1. e3 is totally playable.

Hm, I guess this is really a spam place now. Oh, also, you could play the Colle after 1.e3, or the Stonewall, or other 1.d4 openings, but compared with 1.d4, after 1.e3 you can't play Bf4 or Bg5 and play for a big advantage.

1. e3 is of course playable but i think this passive first move make black equalizes. Better is 1. d3 that GK used to force Deep Blue into unsearched sea.

here it's played by a 2219 player who loses to a 1981 player, in the year 2012.
http://ratings.fide.com/pgn_chess_game.phtml?code1=4155548&code2=4184971&code3=8.25&code4=64549

But it's just the transposition thing all over again. This just ends up back in the Larsen-Nimzovitch after move 3.

I occaisionally play 1.a3. It works well against booked out players who do not understand the opening or have no clue of what a REVERSED opening is ... (usually with an extra tempo - because you have the White pieces). I once beat a 2300+ player at a side event (Game/30 min.) at the World Open with this opening. He played 1...e5; and I later got in c2-c4. He seemd to be unaware of the fact that I was playing a Sicilian with colors reversed ... he also seemed to "see red," and even said after the game that he simply wanted to "wipe me off the chess board," after my "stupid opening." 

By the same token, 1.e3, is completely playable. You could transpose into any "normal opening," or even a reversed system with an extra tempo. 

- A.J. Goldsby I

i can't decide what i hate more, people that open with 1.e3 or people that bring one game to prove that an opening is bad.

Virtually any first move by the white side is "playable."  Duh ??

With the black side, some moves are probably not playable.

Hardly a breathtaking result, in any case.

Any opening in which white does not push one of their center pawns by two squares on the first move just gives black breathing room. White should seize the initiative on move 1. and press black as hard as possible. Inferior moves don't serve this purpose even if they are so called 'playable'.

Adolf Anderssen even beat Morphy with such a strategy.  I believe the game was a reversed Paulsen (great system!) though against the O'Kelly it isn't advisable to open things since you can transpose to a favorable ...e5 Sicilian where Nb5 can't be played.  Instead 3.c3! an Alapin where the a6 seems rather silly seems like a good bet for white.

If it isn't recommended to openn things as white against the O'Kelly then maybe trying to open things while down a tempo isn't so good either? 

I don't know what you guys are trying to prove to us by showing the worst games on the internet including this move, but i still believe white doesn't come out with a disadvantage out of these openings, which deserves no question marks.