What mistakes cost you games when you were Bronze/Silver [closed]

I realize this may sound silly, but in the poker game Holdem many of the top pros have said it is much harder to beat a bad player than a good one, because of the crazy random stuff a newbie will do.

I'm a bronze leaguer myself, and I've taken many of the ideas from various casts and this site and have been somewhat successful since starting playing 2 weeks ago. What I'm wondering is if there are any known tricks to beat bad players that would never work on a good player.

EDIT

I don't want cheesy tactics to sneak my way to the higher leagues. The truth is, there have to be tactics that work only against bad players; that is what I'm looking for. As to the comment about scouting, that's where the poker analogy comes in - the bad player is hard to beat because you have no way of knowing what he's doing even if you can see his hand (or scout well).

I just want to win, I could care less about what league I'm in - I'm just looking for ways to win now, which is why I asked this question. Another way of asking it may have been "What mistakes cost you games when you were Bronze/Silver", but I thought linking the poker analogy (on a gaming site!) would be fine.

Final Edit

So I guess I was unable to ask this question in a way that the community could understand. I'm fully aware of the heap of resources geared toward new players and that is not what I was asking for. I simply wanted interesting tactics that more experienced players have found useful in the lower leagues but not in higher leagues.

After thinking about this a bit, I interpret your question as follows:

Which tactics can I execute today that will cause the most distress for the opponent for the least distress of my own, and can be executed in ALL leagues of play?

If you are a superior player to the bronze you wish to beat, then do as everyone else has said and just out play them and forget about this.

If you are on equal footing, then practice and you will eventually beat them.

For today, you will have to find a way to cause them distress in the most cost-effective way. And by "cost" I include both your mental focus as well as minerals / gas (for example multitasking will cause your own game to suffer because you will forget to macro).

For example Kiwikaki's blink stalker + mothership recall is probably not viable because it requires so many things to be in place and tons of APM.

Because the goal is "little effort for me", you should be careful to choose tactics that you can carry with you as you get better, or could help develop your gameplay instead of just going for a cheap win that will over-promote you to gold. This is why I said "ALL leagues of play".

For example I would exclude things like the planetary fortress rush. Maybe that could win a large number of games, but it would be completely invalidated past silver league I think.

Here are some other ideas:

1. As Protoss, at the very start, build a pylon in their base they can just barely see, and that's far from their mineral line. Bronze players may send their entire worker line out to kill it, and you can easily cancel it before it dies. This is completely worthless if you're playing anyone that knows better.
2. Send a few cheap units periodically into an unguarded base of theirs. Manage the attack if you can, but favor just letting it go by itself. Obviously there are a million things to consider to make this more effective. But just a few keystrokes here and a couple hundred minerals could take down an entire expo, force their entire army to relocate, force them to retreat prematurely if you're mid-battle, force them to spend 2000 minerals on static defenses, and more to the point: their fundamentals will suffer because it takes them much more effort to defend than it took you to attack. This is a good way I think to warm up to the idea of multitasking in general, to get used to the idea of "my army is fighting and I'm not watching it". So this tactic can be evolved and developed over time as you get better.
3. Hallucination is something that, on the battlefield, will often not go detected, and bronze won't have the game sense to even realize it's hallucinated. A couple keystrokes and your army looks twice as big and will absorb so much damage. The opponent may just 'gg' naively at the sight. It has huge potential at higher levels too, which makes this also a valid tactic.

Hmm I can't think of any more. But hopefully I have made the question more specific so others can contribute?

So I'm not 100% sure what it is you're looking for, but I did once write about great ways to learn Starcraft, and I've given advice to people who feel that they're stuck, and I've even posted on dealing with common build orders. But I'm going to assume you've seen all that, and its not what you're looking for.

I could lecture you on the fundamentals (like Opera did) and why watching high level games is a waste for a new player, but you didn't seem receptive to that, so I'm going to treat you like how I treat my friends who are learning Starcraft 2, and I'm going to explain exactly what you need to do to win.

Usually I like to start new people with Protoss because I feel like they're the easiest race to learn; and the build I like to describe is called the 4 Gate. With solid execution you can get to Diamond with just about any build (this is where fundamentals trump strategy), but the 4 Gate is a really easy build to execute, so that often helps people who are new to the game.

The most important thing about any Starcraft 2 build is constantly building workers, so for the moment, unless I say otherwise, assume I'm always telling you to build Probes. In fact, the number I'll stick next to most of these things is about the number of Probes you should have at that point. Additionally, most of your Chrono Boost should be on boosting Probes.

The 4 Gate is a "Core First" build which means (despite its name) you're going to build 1 Gateway then a Cybernetics Core. Because you don't want to build the Gateway before you have your economy, this usually means Pylon on 9 and Gateway on 13. You can play with these numbers, but the key here is good execution so inevitably you're going to find those numbers some of the best.

From here you'll want Assimilator (14), another Pylon (16) and the Cybernetics Core (17). Usually players like to get an early Zealot (18) out of their Gateway to stop any funny business, and then back that up with an early Stalker (22).

They key to a 4 Gate is your Warpgate technology, so as soon as that Cybernetics Core finishes (around 20 Probes or 24 supply). You'll want to save a Chrono Boost to make it finish faster. From here you'll want to drop the other three Gateways (for a total of four, as in 4 Gate!), and another Pylon.

Around 26 Probes you should stop Probe production (this is called cutting your workers) and just warp in Zealots and Stalkers. This should be at about 5:30 into your game and, at this time, you'll want to start pushing out. Make sure to bring a Probe to build a Pylon near your opponent's base (this is called a Proxy Pylon) so you can warp in reinforcements. As soon as it finishes, Warp in another bunch of Zealot/Stalkers, and attack.

This Attack should be at about 6:00 minutes into the game.

More than likely your first attack will not come at the 6 minute mark, but at the 7:30-8, and this is sort of the difference between a Silver/Bronze player and a Diamond player, those 2 minutes; because if you can launch an attack two minutes earlier, its likely he'll have half the army and won't be able to handle you. So you're goal then becomes: getting that attack down to the 6 minute mark.

This is called: working on your Execution.

You get that down and you can stomp your way through to Diamond.