Is it true that a good programmer uses fewer “if” conditions than an amateur?

A "goto" is not a branch (as noted in the article) but it rather a jump. From what I've seen it's not the level of experience that determine the number of "if"s in a person's code but rather seems to be an intuitive minimization of logic as a whole.

For those that wish to learn, I've used Gray's code and Karnaugh maps to minimize really complicated logic. And computer scientists are often amazed that an electronics engineering technique could be applied to software.

An amateur is a person who thinks stuff like that is what makes good or bad code :)