By 'High-level play' he is most likely referring to tournaments and the e-sports scene, which is almost entirely 1v1 and plays very differently from 4v4.
I see. In that case it applies even more. It might be considered a cheese rush but an all-in with your drones would be very hard to counter unless they were able to hold the choke. It would have a good chance of ending the game in under 8 minutes versus drawing it out another 5-7 minutes.
It seems like cheese has failed more often than not so far in the GSL. At best it's a 50-50 proposition.
Tester deftly deflected cheese attempts from Hyperdub and NexFreeSaga before crushing the remains of their army in season 1. On the other hand, fan favorite TLO was eliminated by some proxy barracks from the cheese-loving Hyperdub and GSL season 1 winner aFruitDealer showed that he wasn't above a cheese game or two with a ballsy six-pool on a four spawn map against Inca.
Cheese fails every time if it's spotted against a high-level player, which is why it's cheese. These guys have definitely practiced against 6-pool, proxy gate, proxy rax, 7 roach rush a thousand times. There's no way they would take a cheesy loss with $80,000 on the line or give up the easy counter and auto-win.
