I thought I'd be clever and rig up a greasemonkey script to autobid at 2 seconds remaining, stick to the nailbiters, and only bid on the auctions that listed '0 bidders in the last 30 minutes'. I'd get up at 2:30am so I could start the auction hunting at 3am.
Problems:
There are no auctions that list 0 bidders in the last 30 minutes.
Those new auctions never expire with few bids at retarded o'clock, they're set to expire at 8am to noon ish, which is about the right time to start a bidding war and keep it going for hours.
There's too few nailbiter auctions.
The timer is inaccurate. When it says 2 client side, it could be anywhere between 0 and 10 server side. Plus, it keeps freezing and jumping. When you hit bid at 2 or 3 seconds remaining it freezes, then it either pops back up or you lose. If you lose you're never really sure if it's because it took that long to negotiate an XHR connection or if there's too much time float between machines.
This clever bastard tried a more sophisticated route and share his greasemonkey script:
joshua stein: trying to game swoopo.com
Also note that those people who get a $1300 laptop for $133 had to pay something retarded in bid fees.
People are surprisingly aggressive in bidding. People were bidding items well over what Newegg was selling it for.
I got a better return buying $1 lotto tickets. On my lifetime record I'm still $18 ahead there, actually. Swoopo was a waste of $26 and a lot of time and coffee.
