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In the few months since my initial post I have spent whatever free time I've been able to gather up between projects and work and family to experiment with SC2. I tried out all the races a bit and tried to get a basic understanding of how each one works, as well as a basic understanding of game mechanics (what is macro for example). Other than exploring my way around the game I have spent time reading theory, watching youtube, live streams, and tournaments to get a better idea of the game.
I keep hearing the term "cheese" and it's usually in a negative connotation. I'll hear something like "Despite the fact that he tried to cheese me I was able to pull out a win." Or "Even in Masters you still see something like 2 racks rush cheese." Always said with a negative spin as if cheese is something that only newer players, or not as skilled players do.
Through my research I'd found a couple of protoss builds that were focused on killing your opponent and winning the game quickly; builds like a 1 base 4 gate push, or a special version using only zealots to warp into the mineral line before the other player has gotten out a stalker in PvP, zerg 6-pool, and terran 2 racks. The idea seems to be to end the game before the 10 min mark, which seemed strong to me. The thing was that when I tried these builds a couple of times on ladder I got so much rage from people calling me, in not so nice terms, "a no-good cheeser."
Then of course there is the pinnacle of rage generation from an opponent, the protoss cannon rush. I've seen pros do this to the natural like when Jim played Solar in the IEM Shenzen and it wasn't successful, but I have never seen a pro cannon rush the main. From what I've seen around the interwebs and in games this is the "ultimate cheese," but despite the negativity I got when I tried this, it worked every time. The advise to stop this rush that I read was "kill the probe" so I brought 2 or 3 and kept chrono boosting probes back home to mine more (letting me build more cannons faster) and to send as backup if need-be.
So I understand the above builds to be "cheese," but then I started looking at builds like a protoss 2 base blink stalker "all-in" and a zerg 2 base +1+1 roach "all-in." These builds both focus on early aggression to roll over your opponent early like the 4 gate or 2 racks, but they just come in a few mins later. Are these type of all-in builds also cheese?
What is the difference between a cheese build and an all-in?
Why are cheese builds seen so negatively when all-ins are not?
Thank you in advance for your input.
PS I'm not trolling here, although I can see how some people might see this as a troll post. I'm genuinely curios and trying to improve my understanding of the game.
 
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The way I see it is that it's a strategy that heavily relies upon not being scouted/being scouted too late.
An all-in would be a build that has to win at this moment or else it leaves you so far behind, the best exemple being scv pulls in TvP. (a cheese can be an all in, like a 6pool, or it may have a back up solution like a proxy 2rax or a canon rush). Most people abusively call some builds all in, roach 1/1 for exemple is just a strong timing vs terran that leads to a decent roach/hydra mid game. Sure since you're building units instead of drones/tech you have to do damage but it's just an aggressive build like many others.
Cheese builds are often very frustrating to play against, and most of them are awful once your opponent scouts and have the proper answer. The two most powerful cheese and the only to be regurlarly used at pro level are some early pool in ZvZ, canon rush in PvZ and 2rax in TvZ (and yes a zerg is at the receiving end everytime).
If you know how to scout and execute correctly the defense you're fine, but if you don't you're screwed and there is most of the time little you can do about it, that's why it's often frustrating for the players receiving the cheese.
I hope it's clear and you'll understand my point. And just play what you like, who cares if you're enjoying it (and winning with it :p )
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Canada11355 Posts
Ask weedamins what he thinks of calling cannon rush a cheese.
Cheese refers to a build that you decide to use before you have any information about the opponent(starting location, opening build order) and execute with the intention of winning when the build is executed. (proxy 2 rax has to deal significant damage, for example, or else the terran player has to pick up and fly his barracks home, rendering his production useless for a time)
People speak negatively of cheese because they are often trying to improve their gameplay where cheeses will do nothing to improve your overall skill level aside from refining and executing a build order. Personally, I am more upset at myself for losing to cheese than I am at my opponent as the premise of a cheese is that it should only work if unscouted and losing means I made a huge error in scouting.
