You can outbid a bot easy, just make your bid what you are willing to pay rather than making it "just enough to nudge over the current high bid" You are still not full-proof here, but if you wait to bid till the last 5 seconds and then make a healthy bid on something, the bot would have to be set to bid OVER your high bid, which it doesn't know what that is. 
 

Yo guy... that's not beating a bot, that's paying my maximum price. 

I want to get it for as LOW as possible.

If I'm going to pay my max price, why bother with the auction? I'll just BIN. Which, as alluded to, is my preffered method now because it's just much easier and I don't have to bother watching auctions. 

Back in the day when there was much more available it was worth it to watch auctions, and FUN, but not so much anymore. 

I guess with this, two people the highest amount they are ok with paying, then it goes to whoever was going to pay the highest. Just put the most your willing to pay at the latest time you can then, but if someone else put a higher maximum bid you're going to lose.

So either you will get it for just over what the other person put as their highest amount they would pay, or you dont get and dont sweat it because it went for more than you wanted.

For example, if you put a maximum price of $200, it does not mean your going to pay $200. If you put $200 and someone else puts say, $120, then you will get it for $121.

I know ebay used to be you put a maximum bid and thats what it would jump to (regardless of what others put), but doesnt really work like that now (or for a while)
 

You actually don't pay the maxium. 

Example: say you are looking at an auction that is currently sitting at $9.87 with 2 bidders for Kid Dracula loose cart (mint condition). There is 1:36 seconds till the gavel. You want to beat the bots and whoever else is willing to bid. SO:
you judge that you'd be willing to pay $88.65 for the cart. You feel if you can get it UNDER $90 then you got a bargain. With this number in mind, you decide to put a final bid of $90 on the cart and cross your fingers.
At 5 seconds left to go, you unleash your bid: $90. At the same time, the bots and other humans who are trying to get it release their bids, and here's where ebay makes it FAIR and why the bots aren't better than anybody else bidding.
Ebay's bot system is sorting through all of these bids at a lightnighing pace. It does 3 things.
First it looks to see what the current high bidder's maximum bid is. When the high bidder put in his bid, he had the option of putting a number that HE was willing to buy the game for. So for example, let's say that the current high bidder put in a $50 bid, and so he outbid the person who was the previous high bidder's mark, and was sitting at $9.87 as his CURRENT high bid. Remember, that when HE placed the bid, he did not BID $9.87, he bid $50. So in order to beat his bid you need to go over that amount.
So now comes the more complicated part. At the end of an auction, everybody is putting in last minute bids and say you do the same. Say you bid $10, and then look to see you have been outbid to $10.50. The important part here is that the person who bid $10.50 did not have to do anything. Ebay's bot saw that he has a bid of $50, so ebay took your bid, and increased the high bid accordingly. This concept is important. Because let's go back to your $90 maximum bid. If you bid $90 at the end of the auction and no one else bid anything, then you WIN that auction and your final bid would not be $90, it would be $50.50, or just over the maximum bid that came in or was already in.

So see, the bots don't have an advantage on you other than the fact they are willing to bid more than you.

 

A lot of people have time to waste sitting at a computer trying to buy a game for 20 they can flip for 35 and make an 8 dollar profit for a couple hours of work.

Let them have that shit.