what are a few of the most common openings that use 1. e3 as the first move?
None that I know of. Why voluntarily play defense as White?
Sometimes it’s good to put your opponent on the offensive. Then he’ll have his initiative to defend. He’ll feel obligated to try for a win, and may crash himself against the rocks in the attempt.
Bill Smythe
my knowledge of openings is virtually nonexistent aside from knowing I need to control the center. or at least it will be for a more chapters. but I’m playing real people for the first time in ages through a correspondence chess Android app and in three of the games white has opened with e3. initially I thought I was being set up to fall for some common trick . based on your responses I’m now thinking maybe they know even less than I do.
1.e3 e5 2.d4 and what better does Black have than to transpose to the Exchange French with 2…ed 3.ed d5? I suppose Black could swap, then play …Nf6, …Be7, etc. while forgoing …d5, but that seems toothless. I lost a game to NM Kayin Barclay by trying to be creative. Seems boring for both sides.
So maybe 1.e3 d5 is more principled?
- e3 might make for an interesting mega engine tournament. Have every game start with that move. See what bubbles up as the best options over say, several thousand games. Be at a fast time control, but thats ok, since we’re interested in the statistical probablity of the first 9 to 18 plys leading to positive, equal, or negative positions for white.
Maybe I’ll mention that on one of the “engine to engine” testing forums. Usually they focus on pure strength of an engine (coupled with a good opening book), but maybe one of the forum members will take up the novelty.
For those that don’t follow engine to engine testing. The websites that actually “rate” chess engines have specific time controls and setups for thier rating charts.
But the most common testing time control (for people that just like to test engines and post results on a forum), is 5min+4 seconds, ponder off, multicore on (if applicable).
1st off l’m only a Class B player. (So take everything I say with a grain of salt)
I don’t like to study and I like to get out of “Book” more or less as quickly as possible.
Having said all that in the last 3 weeks I have played e3 in rated games 3 times. I loss the first game
but I think I loss because I got overly agressive. I’ve won the next two games mostly because my opponents got
too agressive. (Opponents were all close to me in rating.)
My rationale for playing e3 is that it gives me flexibility to respond to what Black is doing. In the game I lost it became a Larson type setup with b3 as the second move. One of the others transposed into a sort of an English.
One of the games I won was in like 15 moves. My opponent blundered and then got his Queen trapped. (note I did trap it completely by accident while attacking it to set up a pawn fork of a Knight and Bishop)
Another reason is that I like to attack too much sometimes and e3 forces me away from that tendency.
And at the level I am playing at it is really more about tactics and combos.
My greatest strength is that I think for myself. My greatest weakness is that I think for myself.
unfortunately neither my opponents or I see sophisticated enough to fully appreciate the implications of what seems so small a thing. two of my opponents had queens out by turn four and have left the center empty. I’m pleased to see this little move has sparked such an instructive discussion here though. maybe one of these days I’ll know enough type be able to contribute.
This is the Van’t Kruys Opening, although as Bill Brock pointed out it can transpose to the Exchange French after 1…e5 2.d4 exd4 3.exd4 d5. The game Blackburne - Nimzowitsch, St. Petersburg 1914, annotated in Nimzowitsch’s book My System, continued 1…d6 2.f4 e5 3.fxe5 dxd5 4.Nc6 Bd6 5.e4. Blackburne won, but Nimzowitsch claimed that he (Nimzowitch) had thrown away a strategically won position.
In his book “Dynamic White Openings”, Tim Harding says, “White may end up playing a Bird’s Opening (having avoided the From Gambit) but more likely a reversed French Defense will arrive. BCO [Batsford Chess Openings] says ‘White intends a reversed French, Queen’s Gambit, Queen’s Indian, or Sicilian.’”
thank you sir.
E3 is still not the best first move for white. Blacks odds of winning go up to over 50% while the draw odds stay even. Look for openings where white can take advantage of the first move.
You mean 1 e3 leaves White worse off than in the initial position, giving Black an actual edge? That seems unlikely. A more plausible explanation: opening with 1 e3 reflects a lack of confidence in one’s opening knowledge, but instead of getting out of the book, you get hornswoggled via transposition into openings the opponent knows fairly well.
I only looked at the games between equally ranked players and the winning percentage by first move.
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It’s funny that this thread was started just after my friend, Wayne who really works to play, well, weird openings, started to play 1. e3 as White. Wayne’s standard for many years was the Polish, but he played it his way and not the way you see mentioned in any book. He’ll still go back to the Polish on occasion. Then he played 1. d4,…, 2. Qd3, and did that for a relatively short time.
Anyway, he brought it out in a rated game against me the first time. I happened to win that game from the middle game play and the opening had nothing to do with it. He then won with it in 2 more rated games in that same club tournament.
Looking at my opening book from Chess Base, there aren’t very many responses to 1. e3 that gives Black a nice advantage. The move is quite transpositional. For instance 1. e3 then 2. c4 is a line in the English.
Sure, statistically and at high levels, it isn’t good, but that doesn’t necessarily make it bad in the pawn pushing class play of we distinct amateurs.
Now, tonight we have something like 6 rounds of 5 minute play and there’s a good enough chance that I’ll play Wayne with at least a 50% chance that I’ll get Black and see him play 1. e3. Now I have to come up with a good way to defuse this slow burning fuse of a firecracker, or even dynamite.
It’s a matter of opinion, but I do think that after 1. e3 d5, Black has a slight edge, due to better central control. If White continues with 2. d4, then Black’s edge is due to locked-in Bishop on c1.
Michael Langer
Occupation is not control. 1.e3 d5 2.c4 gives chances for a slight advantage. 1.e3 has the right to exist. It’s still a silly move IMO because it’s so inflexible, and because of 1…e5.
There is a ton of theory on 1. e3 e5 2. e4, but guess who is playing “Black”?
When I was an active tournament player, the opening I never lost to was the Colle or Stonewall, advocated in Reinfield’s “Improving Your Chess”. I had a few lucky escapes but I think the future experts and masters who played it moved on to much sharper and sophisticated openings. Certainly 1. e3 will win a few games if Black goes crazy, but there’s better.
Or take a kid who gets so much success with the 4-move mate attempt, he doesn’t try to learn any other opening.
In both cases the player puts a limit on the quality of player with whom he can compete. Note that that limit is a definition of how good of a player you are. When you get to be a good player you will be playing better and sharper openings. Why not start learning and working on them now?
So last night we did 6 rounds of Game 5 d/5 and I played white 3 times. I won all my games with e3, but possibly in spite of my opening 
The first game was against a much lower rated player so we can throw that one out. The second one though was against a 1900+ and he simply missed a tactic. The third one my opponent was close to me in rating and had me dead to rights but a Bishop sack with counter play saved me.
A couple of the games I followed up e3 with c4 and ended up with the d2 pawn horribly backwards, in one case with my opponents knight parked right in front of it.
I remember once, a very long time ago, when I was in the Army, I played some guy that was going for a classic *short mate, and couldn’t understand why my position was so much better after 5 moves. He said I was the first person he couldn’t win against. -He actually boasted that he’d win in 5 moves. Thats why that particular opponent was so memorable. Its also just about the time I first took a serious interest in chess and had been going to a chess club on a regular basis.
*That is, he basically threw his pieces at my kingside looking for a quick win.
Playing on the internet, I do occasionally come across someone like that. But back in the late 80’s there wasn’t really much for chess on computers (and the internet mostly existed on university mainframes).
After 1 e3 e5, 2 c4, how does Black demonstrate the silliness of White’s position?