May I ask your league? It should be said that cheese works extremely well at the lower levels of play by design. A player with a refined/decently executed build order will often crush a cheese outright where an early supply block or blunder can cause a cheese to be undefendable.
Edit: You asked for the difference between cheese and all-in. A cheese can be described as a build order that intends to punish a greedy opponent in the first few minutes of the game that, if executed poorly or is properly defended, completely cripples your economy to the point of no return.
An all-in is a build that starts with a healthy economy and then cuts workers/bases in favour of creating a larger-than-standard army to punish more 'standard' styles or greedy opponents in the mid game. While often creating a similar situation when failed as a cheese, an all-in has a much higher margin for error as the unit count is much higher, and you have at least some infrastructure to fall back on if only a moderate amount of damage is caused..
I hope I made sense
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cheese and allin is almost the same. cheese is just a little more "allinish" then allin. Both relies on the opponent not scouting it. If opponent scouts it these strategies will fail. Not everyone is negative about this. Koreans are not. People from Europe and US are. I guess the reason is that they dont understand the game well. Its very ridicolous sometimes i play someone going double expo with upgrades before any production facilities and when they die to my poke they call me a cheeser. These people dont understand that they are cheesing themselves by playing so ridicolously greedy.
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Here are some loose definitions of each term:
Cheese: a low-economy early-aggression strategy that focuses on surprise and a lack of situational preparedness of your opponent. This can include proxy buildings building cannons or tier 1 units, and staying on one base for a prolonged period of time in order to continue mounting aggression.
What is not a 'cheese': Taking an expansion then attacking. If someone cries "Nice cheese", then they are dumb, and you should reply "Your fine whine compliments my refined cheese exquisitely."
All-In: An all-in is exactly as advertised: it's all or nothing. The term gets thrown around way too much in ways that are nonsensical, and I will explain why. An all-in is where you cut off your economic growth in favor mounting aggression to an extreme so if your aggression fails to do sufficient damage, your opponent's production will simply overpower anything you can build beyond that point.
Not an all-in: If someone attacks, and the attack does not do the amount of damage expected, but the player is not so economically behind that they are out of the game. The term "all-in" is often confused with
Timing Attack: A timing attack is a strategy that exploits a window of opportunity where your opponent does not have sufficient units to deal with your attack. For a timing attack to be successful, it must be executed before the opponent has time to build up their forces, so the window of the attack must come A) Early enough to hit the enemy's base before they can defend appropriately, and B) Not hit too early and have too few units to hurt the opponent. This is why there is a specific and short "timing window" where you execute your timing attack. To get to a specific timing window, the wizards that develop such strategies may make small to significant cuts in their economic or tech growth in favor of unit production.
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Thank you guys for the feedback! This really helped to clarify some things for me. I can see how it could get frustrating for players who are trying to work on improving their set up to later parts of the game and they keep getting hit with this kind of early aggression cheese-type play.
I am really new to starcraft and I am currently still bronze league and blunders on my part are certainly still really common. I can see how getting supply blocked or missing queen injects could mess up a player's ability to defend against really early aggression. Since that doesn't happen to the pros I can also see why cheese isn't so common in the pro tournaments.
Thanks again for the comments, I really appreciate it. I'll keep practicing until I settle into a race to start working on improving my play and start working up the ladder.
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Hi! Please use "rax" because "racks" can be misleading 
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It's a term invented by an internet culture, so of course it's going to have 101 slightly different interpretations. It is used variously to describe builds which are intended to win very early vs even good players (if they don't see it), or to describe extremely gimmicky strategies. Sometimes strategies which began as cheeses were later refined to be fake-cheeses which actually put you in a decent position if your opponent defends too strongly. Bunker rushes in TvZ BW are a good example. Some people intend to win the game right there, others learned that if Zerg pulls all his drones to defend, you're actually okay to just let it die and keep playing.
What is the difference between a cheese build and an all-in?
A real definition of cheese is hard to pin down. Generally speaking, all-ins can happen at any time in the game, and if a cheese is an all in it usually happens extremely early and involves a proxy. One could say the main reason there are two different terms is that cheese is perceived to be more dependent on luck and prediction of how you opponent is going to play before the game starts, where an all-in later in the game is based on what you've seen your opponent do throughout the game when you believe you have a good chance to win (or maybe your only chance to win if you are behind).
