What is going on in the English Opening: Carls-Bremen, Reversed Dragon? How does it not drop a piece

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StoicTheGeek

I'm looking at this variation in the chess.com explorer and I'm very confused. It says there are nearly 1,300 master level games that went this way, but I can't see how it doesn't drop a piece for black. 

What's more - not one of the games went on to take the piece. Is there some deep positional strategy I'm missing out on here?

Here's the opening

1.c4 e5

2.Nc3 Nf6

3.g3 d5

4.cxd5 Nxd5

5.Bg2 Nc6

*

ThrillerFan

I think you are misreading the move.  Guarantee you 1300 master games do not feature this move order.

 

Bet you it is either 5...Nb6 (likely followed by Nc6), which I would wager is the case, or else White played an early Nf3 at some point.

ThrillerFan

Just to confirm, the database on here, which I do not use, there are better ones out there, has 4 games here with Nc6 (4 morons) and 2688 instances of 5...Nb6.

macer75
ThrillerFan wrote:

Just to confirm, the database on here, which I do not use, there are better ones out there, has 4 games here with Nc6 (4 morons) and 2688 instances of 5...Nb6.

That's not very nice...

pfren

5...Nc6 does drop a knight, indeed... but noone plays it. The chess.com explorer always messes move transpositions horribly.

5...Nb6 is normal, and incredibly popular.

StoicTheGeek

Thanks all. I didn't realise that the explorer did that with transpositions. Glad to hear that I am not going crazy and it really is bad.