[slm_HN]

In fact there is opponent reading (literally) in Blackjack. The opponent (dealer) must check his hand for blackjack, if the dealer's upcard is a 10 or an Ace, after having dealt the initial two cards to every player. "Hole peeking" is a technique where a teammate stands behind the dealer so they can see the hole card when the dealer checks for blackjack. They then signal this information to the player so he knows the value of the dealer's hand. Hole peeking used to be so common that casinos now have card readers built into the blackjack tables so that the dealers don't have to expose their hole card to check for blackjack.

It is/was also possible for a player at the first seat of the table to see a sloppy dealer's hole card when checking for blackjack. This is called "first basing" while using a teammate is generally called spooking.

[lonelappde]

That's card reading not opponent reading.

[chongli]

Yeah, I read the wikipedia article on first basing and spooking as well. That's not the same as reading people in poker.