How much time and experience does it take for basic strategy to become ‘automatic’ and deliver consistent results?

For me, it took several hundred hands before basic strategy started to feel natural. I used online simulators first to get muscle memory down, then moved to low-stakes tables to test it in real situations. Reading through https://picgallerybd.com/news/2025/11/11/when-to-hit-stand-double-or-split-in-blackjack/ helped a lot because it broke down which plays are critical and which are situational. Even now, I sometimes pause if a rare hand comes up, but 95% of the time the moves are automatic, and that consistency definitely helps reduce losses over long sessions.