"1rax double" is equivalent to "1rax expand" or "1rax CC". They use multi or double to mean expand in the early game. Instead of "cheese" or "all-in" they use "pil-sal-gi" which means ace/joker card or "han-bang" which means an army or attack on few resources.
I am not sure what short-hand they use for barracks, gateway, etc.
That’s a really interesting one to me! One thing I’ve noticed is that Koreans do not seem to have the same hangups / negative attitude towards cheese strategies as westerners do!
The attitude seems to be that throwing in the occasional cheese is not so much meant to win the game, as it is meant to make sure your opponent wastes resources on defending against a potential cheese at all the other times.
This is very similar to the function of a bluff in a theoretical analysis of poker. Very simplified, the optimal frequency of bluffing is when bluffing just about breaks even against optimal play from your opponents. But throwing the bluffing in masks when you actually have good cards.
But if you are known to never cheese, your opponent might bet on greedy strategies, sometimes known as "economic cheese": you don't prepare any defense, and skip scouting, to build an overwhelming army all of a sudden at some given time like just after an important couple of upgrades that boost the army (a timing attack).
The "normal" play (economic growth plus scouting) is usually the superior strat, but if your scouting fails to detect a cheese attempt that must be countered with a very specific defense, the game is lost. The occasional cheese keep the players honest so they spend resources in scouting, instead of going greedy.
StarCraft has its own bluffing scheme, that is faking a build so the opponent goes for a specific counter, but actually going for something else.
> But if you are known to never cheese, your opponent might bet on greedy strategies, sometimes known as "economic cheese": you don't prepare any defense, and skip scouting, to build an overwhelming army all of a sudden at some given time like just after an important couple of upgrades that boost the army (a timing attack).
Yes, that's exactly what I was trying to say.
And the optimal cheese frequency is when cheesing has the same expected win-rate as 'normal' play.
> StarCraft has its own bluffing scheme, that is faking a build so the opponent goes for a specific counter, but actually going for something else.
Yes. I didn't say cheese was bluffing. Just that the strategic considerations around cheese frequency are similar to the math for bluffing in poker.
I think the real issue is that, like learning to play the piano, StarCraft demands extreme levels of practice to master its physically demanding control scheme. To then lose to an inferior opponent who merely bluffed you feels profoundly unfair. For whatever reason, Koreans seem to be better equipped to handle the cognitive dissonance associated with such an unfair system. Perhaps the Korean school system (and its infamous final exam) has something to do with it?