I calculated BS in 1987 completely independent of any other influence
In 1987 in Tasmania, Australia, as a 17 year old, I calculated basic strategy.
I (misguidedly) believed I was the first person to ever do this. I did not know there were books on BlackJack, I did not know there was a whole body of literature on the subject. I was a complete island with no outside influence.
Guess what? The basic strategy I calculated was precisely the same as eveybody elses. That's because there only is one basic strategy for a given number of decks and set of rules, and that's the basic strategy. When I did discover the body of literature several years later I was pleasantly surprised that it confirmed my calculations.
No matter how many ways you look at it, the long run expectation of hitting 12 vs 3 in a multiple deck game will always be -25% and the long run expectation of standing it will be -29%. Just as 3 times 7 will always equal 21.
Oh yes, but I guess I just failed to identify "The Flaw" (capital T capital F) same as just about everybody else in the world except John Patrick!!!
If Patrick has indeed won millions of dollars at the casino, I can damn well assure you it wasn't by playing BJ with his "conservative" basic strategy. But Patrick does state that BJ is "the hardest game to win at". It sure as hell would be for him by hitting those Aces against a 9!
If Patrick has won millions (which I doubt), I'm guessing it would have been using "old time" strategies such as collusion. Maybe he got really lucky, I mean, with all the millions playing someone has to be 7 standard deviations out there on the far right of the bell curve. Just look at Archie Carras (apologies if the spelling is incorrect).
I can tell you one thing, I have won millions at BJ, and it was straight up and down the line - basic strategy, hilo running count, boring old true count conversion and learning my numbers. A little ST thrown in for good measure in the later years. I think one the real skills of BJ is being able to stick to the straightforward simple approach, and not start to imagine monsters in your mind and head off on little flights-of-fancy tangents (like BS must be wrong!).
Just my contribution on the subject.
AWS