He won’t say what all the adjustments were in the final e-mailed agreement with the Trop, but they included playing with a hand-shuffled six-deck shoe; the right to split and double down on up to four hands at once; and a “soft 17” (the player can draw another card on a hand totaling six plus an ace, counting the ace as either a one or an 11, while the dealer must stand, counting the ace as an 11)

The blackjack rules (excluding the discount agreement) mentioned don't seem out-of-the-ordinary. Most Las Vegas casinos have these exact rules for their higher minimum tables http://wizardofvegas.com/guides/blackjack-survey/.

The house edge of this game (using http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/calculator/) is 0.33457. There's no additional player-favorable rule that I can imagine to which all 3 casinos agreed (like late surrender, a rule I've never seen in a Las Vegas strip casino) that would account for the ~0.08 difference in house edge. Like another comment suggested, I think there's a good chance he intended to count cards when calculating his odds. A simplistic card-counting strategy (http://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/card-counting/high-l...) could account for the difference.