He was likely born before 1534, and lived until at least the 1574 contest. Legacy Ruy López' contribution to chess was mainly to its opening theory; Peter J. Monté has described him as the "father of opening theory". His analysis of the King's Gambit in particular went well beyond earlier writing such as Damiano's. He also was the strongest player in Spain, and possibly Italy, for about twenty years. As Andrew Soltis describes: "At that time, the best players of modern-rules chess lived in Italy and Iberia. López is believed to have easily beaten the most skilled Italians. He may deserve the title of world champion, but that title did not exist until the late nineteenth century." López' reputation suffered from the writings of the Modenese Masters. Ponziani described López as unfruitful, unmethodical, and having made little advance on Damiano. H.J.R Murray argues, however, that the Masters' criticism of López is unfair and likely stems from his play's resemblance to Philidor's, who was their school's great rival: Libro de la Invencion liberal y Arte del juego del Axedrez Ruy López' surviving treatise, which is fully titled Libro de la Invencion liberal y Arte del juego del Axedrez, por Ruy-López de Sigura, clerigo, vezino de la villago Cafra. Digirida al muy Illustre Señor Don Garcia de Toledo, ayo y mayordomo del serenissimo principe Don Carlos nuestro Señor., was published in 1561. López divided his book into four parts ("books"). He first presents several mythological origins of the game, and discusses its benefits, rules, and strategies while interspersing a number of quotes (in Latin) from classical authors. The second part focuses on openings and is López' legacy as "the father of opening theory." Third comes a hostile appraisal of Damiano's opening analysis. López' final chapters are devoted to odds chess, where he again criticizes Damiano's approaches to these games. In this work López presents sixty-six games, of which twenty-four were taken from Damiano's 1512 book. According to J.H. Sarartt, López' games are of a lower quality than those in Damiano's work. He admits that they might nevertheless be more instructive, since López gives a larger number of variations. Other authors have given varying opinions about the quality of López' analysis. López only rarely presented variations that ended in checkmate. Instead he concluded lines with comments such as how black must lose his queen, or that white has a very good game. Example