Why are cheese builds seen so negatively when all-ins are not?
All-ins are often seen negatively in BW (namely hydra busts), but almost every strategy in SC2 is an all-in, so I guess the idea is that an all-in which comes later in the game and has more complex aspects to it takes more skill than an all-in which comes very early in the game. Generally speaking a game is probably more interesting to spectate and to play in when it involves more than a single all-in. Personally the cheese was so varied and interesting in BW that watching a pro pull out a specially prepared one was usually a very fun and popular game to watch. ie BOXER.
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On September 11 2014 21:42 Chef wrote:
but almost every strategy in SC2 is an all-in
Yeah, we get it, you don't like our game. Is it really necessary to continue with this kind if ignorant commentary?
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On September 11 2014 21:42 Chef wrote:
but almost every strategy in SC2 is an all-in
HAHAHA nice one
+ Show Spoiler +yes i know it isn't true :D
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What makes cheese frustrating is that it's often much more difficult to scout an all-in coming and knowing how to defend it than to pick an all-in, execute it and pretty much hope it works (although there's defintely still skill involved with tricking, denying scouting and build order execution and micro). The idea that the opponent is doing a hypothetically suboptimal play if only you were good enough to gather the information you needed to defend. For me personally I'm mostly angry at myself for knowing I should be able to defend said cheese yet being caught with my pants down, which then gets projected on my opponent for "rolling the dice". 
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Was expecting a thread with posts discussing the curdling process and pros and cons of eating safe amounts of cholesterol and fat regularly. But life is frequently a disappointment. =[
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Cheese strategies are similar to 'all-in' strategies. They essentially rely on gimmicky tactics that end the game quickly based on the assumption that the opponent will have never encountered it before or rarely encounter it and so won't see it coming. This is often different from meta-gaming your opponent however. It differs from what most people consider 'standard' because every cheese has a counter that if executed properly, will put the defending player far ahead. You'll soon see as you get into higher leagues that your success with cheese strategies drop dramatically as player reaction speed, scouting and game sense improve. This is why cheese is frowned upon, its like an easy way to fast track your win/loss ratio and skip leagues, but ultimately your real skill level will not improve much.
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Cannon rushing isnt a cheese or all-in in PvZ
I would also argue at the poster above, cheese does help with mechanics and top players can cheese very well. I would even argue that newer players should start off cheesing to get to a higher league and practice basic mechanics.
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On September 11 2014 19:36 JieXian wrote:Hi! Please use "rax" because "racks" can be misleading
Sorry JieXian. I will use 'rax' from now on. Thanks for the correction 
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Thanks again for all the feedback guys! I'm still in the process of trying to figure this game out and the community here is super helpful! :D
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On September 11 2014 22:12 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2014 21:42 Chef wrote:
but almost every strategy in SC2 is an all-in Yeah, we get it, you don't like our game. Is it really necessary to continue with this kind if ignorant commentary?
Just accept the inferiority of your game. ACCEPT IT.
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On September 12 2014 09:09 kimjung_theillest wrote:
Cannon rushing isnt a cheese or all-in in PvZ
Are you Combat-EX?
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United Kingdom36156 Posts
I know I haven't watched much SC2 recently when I actually thought of cheese the food first when I read the title :/
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I think cheeses/all-ins themselves should not be seen negatively since they are part of the game. They are risky but valid strategies. For this reason, it's a skill that players need to learn how to defend against or deal with cheese/all-ins (through scouting, micro, etc). Yes, they are different styles from normal macro games, but they are still very common in all leagues from bronze to pro. So I think people should welcome opportunities to practice against cheese/all-ins as there is a lot to learn from.
On a side note, I think pro non-standard play is more exciting to watch as a spectator. Normal macro games get old and boring to watch, and sometimes even to play. That's why some people criticize a player like Rain that his predictability and standard play are his weaknesses. His defense on the other hand is top-notch.
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EPT
