You inferred it, but it's not implied.

Instead of thinking of a bet as saying "I have good cards" think of it instead as "I have an advantage in this pot", which is not a lie.

In poker advantages can come from cards, or from other objective measures such as position, stack size. And of course from subjective measures like being able to read your opponent.

If reading your opponent is a strategy that confers advantage then it stands to reason that deceiving your opponent is as well.

The original claim is that people misconceive "that poker is about lying or that you need to lie to play poker"

Just because other people may try to lie to you, does not mean that you need to lie in order to succeed.

No one said "lying can't be used at all"

My claim is a bit stronger, not only can you play without lying, but you don't sacrifice anything, you can play at top level without lying, and you gain no advantage by lying. In essence at optimal play you ignore whatever your opponent says, there is only the bets and game actions, which are independent from the cards held.

Skilled players read their oppononts' hands (i.e. the cards they're holding), not the opponents themselves.

I feel one of the most useful skills picked up by poker that people don't explicitly speak about is managing your information effectively.

Deceiving my opponent has the connotation of this happening in one instance. After you realize that you can't convincingly deceive your opponents in poker into perpetuity, it becomes a game of managing your image —revealing the right information while being conscious of information that you shared in the past (if you're playing someone skilled or perceptive, that is).

On the flip side, what an excellent game to help people pay attention to signals, figure out how to weigh them appropriately, and appropriately act on them when the situation calls for it.

But one of the most common strategies is to posture as if you have a good hand even though in reality you don't. That is deception.

The original claim is that people misconceive "that poker is about lying or that you need to lie to play poker"

The claim is not that deception can be used as a strategy at all. That btw is actually an uninteresting claim. In almost all games, you can lie to your opponent and probably gain some advantage.

If I were coaching a beginner poker player, I would honestly tell them to play statistically sound poker. That's a good way to make a lot of money.

Sure its a spectrum, but i think poker is fundamentally much more about deception than say monopoly is.

Only in the sense that poker is more about anything than Monopoly is!

Sure—but when you say it like that, suddenly it’s not a bad skill at all to tach your children, and teach them to be wary of others using it.

Yeah, it's basically the main thing I was taught to do to avoid any chance encounters with (animal) predators growing up: walk confidently and present as a fellow predator and not a prey animal.

By posture do you mean act verbally and physically? Or bet as if you had a good hand?

The first is mostly inconsequential in poker, you should avoid having tells in your posture and speak, but the goal is to avoid conveying information about your hand, not conveying false information about it to deceive.

The second is just the game itself, acting as if you had strong cards has a cost, and is not lying, when you bet you are not saying "I have a hand". In a sense you may bet with a bad hand, but you are more forcing your opponent to pay for a chance to win the pot on account of your hand potentially containing a strong hand. You are truthful in your representation of a potential strong card.

In fact if you were to bluff on a situation were you could not ever have held a strong hand, it would be a mistake, and you would stand to lose expected value.

It’s not tedious at all. Many games have structural information asymmetry, and part of the fun is navigating this. To add an extra verbal lie is categorically different from playing within the bounds of the game