I feel ignorant, I thought with card counting you were still pretty much playing the simple strategy but altering bet sizes as your expectations of winning increased?
But note that’s a reason for casinos not to overtly discourage counting; they’ll still happily ban a player who is apparently counting well rather than roll the dice on whether they’re counting “well enough”.
[0] Sibling points out that counters will make specific deviations from “naive” perfect play depending on the count, but that’s to push earnings up a bit on an already positive edge. There’s also the element of camouflage, where a really strong counter might deviate in ways that don’t hurt their earnings but make their play look less “counter-y”.