Follow the Basic Strategy at heart?

[project96gsr]

New to BlackJack...

I've looked at several basic strategy charts for different deck size and they all seem similiar. I'm wondering if other people follow basic strategy all the time or deviate from basic strategy depending on situation and card count.

For example:
Dealer has 7 showing and you have 16 with a +7...

 

[FLASH1296]

There is no True Count that you will likely see that will make the preferable play standing on that hand.

 

[FLASH1296]

Most of us have memorized a matrix of indices to tell us when to deviate from Basic Strategy.

There are almost 200 possible; but the vast majority of this "power" can be derived from less than 2 dozen of them. Most are of such little value or appear so rarely that nobody bothers memorizing them.

The Insurance Index is the most important.

I am a stickler for detail so I use the ZEN COUNT with about 88 indices, when including Late Surrender.

Most of us use somewhere between 16 and 22.