I concur with what others have told you. I think you might be missing something. I just started playing this yesterday, and after failing the first few tries, it's pretty easy to beat the game consistently. The hard part is getting the perfect score, that I have not yet achieved. And sure, if you know the "1" surrounded by "8" pattern, you can go faster, etc. but those are not needed for beating the game (I just learned about them a few mins ago reading comments here actually, but it was never a blocker for finishing the game).
I must be, clearly, Cause the winning strategy that worked for me is very much opposed to how i feel minesweeper should be played and thats okay this game is different but I am an avid fan of minesweeper as a game and this takes away from the design of minesweeper i've come to enjoy. I've watched some videos of other people playing, and the strategy seems more luck based than logic based which is not what minesweeper should be.