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I'm not trying to start an argument, but something I noticed was that there really are differences in leagues, and I'm not talking about skill level. Maybe its the fact that placement matches are only coming down to 5-0, 4-1, 3-2, 2-3, 1-4, 0-5, which really lowers the sample size, but I can't convince myself that this is normal.
The Copper:
My first time on Starcraft 2 my weakest matchup was TvP, I played 5 placement matches all TvP, ended up losing to the immortal push and got thrown into the copper league. While I was in the copper league I didn't lose my next 15 games but was never moved up, and then a wipe occured. What I noticed about the copper league is that it was over by the first push, so I never got to examine real play at that level.
The Silver:
Throughout the next 5 patches, I have placed in Silver division every single time, after every time my account got reset in patch 8/9, I always was placed in Silver, and did fairly well. I would say my win rate was somehwere around 70% or so in the Silver Division but, for a long time, I never played enough games to garner a high enough ELO to move up.
The things I noticed about the Silver division is that there is really strong play, just at a slower pace. Most players have about 40-80 APM, know build orders, and execute them. Multitasking is at a rather slow pace, as most players are focused on building up, then pushing and micro'ing, and as soon as they die, then they begin the process of macro'ing up once more.
I had some pretty good success in the Silver division, placed in the top 3 in a silver and lower tournament, and regularly made it to the top 16 or top 8 of many silver and lower tournaments. The last few days I decided to play maybe 5-10 games a day and try to boost up my ELO. I went on a 6 game winning streak (all against gold players) and won quite handily in those games. Finally, I hit the #1 spot in the Silver Division #6, with an ELO of roughly 1550, and was moved up into the gold division.
The Gold:
Now this is where I hit my point in gold, I knew I was capable of reaching gold or platinum for the last few weeks, but due to school and work, I just couldn't get enough games in to receive the promotion. I enter my first game, play the standard build, and get 4 pooled.
Ok...just a fluke, move on to the next game...proxy 2 gate. Interesting, I didn't think I'd get cheesed 2 games in a row, lets try a third. This time, proxy 2 gate again, I hold it off with some reapers and win. fourth game? Proxy 2 gate again, held it off and won.
At this point I'm beginning to wonder, what in gods NAME is going on, I'm getting pretty pissed off, enter another game, and another 4 pool. It wasn't until my 6th game, where I finally had an opponent play me straight up. It was a long macro game about 40 minutes long on TvP lost temple with 9/3 spawn positions. Harder to get cheesed on here I suppose. When I finally defeated my opponent I looked at his profile, and saw that he was a #2 ranked silver player in his division.
Now I don't mean to generalize upon the whole beta, but it made me think. Is it so wrong to assume that most players in gold (and maybe even platinum) are just cheesers. If they go into 5 placement matches against 5 random people, the odds of any of them suspecting cheese is slim to none. It is very easy to go 5-0 or, if you're unlucky, 4-1 JUST off cheese, you can even improve your ELO that way since it is quite rare to face the same opponent several times.
So my question to everyone is, do YOU notice differences in the leagues? I would face 1 cheese per 15-20 matches in Silver, but now I've faced 5 out of 5 gold and platinum opponents who have cheesed me, since moving up to the gold division. So what are your guys experiences with the different leagues, especially to those have moved up or played in different leagues since getting into the beta.
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I had the most fun in Silver and experienced the same thing as you, I think gold has a lot of cheese in it because people are all so close to Platinum and usually if you cheese in placements you go 3-2 and land in gold? You hit copper on the head when I landed in Copper patch 1 (7-3=copper apparently) It was like that. I haven't really come across cheese in Platinum yet.
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I think alot of players at platinum are going to rush / cheese alot because they want to continue to move up in rank, or just got cheesed / rushed themselves so they want revenge on there next opponent ( you ) ^^
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i hardly ever see cheese in plat...I saw a lot of cheese while getting here but not anymore...
i'm around 2000...and stopped playing much lately..
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I think you're right. Gold and low plat has a lot of cheesers who just know 1 BO and do it every time. At high plat I'm shocked when someone actually cheeses (but I still always scout for proxies anyway).
