Honestly his idea of how professionals play profitably in poker is pretty awful. To say that a pro's bets are merely probing for information to let him know when he is beat is a gross oversimplification. "Betting for information" is actually a common leak (a sub-optimality) in beginners' and even solid players' play.
Most bets (there are some exceptions, but they are very few) have one of two purposes:
1) To make a hand with good equity (the chance of winning if no one ever folded) fold, especially a hand that is currently beating your own.
2) To get value from a hand with worse equity that will call.
The best situations are where your bet is doing both. For example, if we raised preflop with 8-7 and are greeted with an A J 8 flop with 2 clubs, we can bet and get hands like 10-10 and 9-9 to fold, while hands like a flush draw or straight draw will call. We can bet sometimes on the turn against certain players and get all but an A to fold.
Contrast this with a situation where we have K-K on an A 8 2 flop with no draws. A LOT of bad players bet small here so that if someone raises (or even calls), they can assume they have the A and fold. This is a huge mistake. We're only folding out hands we beat, getting called by hands that beat us, and possibly giving a smart opponent a chance to bluff us off the best hand. It is much better to check and let an opponent with a hand like QJ hit a worse pair (or give someone with TT a chance to think he might have the best hand when the turn is a 9) so that we can make money from a couple bets. Furthermore we give aggressive opponents a chance to bluff at us.
When we bet for information, our bet has no value, therefore we make no money from it. When we instead bet for value (or to fold a better hand) we do make money (in the long run) from our bet.
This post got longer than intended, but seeing your comment get a few upvotes, I wanted to make sure that people didn't think his insights were actually good. The most insightful thing he said was:
Professional players are so much better
than amateurs that they can make a living
in many cases, becoming very very rich by
exploiting the difference between their
level of skill and the level of the people
they play with.
Don't let yourself (meaning the reader, not necessarily the poster I'm replying to) be one of those amateurs too often ;). Beyond that, especially considering that he says, "I can't play poker..." I would definitely not take his poker insights very seriously. The parallels with entrepreneurship, however, are pretty interesting.
Most bets (there are some exceptions, but they are very few) have one of two purposes:
1) To make a hand with good equity (the chance of winning if no one ever folded) fold, especially a hand that is currently beating your own.
2) To get value from a hand with worse equity that will call.
The best situations are where your bet is doing both. For example, if we raised preflop with 8-7 and are greeted with an A J 8 flop with 2 clubs, we can bet and get hands like 10-10 and 9-9 to fold, while hands like a flush draw or straight draw will call. We can bet sometimes on the turn against certain players and get all but an A to fold.
Contrast this with a situation where we have K-K on an A 8 2 flop with no draws. A LOT of bad players bet small here so that if someone raises (or even calls), they can assume they have the A and fold. This is a huge mistake. We're only folding out hands we beat, getting called by hands that beat us, and possibly giving a smart opponent a chance to bluff us off the best hand. It is much better to check and let an opponent with a hand like QJ hit a worse pair (or give someone with TT a chance to think he might have the best hand when the turn is a 9) so that we can make money from a couple bets. Furthermore we give aggressive opponents a chance to bluff at us.
When we bet for information, our bet has no value, therefore we make no money from it. When we instead bet for value (or to fold a better hand) we do make money (in the long run) from our bet.
This post got longer than intended, but seeing your comment get a few upvotes, I wanted to make sure that people didn't think his insights were actually good. The most insightful thing he said was:
Don't let yourself (meaning the reader, not necessarily the poster I'm replying to) be one of those amateurs too often ;). Beyond that, especially considering that he says, "I can't play poker..." I would definitely not take his poker insights very seriously. The parallels with entrepreneurship, however, are pretty interesting.