1. e3

Why is 1.e3 so underrated and disregarded?

Look who plays it

Passive move that claim modest control of the center squares.

It's underrated because many lower rated players in combination with Bc4 and Qf3.

Personally i think it's quite okay, because you can play the French defense with an extra tempi. (Carlsen transposed it into the English btw...)

I don’t see a point against ... g6 for example.

1. e3 has a score of 40% out of 8230 games in the CB database, just saying.

There are a few main points about this:

1. The stats for e3 near the root are measurably worse than other popular moves in part because of a relatively high percentage of the low number of games following up strangely instead of taking the option to transpose to something normal (which is almost always an option with 1.e3).

If you actually play through reasonable moves for both sides, you'll almost always end up transposing to something with more normal statistics for white.

2. Related to point 1, the strongest lines for white after 1.e3 are overwhelmingly just transpositions to other more common lines, so it doesn't have many independent merits, aside from attempts at psychological or move order trickery.

This somewhat limits its appeal to players who are ok with that being the main point of their opening play.

3. It is perfectly playable. Black can maybe argue that he gets faster equality than he deserves, but doesn't get anything more than that.

4. To the point @Sarg0n made, if there are lines where an all-e3 system just seems worse than normal lines and doesn't have a chance to transpose to something normal, it's going to be in systems involving g6, something noted in "e3 Poison" by Smith, where, for example, lines against the Benoni are just not as good as the main lines.

Even there, though, it's just worse relative to normal lines, not "worse" simpliciter.

If you enjoy playing the resulting positions there's no reason not to play it :)

My brother once played 1. e3 with the plan to transpose to the Petrov after 1. e5 2. e4! 3. Nf6 Nf3.

@Arndti Heh, yeah, Ulf Andersson used to do something like this in bullet back in the heyday of ICC.

He would play e3/d3/d4 or c3/d3/d4 in some order, transposing exactly to whatever his preferred black defense of the day was by losing a move. If you play french and QGD or caro and slav, then you cut your opening prep in half; of course, you have to really enjoy playing with the black pieces for this :)

The good old icc, the place were ims had a license to troll.

Ok, so I'm not the only person that plays 1.e3 e5 2.d4