When you double down, you have to stand, and you can only double down on your first hit. The article makes it seem that he doubled after getting the card, when

When you double down, you have to stand, and you can only double down on your first hit. The article makes it seem that he doubled after getting the card, when reality he made that decision before he got the 2's and 3's. He split his 8's to 4 $100k hands, and then doubled down on each, for 4 $200k hands. He just got really unlucky on each hand, that the point value was so low.