If the current bid on an item is $50 and you bid, for example $65, the following will happen.
Items in that price range have a bid increment of $1.00 So, if the current high bidders maximum bid happened to also be $50, the high bid would now be $51 (even if you bid $65) and you would be winning. If their maximum bid was higher than $50, it will increase their bid. If their maximum was lower that $65, it will put in your bid as $1 over that maximum, up to $65.00. It their maximum bid was higher than $65, it will raise their bid automatically to $66 (even if their maximum was $500), If it takes less than a $1 increment to reach your or their maximum bid, then it will just raise that bid to the earlier defined maximum.
So what this means is, if a sniper comes in at the last second and bids anything up to $65.00, you will still win. If they bid $52, it would automatically raise your bid to $53, timestamped for when you placed the original $65 bid. If they bid more than $65, well that was more than you wanted to pay anyway. $65 was your max.
Bidding your maximum bid as late as you can means that you don't give people time to nibble bid the price up. That's the other reason for sniping. I've put in max bids at the last moment for more than double what actually I ended up paying. If I had but it in earlier, someone would nibble it up. But if someone ELSE wanted it too, I might end up paying close to my maximum, or even not winning. But I wouldn't be upset, because I didn't want to pay more than what the item went for.
That brings me to the final point. Taking my example above, If an item is currently at $52, and that's you and that's also your max bid, I come in at the end and bid $200. I win it for $53. You think i sniped it at the last minute and you lost it by just $1. You did not. You lost it by $148, but you would never see that.
Bid once, bid the most you want to pay, bid as late as you can.
