• Log InLog In
  • Register
Liquid`
Team Liquid Liquipedia
EST 10:03
CET 16:03
KST 00:03
  • Home
  • Forum
  • Calendar
  • Streams
  • Liquipedia
  • Features
  • Store
  • EPT
  • TL+
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Smash
  • Heroes
  • Counter-Strike
  • Overwatch
  • Liquibet
  • Fantasy StarCraft
  • TLPD
  • StarCraft 2
  • Brood War
  • Blogs
Forum Sidebar
Events/Features
News
Featured News
[ASL22] Finals Preview: Sweet Victory!12[ASL22] Ro4 Preview: Mirror Mirror6[ASL22] Ro8 Preview: Within Reach5[ASL22] Ro8 Preview: In A Tizzy11[ASL22] Ro16 Preview: Holy Diver5
Community News
Dark completes military service, returns to SC28[BSL23] RO16 Group Stage19Weekly Cups (Nov 2-8): herO back on top?2Weekly Cups (Oct 26 - Nov 1): MaxPax, herO, Solar win0Weekly Cups (October 19-25): Clem triples first in 5.0.175
StarCraft 2
General
Greetings.. No more SC2 streamers on team liquid? Dark completes military service, returns to SC2 Serral's getting trashed by New Catsle's Mind Weekly Cups (Nov 2-8): herO back on top?
Tourneys
Sea Duckling Open (Global, Bronze-Diamond) Dark returns! GSL CK #7 4v4 Team Battle (Nov 19) soO & FanTaSy return! SC2 Kevin Scrim 4v4 (Nov 16) RSL goes to London! 2026 Offline Finals Nov 21-22 Tasteless Time Warp: SC Evo Showmatch (May 25)
Strategy
[H] ZvP Mid-Late Game: Stalkers Collossi HT
Custom Maps
[G] How to playtest arcade maps Starcraft 2 Advance [D] the control group Simple Questions/Answers
External Content
The PondCast: SC2 News & Results Mutation # 551 Robotic Revival Mutation # 550 Graveyard Shift Mutation # 549 Endless Sparkles
Brood War
General
List of top players active on ShieldBattery BW General Discussion Recommended BW Settings for Mouse and Video Starcraft:Brood War Discord Servers [BSL23] RO16 Group Stage
Tourneys
[$1250] International ShieldBattery League Bisu's Team vs Shuttle's Team 2026-11-14 2v2v2v2 Tournament Stage 1: Community Poll [BSL23] Ro16 Group C - Sunday 21:00 CET
Strategy
Pluto's TvP 5Marine 2Medic Push Simple Questions, Simple Answers Infested Terran strategies in 2026 Nuke strategy worked in K-League 2026-11-09
Other Games
General Games
Stormgate/Frost Giant Megathread Nintendo Switch Thread Free Space RTS Game, optimised f. Phone/Tablet etc List of Game Threads The PlayStation 5
Dota 2
Can Game Data Analytics Help Players Improvements
League of Legends
[TL LoL EUW IHs] Teemo shall perish
Heroes of the Storm
Heroes of the Storm 2.0
Hearthstone
Deck construction bug
TL Mafia
TL Mafia Community Thread
Community
General
US Politics Mega-thread Artificial Intelligence Thread Trading/Investing Thread European Politico-economics QA Mega-thread Russo-Ukrainian War Thread
Fan Clubs
Fan Club Resource Thread Reynor Fan Club The Flash Fan Club
Media & Entertainment
Movie Discussion! Anime Discussion Thread [Manga] One Piece
Sports
TeamLiquid Health and Fitness Initiative For 2023 Football (Soccer) Thread MLB/Baseball 2023
World Cup 2022
Tech Support
Computer Build, Upgrade & Buying Resource Thread
TL Community
The Automated Ban List Recent Gifted Posts
Blogs
The time I organised my…
AssyrianKing
Why I built Repalyzer (1.1.…
BlueStar
Innovate or Game Over?
TrAiDoS
ShieldBattery on Mac
Kraekkling
Can Bots Beat Pros?? Starcr…
namkraft
Customize Sidebar...

