It's been my experience in 4 years of bidding that most buyers don't place even money bids. Try reasearching the current bidders, go to their feedback, click on some of their recent wins, find some that have more than one bidder, check the bid history to find out what they bid and how they bid. You can even go to search, type in their UID, find out what they've bid on in the last 30 days and research that way. By inching up the bid by minumum increments, you are giving yourself away as very interested. You're going to be at the computer anyway if you were to bid the item up, so spend some time and do a little "secret" researching. You may even find the same or similar item they have bid on recently and HOW much they bid.