I think the chess equivalent would be choosing to play with only your King and your pawns under the logic that your opponent won't have practiced playing against only pawns and won't be expecting you to do it. If you're up against a novice they might panic or fail to react and you win! Otherwise, not.
Most cheese in SC2 is a micro check; you're testing to see if you can control your units better than they control theirs, even if they might have an economic advantage. A worker rush isn't nearly as stupid as what you're describing in chess -- especially if it's a ZvZ match, because in that case you can start planting spine crawlers on their creep.
