Owning your own Starcraft 2 strategy guide will severely reduce your learning curve.
Starcraft 2 is a very complex game that takes lots of trial and error before you are even close to a great player.
I'm talking hundreds of hours to reach the top ranks of players and that is if your lucky. Yes, mastering Starcraft 2 is a difficult task.
The reason for this is that Starcraft 2 is more complex than your typical game. It requires an intense concentration and a vast amount of experience before you can beat a top level player.
I don't know if you play Protoss, Terran, or Zerg but you can spend hundreds of hours just learning one of these races.
Learning one race means learning how to face off against all three. Learning to face off against all three means having a complex system of strategies to counter anything you've seen or could see.
Lets face it not everyone has the hours to do this, and for a measly amount of money this issue becomes mute.
Having a strategy guide means instead of testing and testing over and over, you can simply look up what you need to know.
Watch some video replays of that strategy in action and then read an article detailing step by step what to do and watch out for.
It has been an invaluable crutch for so many players, its like your training wheels. Until your in the Diamond ladder let them keep you from falling, or you may never like riding a bike, I mean Starcraft 2.