Blackjack is played against the casino, not other players, and the casino plays robotically, under a simple fixed strategy that is known to the players. There i

Blackjack is played against the casino, not other players, and the casino plays robotically, under a simple fixed strategy that is known to the players. There isn't any reading of the opponent to begin with. The only reason the casino has an advantage, despite having a fixed, non-optimal strategy known to the players, is because it acts last, and the players may lose the hand before the casino takes its turn. There is a basic strategy to learn that is "optimal" about when to take each action, but it is easily memorized, and I wouldn't call it much of a skill element. Now, if you track cards, you can claw back a little bit of the advantage by varying the strategy dependent on what cards remain, but going very deep on this is a lot of work for not a lot of payoff. You get a much bigger payoff by simply betting big when the deck is in a favorable shape, and continuing to follow roughly basic strategy. Fixed betting as described is exactly the same as varying your bets, in both cases you're playing roughly basic strategy with varied bets, it's just that in fixed betting your vary your bets by having the big better change tables rather than by having an individual change bet sizes, because this is harder to detect.