Appendix E of Wong's "Professional Blackjack"
has 31 pages of tables giving exact odds on each possible card decision. For example, for six deck dealer shows 10, if the player has nine, the EV (expected value) of doubling down is -.462, the ev for hitting is -.151 and the ev for standing is -.541, showing that the best decision (albeit still a losing proposition) is to hit rather than double.
Those are the tables that the basic strategy charts are ultimately based on. Once you learn a counting system, though, you don't so much work off the basic stategy--you memorize an index number below which you hit, otherwise you stand (for instance). An example, I have 16 and the dealer has a 10. The number I have memorized is 0 (zero). If the count is zero or above, I stand rather than hit.
Most of us don't memorize index numbers for every possibility. In fact, for the pair splitting decisions, most of us do rely on basic strategy.
Hope this wasn't TMI
