Is the Parham more than a glorified scholar's mate attempt?

I don't understand what white gains from, 2.Qh5. All I see is a lost tempo.

I was thinking that it could be a bad attempt at a Napolean Attack...Some people just don't know when to quit....lol...they push that whole queen in your face too far

The idea is that g6 is a bad move, and the knight on f6 has little protection and that can be exploited.

White is simply worse unfortunately. 

The bishop on g7 is misplaced, however I would like to say a few things:

1) The queen on f3 and knight on e2 are in even worse positions, and if the position opens up the g7 bishop can actually become extremely active.

2) Only lower rated players will ever play for or fall for tactics involving the knight on f6. Bg5 can always be met by h6-g5 when white is extremely passive, and as in other mainline openings (najdorf english attack Ng4, Qxd4 sicilian with Bg5, etc.), the h6-g5-Bg7 setup is not as weak as some would believe, especially when a pawn is on e5 and the bishop on g3 is passive.

3) Any opening where much analysis is needed just to prove it doesn't lose on the spot cannot be good or accurate play

4) The parham is both:

a) a glorified scholars mate attempt

and 

b) an attempt to provoke "weaknesses" by players who do not understand when a square is weak or strong, or what a weakness is.

I would bet if I played the parham and showed a game to my GM coach he would say something along the lines of "What a stupid move". While the opening does not lose outright, and is not completely refutable (black should get a slight edge though), I would have to agree that the opening is stupid, it breaks all principles in order to play for traps.

I'd say it's not much better or worse than other openings, people just can't stand it because it moves the queen (never really understood this). The benefit is against bad players or in blitz/bullet where there are traps and easy wins.

Nakamura beat some GM's with this (of course that was before he played the good GM's)

I think he drew a GM with it once (his opponent was rated lower than he was).  The other two times he lost IIRC.

Not to mention dozens of blitz games he used this in with wins against gm's.

Perhaps unintuitively it's the least valuable pieces (pawns and minor pieces) which work best to claim territory and attack and defend.  For example when a pawn attacks anything other than a pawn, you can't ignore it.  When a queen attacks anything except a queen you can almost always ignore it right away.

When a queen defends a square, you can move a knight right onto the square as long as it's supported.  When a pawn defends a square you can only move a pawn there, and only then if it's defended.

Kind of interesting when you think about it.  How you handle the pawns and minors is much more important in the middlegame than how you handle the queen and to a lesser extent the rooks.

what's peoples obsession with this opening?

it's trash, I play some shaky positions, but they're a league above this.

No waffle, I understand the theory behind it, but what I don't understand is why people have such a hard time accepting it's a decent opening and not freaking out when it's mentioned.

Most people on the forum don't care at all.  If you look at the profiles that are obsessed with it, they've usually been created less than a month ago.  (It's the same group of kids).

conehead is a regular guy, but he's a kid too (I think) and just gets caught up in the debate.

I was not supporting the opening.  Mostly I was commentating on the disparity of strength among GM's.

In chess it's very very hard to not make mistakes.  People agonize for hours (during the game) and years (inbetween games) trying to string together a dozen, sometimes two dozen (if they're lucky) moves without an error.

So when there's a chance to easily pass up an inaccuracy, even if said inaccuracy isn't at all a blunder and probably just leads to an equal game, it pushes some sensitive buttons.

Wow, a new profile whose first post jumps right into pharem discussion who has also happened to do a few TT puzzles.  Couldn't be the same person we've seen on and off for months could it?

Fear and Loathing in the Parham Attack?

Well there's a player called Bernard Parham who's only played the Parham (more specifically 1. e4 and 2. Qh5) and gotten to the rank of master, so it was named after him due to his success with the "bad" opening.

I have seen Naka win blitz games with 1. h4, etc against strong GMs. A player's strength is usually more the cause then an opening. I'm not sure why you so adamantly defend this opening. White is simply worse on move 4 or 5. You can certainly play like this but it is not good...

For styles like blitz and bullet it is VERY effective, against patzers and stronger players. It is very easy to mess up against if you haven't seen it before/ don't know what you're doing.