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tl;dr is in bold.
I've been thinking a bit about how people use the words "cheese" to describe a tactic that is usually considered low-level or noobish, and in looking at a lot of the discussion about cheese people generally define it as something that is "allin-ish". Sometimes they also include "if you scout it then you win."
I think that these definitions are so broad as to be useless, and that as a result when people use these words, it damages real discussion.
I'm by no means a high-caliber player, but I will give some reasons for my opinion that I think are obvious enough to be valid without a complete understanding of every fine point in the game.
First of all, when you press the "Find Match" button in sc2, you are "all in". You've decided to play a competitive game in which the only possible outcome is to win or lose. From that perspective, it seems redundant to describe any strategy or tactic as "all in" at any point after that, as we have already established that we are "all in". So if there is a specific set of actions which people mean to describe by the words "all in" then I think that they should be more precise with their language and highlight when and why the tactics/timings are good/not good.
Further, I would contend that in every game, there are moments where one player (and usually both) make a decision to engage that could potentially win or lose them the game. If what the derogatory "all in" refers to is that decision to put the game on the line with a set of actions, knowing, "there's no way back if this doesn't work," then why is a max army fight more acceptable than a cannon rush?
I think the answer is that it feels more like "the way the game is supposed to be played". There's a set of artificial constraints that some of the community embraces that are not actually enforced by the game engine. See Sirlin's "Playing to Win" for a lot more on this concept.
The reason I started thinking about this was because of Idra's description of Tyler's tactics in their showmatch a couple weeks ago. On the SotG Idra described it as a "two-base all in" and as "abuse" where Tyler made two probes for every patch and then stopped probe production and just made attacking units from there. I think it was 5-gate but I'm not sure. Later he recommended it to incontrol for the gsl qualifier so I guess he either didn't mean those words derogatorily or else he came around in his view of it, but either way I thought that if "all in" can be used to describe two-base play, then it's pretty useless as a term and I wish that people would stop using it and be more precise with their language.
Finally, if "all in" is not useful as a descriptor, then using it to define cheese means that cheese is also poorly defined. However, I think that what people mean when they say "cheese" is more clear, but that it's kind of "I know it when I see it". I don't know if this is comprehensive, but I think that a better working definition of cheese is a tactic which is much easier to execute than it is to defend. This feels like abuse because one player is taking advantage of a racial discrepancy, or a timing window in mirror matchups (cannon rush for instance in PvP, 8 pool in ZvZ, etc). From this perspective cheese seems less odious, as it's difficult to rationalize why a player would not want to take advantage of a tactic that is much easier to execute than to defend.
I don't have any particular opinion on whether cheese is good or bad as a tactic (although along with everyone else I hate losing to it), but I do know that it doesn't have to be "all in" as long as it does damage, and also that scouting it definitely doesn't mean a sure victory for the defender, so I wanted to offer an alternative definition to the discussion and hope I can contribute in a small way to the starcraft zeitgeist.
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Uh.. that's not a better definition of cheese.
Cheese's definition is fine, since it describes what it is.. changing either the word or definition accomplished nothing.
Same for the "all in" thing, okay, let's change the definition since "Find Match" is all-in. What do I call a push where I bring all my SCVs and I plan to end the game right there or lose?
Not all cheese is all-in.
..? See how it's pointless and everything you said is redundant?
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Words are words, and "all-in" and "cheese" (if used correctly) describe certain strategies that have certain shared characteristics.
The reason people don't like the words is because they don't like the characteristics. The problem happens when the person finds something else they don't like but tries to describe it using a word that doesn't apply. When that happens, all you need to do is correct them by saying "no, a 4 gate is not cheese. It may be something you dislike along with cheese, but they are different."
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I actually totally agree with you on this one.
But I think all-ins and cheeses are good when you play like a bo3 in a tournament or something.
Korean coaches apparently encourage people to throw some all-in buidls into their gameplay according to Jinro.
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First of all, when you press the "Find Match" button in sc2, you are "all in". You've decided to play a competitive game in which the only possible outcome is to win or lose.
When I went to purchase StarCraft 2 for $60, I went all-in with my credit card.
=(
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The reason why it is all in is because there is no viable follow up if he doesn't do crippling damage. Since he stopped probe production, expanding will be too difficult to do.
REAL cheese is all-in. REAL cheese is 2 gate proxy, 6 pool, mass cannon rush. Something that if you don't do enough damage, and if they crush it, you have completely lost. If you lose all but a few of your scvs to a 6 pool you lose. If you lose only a couple and defend it, you win. If you don't win after defending cheese, then you did something wrong in your followup after the defense. 1-1-1 banshee isn't cheese. Mass void ray isn't cheese. People use the word wrong.
The reason why Idra has a lack of respect for two base all-ins (which is what Tyler did, just being honest), is because a year from now that will have easily been figured out by almost all players, and almost completely non-viable. Idra's goal is to find a way to play that is the future. A very heavy macro-based play. Even then, cheese and all-in's did exist even till today in BW so they do have their place. Their purpose is to play against a player you know will do a certain build. Everyone knows Idra always goes for the most economic build, so having a build that will punish that, is essential to winning against Idra. And that is what Tyler did. I have a lot of respect for that kind of "play it as a set" mentality. But then you look at players like Flash... And you start to see the depth of insight of Idra. He sees the future of this game as looking more like BW. Remember Boxer was successful when cute things did really really well. Then he wasn't as successful for a pretty long period of time. Even Nada was pretty much the most successful progamer of all time, and he was heavy macro.
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no, a build is considered all-in when there's no followup, and you'll lose 99% of games if you fail to kill the guy then, hence the term similar to Poker, going all-in, no going back.
As for cheese, it's just a build in the early game that is really powerful when it goes undetected. that's it.
