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I've recently lost a lot of auctions by exactly the minimum bid increment while using Gixen so at the risk of you professional snipers giving up your trade secrets I have to ask the question...is there a snipe program out there that has the capability to read the high bid and put in a bid just above it?
I'm not sure I understand.
If your highest bid was say $60, and my highest bid was $100, and there was only you and I sniping, why wouldn't I win by the minimum bid increment?
Is that not how sniping software works? I genuinely do not know, but that was always my impression. :shrug:
James.
To successfully do that you would have to put in an insanely high max bid for something you wanted to be sure of winning...which might explain some of the prices I've seen lately on eBay...but some of the prices I've been outbid on while at the "upper range" were not unreasonable. Maybe I'm just being too cheap. :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD_SCHOOL
That is how it should work.Quote:
Originally Posted by Jimbo
What I'm not sure of is how it works from the eBay end of the deal. If we both snipe at the last second I'd think eBay would have to see both our max bids and award to you because if the item was say at the $5 price level there wouldn't be enough time for the system to adjust our bids by the minimum increment all the way to the point where you win.
Some of the "pay to play" sites show the prices in real time which can be interesting to watch in the final seconds of an auction.
The highest bidder wins the auction, if you feel you would have bid higher knowing the bidding would end just above your maximum bid you simply did not enter the maximum bid you were prepared to spend after all. You cannot blame Gixen for that. Occasionally you're not the winner while your max. bid was the same as the winning bid. In that case the winning bidder put in his winning bid before Gixen did. I do not think you can specify how many seconds before bidding's end Gixen puts in your max. bid.
I wonder what happens if 2 people enter the same max. bid on the same item with Gixen.
I think you're simply being outbid. I could enter a proxy bid on eBay for $100 days before auction end. Every time someone enters a bid under $100 after that, eBay will increase my bid to one increment higher than your's. If you're sniping and your bid gets entered a couple of seconds before the auction end then the bidder with the highest max bid will always win by 1 increment. The fact that you're losing by 1 increment most likely indicates that you had the second highest bid. By how much you were second you don't know, it could be a lot. There could also be other bidders whose max bid was within 1 increment of of your's and also came in second. The fact that you're losing by 1 increment also indicates that there were not multiple people with max bids more than 1 increment over yours. That last part might mean that you're pricing the items very well or a little on the high side and someone is grossly overbidding.:)
Well, I do not know if this answers your question or not, but I just found this at a site called auctionsofwarereview.com:
James.Quote:
If all bids were snipe bids one of following could happen:
* A market price would be reached in exactly the same way as normal due to proxy bidding
* Many bids miss the end of the auction so the result is a lottery with random winners and prices
* The bidders with the best sniping program or service always win, and a new battle to be the fastest sniping company begins
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kees
I'm not blaming Gixen...just venting. Some of the stuff I lost went for bizzare prices like a run of the mill dubl duck for $110 so I suppose there are a few folks who bid VERY high and hope to poach for a buck or two over the going price. Hell, I've seen stuff go for higher than you can buy it at WallMart.
If you subscribe to the mirror service you CAN adjust your bid time...which if I understand how the system works might help by allowing you to bid a couple seconds before all the "free" crowd. In theory if everyone bid the same max you would win because your bid was registered first.
I have a question in on the Gixen forum asking how they queue the bids and when answered I'll post in this forum.
To clarify a bit. I think that once your bid gets entered, it will be increased by 1 increment more than any subsequent bid until you reach your max bid. It doesn't matter when it gets entered as long as it gets entered. When you snipe you're just not revealing that you're bidding until the last seconds. This prevents people from being able to modify their max bid.
Most people are probably not using snipes. They enter a max bid and watch the auction. They hit their max bid and get outbid by 1 increment. The tendency is to go in and raise/re-enter your bid figuring "If I just bid a little more than I had planned to I might win it"... By entering your bid at the last seconds it prevents people from upping their bid manually. As someone else said, it also prevents you from upping your bid manually which is probably a good thing.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I'm pretty sure that IF your bid gets entered at all then the eBay software WILL run it up to the max if needed. The auction-end time is simply a cutoff for bids to be entered. Once your bid has been entered it will be incremented as necessary until it reaches your max bid. That's my understanding. (even if it did work as you might be thinking, seconds is an eternity for the eBay server).Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD_SCHOOL
That's my understanding of the process too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quick
Which is why I'm asking on the Gixen forum how the bids are queued since the first max bid wins if two people were sniping with the same max bid whoever's bid was recorded first would win...in which case it might be worth subscribing to their "mirror" service so you can adjust your bid time.