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I think theres a big difference between cheese and rush though, I would get rushed plenty of times in Silver, in fact the standard build there was to go 9 supply 11 racks. I never really fast expanded, the only times I faced fast expands were against zerg, which was standard for them, but I've faced plenty of 9 pools, 11 pools, etc. while in Silver. The issue is when I'm running into non-stop pure stinky stilton cheese builds. The 4 pools, the bunker rushes, the proxy, in base, 2-gates.
I know that you can never really face zero cheese in your games, but I don't think its TOO far in left field for me to say that Silver division is more competitive, and a hell of a lot more fun than gold. I was considering using antoher key and just smurfing into silver and staying there.
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I agree that at low plat (up to maybe 1600) cheese is pretty prevalent, and I think this is simply because it is fairly effective vs the competition they are getting. Most players that low don't really know how to defend against cheese easily, and also a lot of not very great players get placed in plat and have to get moved down. I think these cheesers do hit a wall though, as I have found less and less cheesing happening as i moved up above the 2000 mark (though it still happens of course)
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The reason gold is cheese is because plat players get dropped by Bnet and placed into gold.
What's the fastest way to get back to platinum ? That's right, cheese. People cheesing in gold are either plat players getting back to play as quickly as possible or just garbage players that should be copper, but somehow got placed into gold with their cheesy allins.
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My placements matches put me into gold, and every second game i played it was some kind of cheese. Now that i'm high gold it stopped, yay!
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I've noticed (based on my longtime experience in gold and my recent experience in platinum) that platinum players tend to play more long macro-based games with early expansions whereas gold players tend to go off one base for longer (not necessarily cheese, but very aggressive (or even passive) one base play).
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My games against anyone who was not platinum usually were pretty easy victories, didn't really notice anything special except for slow one base play.
However, the playstyle in lower leagues must have greatly changed now. I have never even seen a 4 pool in all of my SC2 games. Being a platinum player (an therefore having much greater knowlegde!), I would think it's kind of inefficient, since you start off with 6 drones 
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On May 20 2010 06:48 spinesheath wrote:My games against anyone who was not platinum usually were pretty easy victories, didn't really notice anything special except for slow one base play. However, the playstyle in lower leagues must have greatly changed now. I have never even seen a 4 pool in all of my SC2 games. Being a platinum player (an therefore having much greater knowlegde!), I would think it's kind of inefficient, since you start off with 6 drones
You have to sacrifice a Drone to ensure victory and then send one to scout for the enemy base!
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So when I first started, I got put into bronze because I would stop playing for significant blocks of time to like read tool tips and stuff. After like 8 games (including placements I went 2-3 in) and I knew hotkeys/what units did, I got to realize that everyone in bronze doesn't macro or anything and seems to just build randomly. Luckily, I had joined the beta just shortly before a ladder reset so I was bronze a grand total of about 2 days (maybe 20 games).
Next time around I get into gold league. Because of sc1, my macro is pretty decent, micro is less than stellar but still sufficient, and I have about 150 APM (again, not the greatest but easily enough, if I can get it to the 200 or so I had in sc1 it will be great). For a while I'm winning about 50% but then I discovered the trick to "beat" gold. I went all Day[9] and developed a plan, beginning, middle, and end, for different maps/match ups and almost stopped losing entirely to gold people. So yeah, thats what I find to be the next step. I dont get to play very much right now so I haven't managed to move up to plat yet but whatever.
I know I haven't been cheesed much to be completely honest. In the 100 or so games I've played in gold, I think I've been cheesed three times. Proxy 2 gates twice and a cannon rush once (damn tosses.) Maybe I'm just lucky?
+ Show Spoiler +Shit, sorry this was so long. Got carried away. 
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low plat is where the cheesers are at. all they seem to care about in elo points and rank. my experience with high gold has been pretty good. it seems like every other day is cheese day or something. there are days where i get void ray rush 3 times in a row, then others where all i get are 15-20 min legit games.
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Yeah I think this is why, once release comes out, I'll focus a LOT on tournaments, and just smurf my way to silver or so.
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1500+ gold >>>>>> 1000-1300 plat
:/
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EPT
