I didn't see it mentioned in the paper, but one of the main advantages for using a "sniping" service is that you can participate in multiple auctions at the sam

I didn't see it mentioned in the paper, but one of the main advantages for using a "sniping" service is that you can participate in multiple auctions at the same time. Assume there are similar 5 items that would meet your need, but you only want 1 of them. If you "bid and forget", you might end up committing to purchase 0 to 5 of the items. But if you create a "bid group" to place last minute bids, as long as the endings of the auctions are spaced in time by more than the "lead time", you only have an active bid on one item at a time, and thus will finish with either 0 or 1 items, a much better outcome. The "bid and forget" alternative is to only bid on one item at a time, and then as soon as you lose an auction, you bid on one more. But this requires that you keep track of when the auction end, remember what the next item is, and submit the next bid before that next auction ends, which is hardly bid and forget. ps. No affiliation, but I've used http://auctionsniper.com http://auctionsniper.com for some number of years and would recommend them.