Initially The game the so called "big boys" play is this:

Win at least 0.5% more of the time.

That basically means 50.5% win of the time vs 49.5% loose of the time. With a trading horizon of 5-10mins tops.

Profits come from scale. More trades per ticker, more and wider range of tickers to trade.

Critical part is keeping friction at a minimum (operating costs, connectivity costs and trading costs)

Ok so to back to your question: "when do you quote and when do you cancel"

All the time, there is absolutely not set of rules - it's a dumb as that.

Remember latency and strategy sophistication are proportional, as latency goes down so too does strategy sophistication and complexity

This leads to utterly dumb strategies at the nanosecond time resolution, that if given the right set of conditions can not only be profitable, but near risk free.

As for the link you provided - you don't even have to be that sophisticated - that in itself is way too complex.

Most MMs simply do: Follow the mid. That is move in the direction of the mid as quickly as possible, cancel previous buy/sell place new buy/sell around mid that's it. Only rule, if mid is on the uptick cancel buy then sell and opposite if its on a down tick.

If you have access to good tick data you can backtest this so-called 'strategy', you'll find that on the majority of tickers if you're in the top 1% in latency terms, you'll make a profit 52-53% of the time which is fantastic!

"Pick your product, let's say we decide on AAPL" - this is where you have a problem, as a rebate based MM the venue tells you which tickers you have obligations on subsequently which tickers you'll get discounts on trading. All other tickers you'll be priced as per usual customers with a similar order flow amount.

Remember not meeting your obligations may mean the venue charges full price at the end of the month for your trading costs, which could mean you could go broke.