakh Variation, Center Attack, and others among the most studied.
Counted recursively, this branch covers 59 sub-variations at all depths.
Step through the moves on the interactive board below, review the live Lichess statistics, or play this position against Stockfish at one of six difficulty levels.
- ECO code
- C84
- Group
- Open Games (C)
- Plies
- 10
- Parent
- Ruy Lopez: Morphy Defense
- Direct variations
- 7
- Total in subtree
- 59
This overview is generated automatically from the opening's metadata. Know this line well? Write a description — submissions are reviewed before publishing.
Statistics from Lichess
2,363,539 games · White 47.7% / Draw 6.0% / Black 46.3%
| Moves | Games | W / D / B |
|---|---|---|
| Re1 | 1,734,936 | |
| c3 | 211,487 | |
| d3 | 192,028 | |
| Bxc6 | 79,878 | |
| d4 | 73,290 | |
| Nc3 | 35,946 | |
| Qe2 | 23,467 | |
| h3 | 7,420 |
Source: Lichess Opening Explorer · cached 2026-09-26 02:19:37
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Variations (7)
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