Website Feedback

Closed Threads



Active: 11221 users

Is Cheese Ruining eSports in the West? - Page 2

Blogs > Jermstuddog
Post a Reply
Prev 1 2 All
infinity2k9
Profile Blog Joined January 2009
United Kingdom2397 Posts
December 30 2011 10:03 GMT
#21
Complex things like faking your upgrades on cyber core even. Or remember the infamous forum post on here about damaging your own spire to make it look less complete.
iamke55
Profile Blog Joined April 2004
United States2806 Posts
December 30 2011 12:34 GMT
#22
While I know deep down that cheese is good for me and will improve my skill as a player much more than turtling to 200/200 colossus deathballs all day, I still rage whenever I die to proxy buildings, cannon rush, 6 pool, etc. I hope to eventually purge my mindset of these Western influences so I can improve faster when laddering, but it will be hard.
During practice session, I discovered very good build against zerg. -Bisu[Shield]
CakeSauc3
Profile Joined February 2011
United States1437 Posts
December 30 2011 12:40 GMT
#23
I agree with the OP - I've been playing on the Chinese server the last couple of weeks, and wow, I see more cheeses there each day than in a whole week of playing on the NA server. Sure, at first, it would bug me a bit. But now, I feel like it's actually helping me to improve. My early-game awareness is being sharpened and my willingness to use my own cheese against opponents has increased as well. As I'm adjusting my play style, I'm starting to believe that the general consensus of "cheese doesn't help you improve" is wrong.

Think back to the early days of GSL - most games were won off of one base timing attacks, sometimes they would go up to two base timing attacks (a lot of times these "timing attacks" were just funky cheeses), but very rarely would we ever see a true macro game. Why? Because the pros weren't yet capable of playing a perfect early game. Against a player who doesn't know all of the in's and out's of the early game, you can use aggressive play to capitalize on their mistakes and get a free win. Only after thousands of hours of experimentation have professional players moved beyond that point to where they can play a "standard macro game" - but that's because they first learned how to cheese and how to counter cheese.

That's the way I see it. If I want to improve at sc2, then I need to first concentrate on the early game. If I'm still losing to cheeses on a regular basis, then it's because I need to improve that aspect of my game. And if I want to be a player that can execute a late-game macro strategy, I'd better be able to execute the simpler early-game strategies first. As a player who has always heavily preferred macro games over rushes, I think I'm noticing this flaw in my ability to play the game. A pro wouldn't have this flaw, because before that pro became a pro, that pro had to learn how to cheese. Trying to skip ahead into being a "macro player" without first ever learning how to play the early game is just cheating yourself.

On December 30 2011 15:34 Ripps wrote:
Just a quick question: What league are you in? If you're in gold or silver, go ahead and cheese but know that it is not the best way to improve.
Once you're in diamond or higher, your cheese will simply not have the same win rate because we've seen it before and know how to respond after we scout it. All my builds crush early pools,, 4 gates, and can do well against 1-1-1 all ins.


I'm Diamond in both the NA and Chinese servers. And I'm telling you, there's a cheese out there to beat every build you can come up with. It's actually amazing to me how many low level masters players still get smashed by a proxy void ray or a 7 roach rush, not to mention proxy factories and simple 2 rax play. And I think cheesing does help you to improve the most because it forces you to make quick decisions and have to fall back on plan B when you fail, which can often teach you the most about the game and improve your crisis management skills. Plus, having good mechanics while executing a cheese strat is ten times more difficult than having good mechanics while both players just sit in their bases and macro. Being a reactionary cheeser who can voluntarily fall back into a "standard macro game" is the way to go - and that's actually how I would classify most pros.
Lw247_
Profile Joined December 2011
38 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-12-30 14:49:26
December 30 2011 14:43 GMT
#24
I have no respect towards cheesy players whatsoever or at least not when they depend on it. If I see someone doing a 6 pool, I just can't be arsed continuing the game & I tell them that as well, that if they really think that cheesing is an equivalent to skill then they'll hit a big brick wall sooner than later but I give them the game as I just can't be bothered with those kind of players.

