What is Cheese in Starcraft 2?

[Valks 2,373]

While many of you know cheese as a food that you may love or hate, it has a very different meaning in Starcraft 2.

A cheese strategy is essentially a strategy in which you take a risk by doing something that either takes advantage of a lack of knowledge on the enemy's part at an early point in the game, such as via an early rush attack, or puts a huge amount of faith into a strategy that, unless it succeeds, will essentially destroy that player's chance of winning.

Cheese strategies are often very successful and very difficult to defend against when they work, but will make the game fall apart when they fail. 

A very good example of a cheese strategy that is an instant win-or-lose situation is a worker rush at the start of the game. While this was much more popular in previous expansions and it rarely works nowadays, it essentially takes advantage of the attack command and the surprise element of it. Before the game has even truly begun, your enemy will be faced with your workers immediately attacking them and, with the help of the attack command, wasting less time between choosing targets and essentially winning the game.

There are different strategies for the different races, but they all rely on the same thing: hope. If your rush fails, the game will be over soon after.