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I guess i should do a little intro here.
if your not interested skip to "Do not play a strictly dominated strategy."
Im a gamer, i was pro back in the HALO and COD days, and i had a very short and failed run in Marvel, street fighter and tekken. ive stopped playing shooters even though i still love them i have been spending all my gaming time with SC2. I have become fascinated with the evolution of the game and the evolution of the players. I believe that balance does not come from the game, i believe balance comes from the players. I have been studying gaming and strategy and i will be blogging and streaming about it whenever i get the chance. and A LOT more when i get a better computer.
The main thing that i am strating to learn about gaming, is that there is NO SUCH THING as cheese. there is no such thing as cheese. there are only good strategies and bad strategies. i played protoss in the beta and season 1 and canon rushed my way to diamond league. I did it because it was fun. everyone called me a cheeser and told me i would never improve or be a good player. Although that is partially true, canon rushing did not make me a bad player and canon rushing is not cheese. Alot of games i found myself using canons for agression and trying to keep my econmy out of the shiiter. I would do canon contains, canon blocks, canon attacks, canon rushes, canon defence. And i learned one thing. canons are good. canons won me alot of games. canons at the time were a winning strategy. It also taught me something else. I love getting canon rushed. i canon rushed so much, that know where/when/and how to canon rush. and i know how to stop it. If you ever think a strategy is unbeatable and you think a strategy will win over your strategy. IT IS NOT CHEESE. you should learn the strategy, play the strategy, attempt to perfect the strategy and then decide for yourself if it is a dominant strategy or dominated strategy. I believe canon rushing is a dominated stategy, it leaves you economically behind and it requires a very high risk. The problem with this (and in my opinion all other all ins) is that the reward is a win.
You put in a very high risk but the only possible payouts/outcomes. are a win. or a very high chance of loss. So as i begin to study and imerse myself in Game theory, i give you lesson 1 in game theory
Do not play a strictly dominated strategy. Play the dominating strategy.
in other words, you play to win. you play for you. you play for you to win.
If you know the Dominating strategy and you know the payoffs, play the dominating strategy and collect your payoff.
Even when you think playing a dominated strategy may benefit others (for the "greator good")
you can NOT control the actions of others and others can not control your actions, DO NOT play a strictly dominated strategy.
lesson 1/2
Rational choice (playing the dominating stragy) can lead to outcomes which are inefficient.
i.e. playing a long drawn out game.
i.e. both players use a dominating strategy.
i.e. you lose.
obviously SC2 is a much more complicated game and you have to factor in player skill, mechanics, equipment, meta game, trends, balance updates etcetcetc but i believe these things still hold true. even at the top GM level, sometimes, a player using a great strategy loses. i dont think you can ever think you will win 100% of the time. i can get into confidence and things of that nature later on but i think its important to understand and except that as a fact. you will eventually LOSE.
 
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spelling cannon correctly usually helps your cannon rush strategies too xD
There is a such thing as cheese, but it is subjective. If you feel that nothing is cheese, then that is your opinion. Does cheese work occasionally? Yes. But it will not improve your mechanics and gamesense like macroing will.
I know a guy who allins every game. He's in gm mmr, was in gm 2 seasons ago, and plays against pros occasionally. He has never beaten me because I know that's all he does. I build a blind bunker and play the game safe and he cant break me. Im in diamond/low master mmr (varies month by month), so he's obviously much better than me rankwise, but such strategies only work on ladder if you don't know they're coming. Its the effective strategy on ladder, but it only works once.
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The problem with spending all your time perfecting something like a cannon rush is that although you get really good at doing that one thing, it doesn't really make you much better at playing the game. Sure, you do learn to defend against that specific cheese better, but it's not nearly as productive as using that same time to improve your overall level of play.
Relevant article on honing sub-optimal strategies: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win-part-3-not-playing-to-win.html
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There is cheese - which means a strategy that is easily countered when detected in time and wins the game otherwise - and the only question is if it's good, bad or somewhere in between which is a decision everyone has to make for himself. High risk/high reward in the long run gives exactly as much success as stable low risk/low reward strategies.
Your post basically says "Don't play bad strategies", which is kind of obvious. However, you claim that long, drawn out games are something bad - or as you say it, "inefficient" - which is something i don't agree with.
Playing a high risk "cheese" strategy requires the opponent to make one mistake, if he doesn't make it, you lose. There is only one decision point.
Playing a low risk, long term focussed strategy means there are a lot of decision points and if the opponent makes a mistake at one of them and you don't, you win. This means the better you are in long, drawn out and - using your term "inefficient" - games, the more opportunities you have to win. The opponent needs to really play better than you at all stages of the game or he loses.
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Your post:
"I cheesed, but there's no such thing as cheese, because I only define tactics as good or bad, I don't care about any sub-categories".
Yeah, there are good or bad strategies. Cheese is a subset of strategies, and there are good and bad cheeses as well.
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hmmm not sure if im supposed to reply or make another blog entry  but im gonna post here. and then make another blog entry later in the day. These arent just my crazy thoughts about gaming game theory is a real thing and i got some of this info from a yale university course i found online. im gonna be posting rules/lessons/facts and also my own personal thoughts about gameplay.
it turns out you guys are really sour about the term "cheese" and thats just a state of mind. The fact is "cheese" strategies are perfectly viable strategies. I am going to go as far as to say that FFE (forge fast expand) is a cannon rush. like i stated above, i would do cannon contains, cannon rushes, cannon deffense, one of those things happened to be cannon expands and i did it vs terran and toss as well. i laughed a little when i read an article on Team liquid about koreans using FFE vs terrans on ladder. i laughed because it was something i was doing in season 1. The term cheese is just what somebody labled these anoying little strategies. bunker rushes are "cheese" but you have to let go of that notion that its ok to lose or ok to take a easy win with a "cheese" build. you have to look at it and study it and yes as was stated in the article (i actually did read the article posted above) you have to test and train and fail untill you get a very well rounded (the ultimate goal is to get a perfect) strategy.
but the most important thing is the state of mind. if you dont realize that a fast canon can be a perfectly well rounded dominant strategy then your game play will never be as good as those who cannon, have cannoned, or just practice cannoning as a viable form of solid gameplay. whats a FFE? and FFE is a rush for a forge and a canon.
I am in no way telling people to cheese, and only cheese and only try to always play a easy strat to win, but the fact of the matter is if something is working, and your winning. why not keep using it? there will come a point where you will lose, there will come a piont where your strategy is no longer domminant and you will have to alter your play. but if you have a strat and it never loses. and it takes you to code S and it wins you tournaments Why wouldnt you use it? you should always use a domminating strategy.
I find it funny that in the article linked above, the guy talks about only practicing with dalsim and getting completely destroyed and switching to honda.... why wasnt he using honda to begin with? atleast vs thawk. there are plenty of pro gamers who have more than one player ready for tournaments. and theres even people who play random and I believe TLO? uses terran vs zerg and zerg vs other 2 matchups.
the whole idea behind always using a dominating strategy is that once you have tested, trained and know the facts and numbers, you should always use a strategy that will give you the best chance of winning a game. if there is a pay out, play the winning strategy and collect your pay out. you play to win. in the end the lesson is that you shouldnt cheese you should use the domminating strategy whatever it may be.
using a dominating strategy may lead to drawn out long games, at high levels both players will be using dominating strategies, and yes people... even when using a dominating strategy. you will eventually lose which means, its time to train, practice, test, and evolve your strategies.
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EPT