I just don't waste my time on those kind of players but then again I hardly play ladder & I hardly play sc2 to begin with as it's far from being better than bw.


and just for the record, I'm very capable of stopping cheeses and it just makes me pull the legendary "-_-" face behind my screen so.. I just don't think people should get too obsessed with it as I think cheesing (at least for me) is rather easy to pull off but then again, since I have no respect for cheesy all-in players, I don't cheese, ever. Unless it's a guy who's tried to cheese before, then I just show him how it's done but being smart enough to be able to continue the game without getting too far behind if it would fail, unlike A LOT of cheesy players. (bw & sc2, though sc2 is a game I only play when I really don't have anything better to do).
Velr
Profile Blog Joined July 2008
Switzerland10991 Posts
December 30 2011 14:55 GMT
#25
Cheese >>> Boring ball vs ball which happens more often anyway.
Lw247_
Profile Joined December 2011
38 Posts
December 30 2011 14:58 GMT
#26
Funny how people are bringing up the cheese & ball vs ball discussion... It's not like when it's not a cheese game that it's automaticly going to be a ball vs ball game, unless you really don't know any better like..
Jibba
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States22883 Posts
December 30 2011 15:32 GMT
#27
On December 30 2011 21:40 CakeSauc3 wrote:
I agree with the OP - I've been playing on the Chinese server the last couple of weeks, and wow, I see more cheeses there each day than in a whole week of playing on the NA server. Sure, at first, it would bug me a bit. But now, I feel like it's actually helping me to improve. My early-game awareness is being sharpened and my willingness to use my own cheese against opponents has increased as well. As I'm adjusting my play style, I'm starting to believe that the general consensus of "cheese doesn't help you improve" is wrong.

Think back to the early days of GSL - most games were won off of one base timing attacks, sometimes they would go up to two base timing attacks (a lot of times these "timing attacks" were just funky cheeses), but very rarely would we ever see a true macro game. Why? Because the pros weren't yet capable of playing a perfect early game. Against a player who doesn't know all of the in's and out's of the early game, you can use aggressive play to capitalize on their mistakes and get a free win. Only after thousands of hours of experimentation have professional players moved beyond that point to where they can play a "standard macro game" - but that's because they first learned how to cheese and how to counter cheese.

That's the way I see it. If I want to improve at sc2, then I need to first concentrate on the early game. If I'm still losing to cheeses on a regular basis, then it's because I need to improve that aspect of my game. And if I want to be a player that can execute a late-game macro strategy, I'd better be able to execute the simpler early-game strategies first. As a player who has always heavily preferred macro games over rushes, I think I'm noticing this flaw in my ability to play the game. A pro wouldn't have this flaw, because before that pro became a pro, that pro had to learn how to cheese. Trying to skip ahead into being a "macro player" without first ever learning how to play the early game is just cheating yourself.

This is exactly how it should be, and largely how it was around D on iCCup (at least for me.) I don't think anyone has said cheese doesn't help you improve. It's that while building up your skill, performing it yourself won't help you very much. The people who cheese largely do it just for wins, which is the wrong mentality for practice, and they'll eventually hit a wall where that cheese doesn't work anymore. Of course they can practice it further and further (and many end up cheating in order to make it work) but eventually they'll hit a skill level where opponents can deflect it, and because they had only practiced cheesing up to that point, they have no regular game skill/awareness to fall back on.

