Making Up Your Own Mind

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[Warning: I might come off as griping. Maybe. If I do, I apologize in advance.]

Everyone knows that a 6 pool rush is a cheese tactic that results in you either winning the game against an unprepared opponent or results in you being horribly behind in economy if it fails and most likely losing the game to any sort of counter attack. But why does everyone know that?


I ran into a player today who had hit me up for a 1v1 game because he'd seen me post on the forums. Awesome! I love meeting people in the game or on the forums and I'm always up for some practice(Apollo CC:655, by the way). 

First game, he 2 gate rushed me. Fine, fair enough. I had opened with a 14 hatch 13 pool without scouting, so I had that coming.

Second game, I figure I'll scout with a drone this time instead of the sky snail that is the Overlord. Ah, there's his two gates again. I counter with a 12 pool and a crawler which holds him back. Great, I'm making progress. I move on to a quick lair(no queen) and a spire to swing into Mutalisks. Standard stuff, I thought.

At the point when I bring six or eight Mutalisks around the back of his base to see if I can poke at his workers, he freaks out and says he doesn't play cheese and would quit if I didn't stop right now. He said he'd link me the reason after the game. Whatever, I thought. I had all these Mutalisks but nothing to do with them because I didn't know what he was upset for me doing. Needless to say, I lost the game because I had put all my resources into units I didn't want to use for fear of upsetting him further(I didn't want to lose a practice partner over something I might have done that I didn't know about).

After the game, he links me a clip of Day[9]'s 100th daily(you'll hear it in the first 30 seconds of the clip) that recounts him talking about playing against a map-hacker who could see all his tricks before he did them and said he learned then that tricks only get you so far while skill and timing make a better player. Awesome, I completely agree. I didn't get what this other player was upset about though.

Apparently, he took Day[9]'s comment to mean that any sort of trick, surprise, or sneak attack was cheese and he would have none of it. Try as I might, he would not be convinced otherwise. Day[9] was a pro and if he said it, who was I do disagree. Forget that he saw nothing wrong with sneaking Dark Templars into MY supply line and decimating it because I forgot to morph an Overseer. Apparently that was fine, because Dark Templars are naturally cloaked and it wasn't cheese like hiding Mutalisks in the Fog of War. 

My point, though long winded, is this. It's absolutely fine to learn from the pros. It's great to pick up strategies and to learn what not to do. It's even better to listen to how they mentally play the game. But don't assume that whatever they say is gospel, nor that you completely understood what they meant. Verify, verify, verify with experience and practice. 

If you haven't 6 pooled someone, give it a try. You'll see why it's cheesy and why it teaches you nothing except how to jilt someone out of a few points, be it them or you, and then you can tuck that knowledge safely away and never 6 pool again because you've SEEN why it's cheese and aren't just accepting it as fact.