Agreed. The time it gets entered on eBay is the time that is used to break ties. One of the questions was if 20 people were the only ones bidding, all were using Gixen, and all entered the same max bid. Then it would be determined by the order that Gixen submitted the bids to eBay. I was speculating that Gixen would use the same method. First one entered would be the first one submitted. They do say that if you modify your bid on Gixen before it has been submitted the original bid will be canceled (on Gixen) and a new bid entered (on Gixen). I would expect this to move you to the back of the (Gixen) queue if there was one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quick
I was worried about this myself as I sometimes adjust my max bid if the price goes up while I'm watching and I was afraid my new bid would be placed at the back of the pack so to speak.
Now for the definitive answer.
The question I posed on the Gixen forum...
One question I've always had about snipe programs in general is since they all try to bid at the last second how are those bids queued?
Since whoever puts in the highest bid first wins lets take the hypothetical example of 20 Gixen snipers all putting in the same max bid. Who would win?
And their answer...
The winner will be the one whose bid is submitted first. This is completely random if all the participants use the same offset.
Interesting. Was that from a Gixen person or a forum member? The way they would do that is use a random number generator and then use that to insert the bid into the queue for that offset. I guess from some perspective that would be consistent with the concept of sniping.Quote:
Originally Posted by AusTexShaver
That answer was from the site administrator of Gixen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Quick
I doubt if the process is as sophisticated as using a random number generator. I suspect Gixen just takes all bids and sends them at once (or at the time you specify)...and lets eBay sort it out.
There is no such thing as "all at once" with computers. They will leave the Gixen server one at a time (or possibly bundled in some order). They could get randomized a little bit in transit over the net if transmitted one at a time but not likely.Quote:
Originally Posted by AusTexShaver
If you guys want to play with snipping software for free try this program.
Works very well and best of all the price is right.
This program gives you a good understanding of how the whole process works.
I don't have any affiliation with this site just a happy user of this program. By the way I use the Linux version.
Bruce
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quick
Here is what the Gixen site administrator had to say about that.
So you don't use a "first in first out" queue to submit the bids? Do you use some type of random generator to determine the order of bid submission?
The reason I'm asking is I'm wondering if for some reason I decide to edit my bid that I'm not hurting my chances by that bid being placed at the "back of the pack" so to speak.
"No, handling threads are spawned at the same time for all the snipes. This all happens in a tiny fraction of time that's far, far less then the network latency variation. So editing a bid in no way puts you at disadvantage.
Plus the chance of two users bidding on the same item through Gixen is very small. While it happens occasionally, it's still very rare."
I guess he doesn't know how popular his program is among SRP users. I suspect several of us are using it to snipe at the same razor. :rofl2:
Hmmm. I'd say he either doesn't know (not the programmer), doesn't think you want that sort of detail, or doesn't want to disclose it. If you want to keep pushing him you're going to have to get really specific...
Is it one thread per bid?
Is it one thread per time slot?
Is it one thread per user? (timer used to submit bids placed for different offsets).
Is it one thread per user per auction?
Is it one thread per auction?
Something else?
The example would be users 1 through 10 all bidding on the same item and using the same offset.
Users 1 through 10 submit/setup their Gixen bids in chronological order.
What is the probability that eBay will register user #8's bid as being entered before user #2?
Would that probability change if user #2 modifies his bid on Gixen after user #8 has entered his bid in Gixen?
(you'll probably soon be banned for being a pain in the arse :D)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Quick
I think I've already pushed as far as I can. If I were the programmer I wouldn't cough up any proprietary info just to satisfy someones curiousity.
Based on the responses though I'm guessing it's one thread per user for each time slot. I don't know that much about server latency but it's plausible that you could send quite a few bids for the same object that would be recorded at the exact same time by eBay...in which case the winner would be determined by a random drawing, which would be done by eBay.
If you want to push go to the Gixen forum and under support look for the thread titled Who Wins.
haha. Yes I'm curious but I don't have a vested interest. First on my queue I figure it'll take me a couple more days of reading here to plan out the honing stones I can't afford :)