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Your definition of cheese is almost every strategy in one area or another.
The words cheese and all-in have a clearly defined meaning. Cheese is a strategy that can be almost entirely blocked based on knowing it's coming. All in is a strategy that has no follow up, it doesn't necessarily include ending the game immediately. An all-in cast last until you mine out your base, if your strategy is to steadily stream units without ever expanding.
It's important to classify strategies so you understand their strengths and weaknesses. The terms don't have an inherently negative connotation - that's an attribute that a select group of people arbitrarily choose to apply to the term. How some members of the StarCraft community use a term (improperly) is a completely different topic, however.
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Umm, let me provide an analogy. In poker, you can bet increments of money over a period of time, or you can go "all-in", and if you lose, you're out. But if you lose hands where you don't go all-in, you can still play. This is like Starcraft. If you pull all of your workers to attack, and you lose the battle, you're out of the game. If you lose one smaller engagement, you still have a chance to come back. That's where the term all-in comes from.
Also, cheese, assuming the game is balanced, should be incredibly easy to stop if scouted. Cheese largely relies on the element of surprise and usually is very aggressive meaning that you cut workers and it is kind of "all-in". However, cheese has also been adapted to the phrase "econ cheese". So basically, cheese is any sort of play designed to catch your opponent off guard and give you an advantage, whether militarily or economically.
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I highly disagree with most of your post but the part that REALLY struck me was this:
`a better working definition of cheese is a tactic which is much easier to execute than it is to defend.`
SOOOOO many cheese are much easier to execute than defend. Take for example, Free vs Hiya or Bisu vs Pokju to name some famous BW examples. Sure, there alot of common cheese that take very little thought or skill to execute like 6 pool. But really, there are many cheese which have to be carefully planned and practiced like the GSL2 finals game 1.
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all in is when there is no next step, pressing the find match button has a next step which is playing the game.
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Your definition of cheese will probably describe all cheese and a bunch of other things, like hellion drops and using banelings vs marines, at any time during the game. Maybe you mean build orders instead of tactics, but then it still gets things like 10/15 gate. (a bw example since my sc2 knowledge isn't that great) In general aggressive build orders are easier to execute than defend. I think your definition has some merit, though, and it explains why people hate losing to cheese so much. (We are both bad players, but since you chose a cheese strategy and I didn't you won.)
As an aside, the reason you wouldn't want to constantly do cheeses as you have defined them is the relative difficulty of execution vs defense doesn't matter, all that matters is that your strategy is harder to defend than your opponent is capable of doing.
Max army fights are more acceptable than cannon rushes because max army fights are unavoidable, right? And they aren't necessarily all-in, since trading most of one army for all of another army is very likely. I think calling something "all-in" just says that the game is likely to be decided in the next few minutes and without any sort of transition from the person using the all-in. I'm not sure what definition you had in mind, but this one doesn't overlap with "starting the game", and it's not derogatory and it's pretty precise IMO. (Clearly not that precise, but I am not an expert in the strategies so I can't narrow it down.)
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Or you could just describe cheese as gimmicky.
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I disagree with basically everything.
But it seems you're more annoyed at terms than anything else. These two terms have been discussed before.
A bit of a strawman, but here's something I'm nitpicking
Further, I would contend that in every game, there are moments where one player (and usually both) make a decision to engage that could potentially win or lose them the game. If what the derogatory "all in" refers to is that decision to put the game on the line with a set of actions, knowing, "there's no way back if this doesn't work," then why is a max army fight more acceptable than a cannon rush? The only people who think max army fight is more acceptable than canon rush are those who are butthurt, but there is a difference.
If you lose the fight in a max-army fight, you still have an economy to build more units with - your economy should be more or less similar to the opponents and unless you got completely demolished in the army-trade you're still able to fight on. You canon rush? You've cut probes, no gate way, etc; you HAVE to do damage with it in order to catch up economically. The difference is the economy/tech, and that seperates (for the most part) all-in vs non-allin.
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why are there always threads about this, it has been disscussed so amny times. why don't people ever look on liquipedia. it explains how a rush can be all in and cheese is pretty much always all in.
 cheese
rush
^helpful links 
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On November 26 2010 02:52 spearofsolomon wrote:
First of all, when you press the "Find Match" button in sc2, you are "all in".
You're defining "all in" for yourself and not in terms of how it's been defined within the space of Starcraft strategy discussions and commentary. There's no point in using a different word because what we have is a very meaningful term that defines a specific and limited set of strategies within the game with clear implications (as soon as a commentator says "he's all in!" we know immediately that there will be aggression and no further bases).
Sure, we could step back and say someone is all in as soon as he chooses a strategy + backup plan a + backup plan b etc. but then we begin to approach a situation where the phrase loses the urgency it originally had.
Also, I've never considered term "all-in" to be entirely derogatory. You're right that any strategy within the space of the game should be treated the same way, and it generally is when wins are more valuable than entertainment (others may argue that all-ins are below the belt). The reason all-ins or "cheese" can eventually become derogatory is that entertainment value will be forever married to the competitive sport, and all-ins within SC2 simply aren't as entertaining.
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Oh look, it's this thread again. Theres one of these exact threads every 6 months or so.
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When Koreans are interviewed, they refer to "cheese" as "strategic play". If this "cheese" never existed, then players would simply play greedy all the time.
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yea it's getting a bit overboard. Tastosis nowadays refers to every other attack as all in.
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All-in is a perfectly okay term. All-in's are simply strategies that have no alternatives. There are not transitions, no flexibility. They are a one and done strat that either wins the game in one battle or loses it in one battle. All-in strats put all your chips on a single gamble, hence the term "all-in".
Cheese is a term that is used perhaps too loosely, and it's important to note that the two terms are not mutually exclusive.
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EPT
