My experience with cheap control death usually comes when I play a certain game for awhile, then start playig a similar game with slightly different controls. For example, playing a first-person perspective game like Half Life 2, then start playing some other shooter where the jump button may be different, or the reload method is different. Even third person games where the analog camera controls are inverted can be a hassle at first.
Also, the controls of NCAA football and Madden are getting more and more like eacother, but back in the day the controls were so drastically different that you would play NCAA for a few months until Madden came out, then have to untrain yourself from the NCAA controls and relearn the Madden way of playing football.