Defences to the Parham Attack

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pfren

44 pages of flogging a dead horse... Uh, not interesting at all.

CHCL
Sungolian wrote:
joeydvivre wrote:

1) You guys spend way too much time obfuscating discussions and trying to somehow "win" a discussion by pointing out semantic flaws or creating them and then defending them.  Maybe if you cooperated on creating a dialogue or a dialectic you would actually learn something.  Honestly, by looking at all these discussions of the Parham, I have learned a few things but there is no evidence in these threads that many other people have.  In particular, there are almost no consensus lines you have all worked out  (which means you have mostly wasted your time).

2) Arguning about who is the better chess player, etc. is just a backwards kind of ad hominem argument that doesn't get you anywhere.  If someone is a lousy chess player, they will probably suggest lousy lines and those should be easy to correct if you have some decent basis for dialogue.

3) Arguing about piece value based on how easy it is to mate with them is silly.  Pieces have relative values depending on the position and a board devoid of pieces except one or two is a degenerate case that probably has little bearing on the valuation of the piece in other settings.  Chess literature is absolutely full of discussions about relative merits of N vs B vs R in any number of settings and the discussion is never about "well in a complete liquidation, 2 B's is better than 2 N's so a B is better than an N". That's just dumb.

4) This discussion of K + 2 N's vs K + P is silly.  Go to Google and look up Troitzky line if you care.  It is very difficult and not winnable by many GM's (GM Lilienthal failed 3 times in his career I think).  That means it is very likely a draw in amateur chess.  

This is precisey what I was telling jetfighter with my post. 2 knights can't mate a lone king, but two bishops or 1 knight and 1 bishop can. However, they are rougly equal in value in the opening and middlegame. Therefore my point is that his "explanation" for why the rook is a better piece is irrelevant. I do agree the rook is a better piece, but not for the reason that he gives.

The value of a piece depends how many squares it can control and (in the middlegame) what squares they control.

The_Gavinator

So have we come to a decision on lines? From what I understand, the Parham pwns.

CHCL
joeydvivre wrote:

"The value of a piece depends how many squares it can control and (in the middlegame) what squares they control."

and how valuable the squares are that it controls, how mobile it is, how safe from attack it is, how much it contributes to defense, how static the pawn structure is, how likely the game is going to an ending, how it cooperates with other pieces, etc, etc...

That is what I meant. I was rushing because I was having company over.

The_Gavinator

No I just haven't seen any lines lately, I was just wondering if you all finally realized that the Parham pwns.

johnmusacha

You guys have thoroughly got me interested in the Parham.  Not that I play it . . . but I was going some reasearch on line and found out that Bernard Parham was at one time the Indiana Chess Champion. 

Not that this amounts to much at the Candidate's or Interzonal level...but wow... that still is pretty impressive.  That means he was the best chess player out of about 6.5 million people. 

So the guy obviously knows what he's doing . . . perhaps we should give his contributions to chess a bit more respect than we have been on this site.

The_Gavinator

Joeydvivre- The issue is white comes out better with best play, not that I make up the lines. I try to be fair to everyone, white just is better. And I don't get any idiots that play g6 or Ke7, I usually just walk all over them because this pwns.

johnmusacha- I agree, Bernard Parham is a great chess player, he gets no credit.

johnmusacha

Gav -- yeah, that's what I was thinking.  Like 99.9% of people on this site ever was a U.S. State chess champion . . . Hell, I played chess in the Miami-Dade county jail and I still wasn't the best player on my cell block, let alone the entire jail complex I'm sure.

And this dude was a state champ.  What gives with the lack of respect ya know?

shepi13
The_Gavinator wrote:

Joeydvivre- The issue is white comes out better with best play, not that I make up the lines. I try to be fair to everyone, white just is better. And I don't get any idiots that play g6 or Ke7, I usually just walk all over them because this pwns.

johnmusacha- I agree, Bernard Parham is a great chess player, he gets no credit.

THIS IS JUST WRONG.

The_Gavinator

Most of them would probably get crushed now too.

shepi13

It is at best equal for white with best play. In fact, usually white is just worse.

The_Gavinator

The thing is that shepi sits there and screams the Parham sucks, then can't find any lines that hold up against it, and gets smoked by it himself. Definition of trolling.

Ben_Dubuque

Gavinator if you think he was loosing the entire time in the game with the h6 g5 plan you need to fire up Houdini and post what it tells you unedited and you will find that you are wrong and he was completly won but blundered into a mate.

CHCL

I challenge the Parham fans to show us the best moves for both sides. If you can show that the Parham PWNS then good for you. If not, then stop polluting Chess.com with Parham nonsense.

Scottrf

Parham destroying a 2506:

http://www.chess.com/games/view.html?id=289187

Parham defeating a master in 5 moves:

http://www.chess.com/games/view.html?id=198942

It's basically undefeatable.

CHCL
Scottrf wrote:

Parham destroying a 2506:

http://www.chess.com/games/view.html?id=289187

Parham defeating a master in 5 moves:

http://www.chess.com/games/view.html?id=198942

It's basically undefeatable.

Can you please stop using bad examples of chess for your points.

Scottrf

CHCL,

The only blunder was 1...e5?? allowing 2. Qh5!! which almost wins by force.

CHCL

How does it win by force? I would like to see the "crushing" main line.

johnmusacha

The Parham got me again.... I lost on time but its still a loss



nameno1had
joeydvivre wrote:

Gavinator - The problem here really is that your devotion to the Parham far exceeds your ability to evaluate a position.  That means there have been tons of positions posted where you say "White is winning" when white is half a dozen moves from being checkmated.  Ultimately this means that the whole enterprise is stupid.  When two players get together to figure out chess moves and they go down lines, the goal is to come up with best play - not declare that one side is winning.  Watch two GM's do it sometime - they will be like "here - that smacks that", "hmmm.. yep, okay let's back up five moves.  Bf4 looks thoroughly refuted".  You don't do that - just declaring that any crap put up must be good for the Parham.  That means you don't even have a decent Parham repertoire yet.  

What you would find for the Parham is what Nakamura said - "it's playable" but it doesn't give white advantage.  If that works for you because you get enough idiots playing 2..g6 and 2..Ke7 so your win percentage is high, then keep playing it.  In the meantime, everyone else knows the story of the Parham.

Sorry, I don't mean to seem to cut into your reproof of the Parham's ineptness, or Gavinator's ability to evalute it either. I just couldn't help but notice that by default,becuase you are right, it is also an accusation of his inability to play well enough to win with it, unless he is banking on opponent's mistakes and thus he is playing a bad form of hope chess. It's obvious, even "if" Houdini has said it wins for white with best play, he doesn't have it memorized, or we would all be in awe of his well known prowess.