The secret bet in BJ tournaments give an edge to educated player because they can better guess what other players are betting. It also neutralizes the impact of bet position on that hand (usually the final hand).
Secret bet is not an advantage for skilled players. You can't make optimal bet when in a position and don't know the exact bets, and the guessing out of position, though you can predict to a degree what they bet, is just a guess. Usually one have to assume that unknown players will make max bets but strongly consider that they make optimal bets. The worse secret bet is that you play the hand and afterwords the bets are revealed - that's ridiculous but I saw it. S. Yama
Secret bets, almost always used on the final hand, render useless many of the tools which we rely upon. We spend the last 1/2 of a round positioning ourselves to be able to effectively use strategies, on the final hand, such as splitting, doubling (especially for less), doubling after split and even standing when not a normal move. Very important is knowing when it is necessary to hit or double a made hand. Intelligent decisions involving last hand strategies are not possible when all we know are opponents' bankrolls but not how much of it they have wagered.
The secret bet neutralizes the huge luck factor of last hand position. That's good. It takes away a lot of the tools that educated players have. That's bad. But you can replace those tools with some game theory applications that are not well understood by most of the player pool. That's good. See my article in Blackjack Insider, "Secret Bets for the Beautiful Mind."
Thank you all for responses. Monkeysystem, how can I find your article? Can I do a search without paying membership, I would not mind paying if they were still publishing. I like the idea of secret bet to eliminate bad luck on final hand table position.
