1. H3. Why would a good player open this way?

@stassneyking -  Against the London System with colors reversed, I'd play 1. a3 d5 2. e3 Bf5 3. c4:

I've played this (I have a strong student player at the local club who commonly plays the London System) to good effect.  In the normal London System, a tempo usually has to be spent preventing a knight from accessing b5 (double attack on c7), but the a3 move to start already prevents this with reversed colors, so white can treat it like a normal reverse-Benoni or even a conventional Reti Opening.  In any case, black will have to burn a tempo, possibly two, on his f5 bishop eventually (exchanging it for the b1 knight costs two tempi).

blueemo, makes sense, but as a d4 player I'm much happier here then any strong theoretical opening on move 3: 1.a3 1.d5 2 Nf3 2. Nf6 3.g3, 3.Bf5

I just feel like the white pieces have a theoretical advantage in openings where we fight for the center, move the central pawns, and develop quickly. If it ever feels equal and I have white I feel like I have gone wrong somewhere.

Dsmith 2.Nf6 is better. On c4 I probably play c6 or e6. I'm wondering how you plan to develop your dark squared bishop without creating weakness.

Dsmith, I believe the real issue is actually the loss of time with playing the pawn moves

I have played 1.e3 than 2.e4 and soon I played the black side of a Scotch Game otb. The shock was palpable. It wasn't high level though, he was 1300 USCF and I am around 1200 USCF

LOL

Every move that doesn't lose (Add to that moves that even do actually lose) is less bad than you think.

It can be an edge practically as well making the person think for themselves. The purpose may be to troll or provoke the opponent. They may want to gain deeper understanding of the nature of different possible positions.

The better I have become at chess the more I respect bad openings, When very strong players make disparaging comments about openings for instance the Dutch or the Kings gambit they are talking in relation to a very accurate player playing a very accurate player.

Any person that trashes an opening would still lose to an engine employing it 10/10 times.

bibble, i agree the purpose is likely to be to troll or provoke the opponent. and of course we see players like Naka going on bongcloud speed runs and Finegold playing Nf6 Ng8 for the first 15-20 moves and then winning almost every time, but that's just because they are really good and joking around, basically playing at odds. Of course doing these things is just theoretically terrible and their opposition actually has a big advantage in the opening. If I played AlphaZero without one of its knights I would probably still lose, but would at least have an advantage for a long time. That doesn't mean playing without a knight is not a huge disadvantage. 

You are right good points but based on what you are saying you may overestimate how much of a disadvantage h3 is.

If you were to take a decent player say an expert and look at the rating difference of that same person playing only 1. h3 or 1... h6 as black I could almost assure you it would not be greater than 100 elo (glicko) and that is being highly generous because rating can vary greatly from day to day.

Yeah I agree a difference of maybe 50-100 elo sounds about right. I don't really think it's that terrible. Probably on par with no move which would be about the same difference I think.

A true master would not abuse the crushing power of a3 with initiative. Instead a6 😉

A +0.5 advantage ISN'T a win, as far as I know.

There are many different types of 0.5 advantages... the great majority of them are draws.

And as silly as it may seem, that's actually an important technical realization.

When an engine lists its top 5 moves, and lets say #1 is 0.2 (you're white) and the 5th best move is -0.5 it's important to realize what that means.

Usually it means the -0.5 will lead to positions requiring you, as white, to be more accurate than your opponent. Therefore they're not as attractive. But not always. Objectively they're still equal positions... and sometimes, although rarely, it's your opponent who has to be more accurate to prove it.

To take that thought a bit further... if the scores are not too different, preference should be given to the line in which YOUR moves are natural and easy to find, while the OPPONENT'S moves are difficult to find... even if some other line gets a higher engine score.

People don't find moves the same way engines do.

I went back to look at his past games against me and the move is usually 1. H4. I also checked the opening book by chessbase and found numerous - well a few players in the 2400 area that opened fide matches with H4. Thanks for all the comments was an interesting read. Unimportant but my score isn't 1100 as is stated here as I play on chessbase and comment here. In chessbase slow is between 1700-1900 which is kind of irrelevant anyway. The slow play league we had on chessbase with 100 players, I was towards the bottom while the player in reference was middle of the pack over years of play at 90+5.