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AlI use esnipe for all my bidding. Long ago and far away, I used to bid manually at the 10 second mark, but I learned quickly that I was compelled to be online to do so. Sniping simply frees up my time to do other things. I do my homework, decide what I'm willing to pay for the card, put in the snipe and forget about it. Many West Coast sellers are still wide awake at 9PM their time when it's midnight on the East Coast...why on earth would you wait up so late to put in a bid manually?
I also think that putting in a bid say on day two of a seven day bid just exposes your position. Invariably somebody is gonna nip, nip, nip away till they top you. Esnipe points aren't that expensive.
As for auctions, you still have the option of selecting a high bid, as bids are incremented at 10% levels. The key to auctions IMO is to pick the sweet spot price and select it before someone else does, so in a way that's kinda sniping.
Sniping IMO is the only way to go, place your bid and do something else. Wake up the next AM and see how you did, works for me. Besides, you can't type fast enough to bid on multiple cards you may want that end within a minute or so of each other, at least I can't do that.