It's monumentally important to practice against, however, for becoming a well rounded player. If I were serious about training and had those two accounts, I would use the Chinese one mostly to practice defending cheese and use the NA one to practice performing it myself.
ModeratorNow I'm distant, dark in this anthrobeat
DocNemesis
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
Philippines446 Posts
December 30 2011 16:00 GMT
#28
Cheeses, while frustrating can be worthwhile if you are the victim of the cheese. If you are able to fend off a cheese, whether it be cannon rush, 6 Pool or all in, it makes taking down the opponent worthwhile.
Here to kick ass....with Violence. And I got a blog site: http://nemesistrestkon.wordpress.com
fusefuse
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
Estonia4644 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-12-30 16:11:13
December 30 2011 16:10 GMT
#29
we actually need MORE cheese, based on the responses, and i kind of agree
Liquipedia@jkursk
Prev 1 2 All
Please log in or register to reply.
Live Events Refresh
WardiTV Invitational
21:00
WardiTV Not-Summer Championshi
ByuN vs SHIN
MaxPax vs Solar
Clem vs TBD
herO vs TBD
Lambo vs TBD
Rogue vs TBD
WardiTV1031
IntoTheiNu 850
ComeBackTV 746
TaKeTV 342
IndyStarCraft 233
Rex113
Liquipedia
[ Submit Event ]
Live Streams
Refresh
StarCraft 2
IndyStarCraft 233
Rex 113
StarCraft: Brood War
Britney 64655
Calm 6597
Rain 1754
Jaedong 1689
EffOrt 767
BeSt 760
FanTaSy 621
Rush 378
Larva 358
Hyuk 212
[ Show more ]
ZerO 193
Hyun 183
Sharp 110
Mind 94
Zeus 85
Dewaltoss 82
Last 80
Soulkey 66
JYJ 58
Pusan 49
Mong 46
sSak 34
hero 31
ToSsGirL 31
sorry 25
Killer 23
Terrorterran 22
Shine 21
Hm[arnc] 19
Movie 18
Free 17
Sacsri 16
Aegong 15
ajuk12(nOOB) 10
Dota 2
qojqva1487
canceldota84
Counter-Strike
byalli850
Heroes of the Storm
Khaldor321
Other Games
FrodaN3191
singsing2318
B2W.Neo476
Beastyqt430
Lowko400
KnowMe254
mouzStarbuck151
XaKoH 132
syndereN96
Railgan18
CosmosSc2 14
ZerO(Twitch)14
fpsfer 1
ToD0
Organizations
Other Games
EGCTV930
[ Show 12 non-featured ]
StarCraft 2
• AfreecaTV YouTube
• intothetv
• Kozan
• IndyKCrew
• Migwel
StarCraft: Brood War
• Azhi_Dahaki29
• ChaeLyn 6
• BSLYoutube
• STPLYoutube
• ZZZeroYoutube
Dota 2
• WagamamaTV971
League of Legends
• Jankos2509
Upcoming Events
IPSL
1h 58m
TerrOr vs IJ_Terran
rasowy vs Hazorath
BSL
4h 58m
TerrOr vs OyAji
UltrA vs Gosudark
Sparkling Tuna Cup
18h 58m
WardiTV Invitational
20h 58m
IPSL
1d 1h
Art_Of_Turtle vs KameZerg
Radley vs George
BSL
1d 4h
Artosis vs Dewalt
Ret vs Tech
SOOP
1d 18h
soO vs FanTaSy
WardiTV Weekly
1d 20h
Monday Night Weeklies
3 days
PiGosaur Cup
3 days
[ Show More ]
The PondCast
3 days
GSL
4 days
Replay Cast
5 days
KCM Race Survival
5 days
RSL Revival
6 days
Liquipedia Results

Completed

Proleague 2026-11-12
Blizzard Classic Cup 2026
HCC Season 3

Ongoing

Acropolis #5
KCM Race Survival 2026 Season 4
International ShieldBattery League
Individual League
BSL Season 23
IPSL Winter 2026-27
Calamity Cup Div. A Season 8
Underdog Cup 2026 Div 2-3
BLAST Rivals Fall 2026
IEM Beijing 2026
PGL Masters Bucharest 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 5
1win Private Club #2
Thunderpick World Champ. '26
ESL Pro League Season 24
Stake Ranked Episode 4
1win Private Club #1
Logitech G Play Connect 2026
SL StarSeries Fall 2026
FISSURE Playground #3
BLAST Open Fall 2026

Upcoming

YSL S4
Sector 591
SC4ALL II: Brood War
BSL 23: Non-Korean Championship
HSC XXX
Stellar Fest 2: Lunar Cup
StarCraft2 Weekly Open Tournament 2026 Grand Finals
SC4ALL II: StarCraft II
Kung Fu Cup 2026 Grand Finals
RSL Offline Finals
IEM Kraków 2027
PGL Bucharest 2027
BLAST Bounty Winter 2027
PGL Major Singapore 2026
Stake Ranked Episode 6
TLPD

1. ByuN
2. TY
3. Dark
4. Solar
5. Stats
6. Nerchio
7. sOs
8. soO
9. INnoVation
10. Elazer
1. Rain
2. Flash
3. EffOrt
4. Last
5. Bisu
6. Soulkey
7. Mini
8. Sharp
Sidebar Settings...

Advertising | Privacy Policy | Terms Of Use | Contact Us

Original banner artwork: Jim Warren
The contents of this webpage are copyright © 2026 TLnet. All Rights Reserved.