Newbie question about auction monitoring

It does do it! I'm so mean, I'm always getting emails from AS telling me that my 'potential' bid is too low...

As to how often it checks - no idea.

The closer the auction ending is, the more frequently As checks; the father away it is, the less frequently it checks. I believe it checks once a day until the last 24 hours, then it accelerates every few hours.

I have rarely ever changed a snipe amount. To me, it is is important to set one's maximum amount and then leave it alone, whether there are a hundred bids or none at all. I see this is part of the of the process of emotional detachment involved in sniping. Receiving an outbid warning from AS simply tells me that I have already lost the auction, in that someone is already willing to pay more than I was. The item, no matter how rare, will almost always come up again sometime. To set a snipe amount and then keep changing it does not seem to be setting one's max and comes dangerously close to proxy bidding mentality, however delayed. Of course, being aware of this, most of my snipes are set high enough and I do win ninety some-odd percent of my auctions.