How often should I cheese my low-level opponents?

I'm a pretty bad Starcraft II player -- currently stuck in Silver league. I find I can beat most of my opponents fairly easily with tricks like 6-pool, proxy pylon, bunker rush, and so on. However, I'm worried that if I rely on this type of play in order to rapidly advance, I'll quickly find myself facing higher-level opponents against which these tactics rarely work. So my question is:

Is it better to win at all costs, or play "straight up" in an effort to form good fundamentals?

Day9 advised: if your strategy works - play it and use it widely. With this strategy you will move into upper league till it stops working... after that you will need to see why it doesn't work... and either improve this strategy or choose another one.

If you strategy will help you to go into upper league (6pool rush, for instance) I would use it. If you will try to use something else that will not work always it will just mean that you need to practice that "another" strategy. For that you need improve you thinking, speed, etc... You will be able to do that if you play against STRONG opponents, not silver league level.

I'd suggest starting to get actual build orders going...eventually this cheese will fail on a regular basis.

Different people play sc2 for different reasons. If cheesing is fun to you, I don't see why not do it. As with any imbalanced form of play (i.e. narrow gameplay, unable to react properly to a wide variety of scenarios), you will probably find yourself a bit "over-promoted" in the ladder at some point, playing opponents where your only hope of winning is cheese, because it's the only thing you've practiced.

But even that shouldn't be a problem. If you want to later branch out and play macro games, it only takes a few tough losses to reduce your MMR rating so you're matched back with players of your skill level (and a potential accompanying league demotion).

If by "better" you mean "will get me to Master League most efficiently", I would advise reading http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/Hot_Bid/CecilSunkure/How_To_Improve_Efficiently_a.pdf, a fantastic post that basically shows you the correct philosophy of how to climb the ladder.

On a different note, cheese will only get you so far--it only ever works if it's unscouted, and if you expect higher-tier players to forget to scout you, you've got another thing coming.

To be a good Starcraft II player you need to have solid mechanics, being able to keep up your macro in the long run in the game. While using cheese strats will get you promoted in the short run, you will eventually start facing opponents that will be able to hold them off, and you'll find yourself back in the lower leagues in no time.

When I first started playing, I used cheeses much like you say you do.I was placed in gold league, and won a couple of games the same way.But in a few days I got demoted all the way into bronze.

If you start practicing solid mechanics and macro you'll have a good steady increase in skill level, and promotions to upper leagus will follow shortly.Sure, you're gonna loose a few games if your opponent uses a cheese, but don't worry, in the long run you are way better off.

Regarding what Day9 said about using a single strategy if you find that works for you, I don't think he was reffering to cheeses.Just find a solid, general build that you like(like a 3 gate robo if your protoss, or spanishiwa's build for zergs), and stick with.These are pretty good macro oriented build that can hold off early pressure and allow you to win in the later stages at the game and at the same time you will find that your apm, macro, resource and unit management will improve drastically.