I'm no shady strategist so I bet I'm missing a lot simpler ideas and also, ones proposed above do not actually work out to a profit mathematically.
I do wonder why you are calling out a hero member as a shady strategist, but I haven't read all of kjj's posts, so he could be I guess.
I didn't read this as him calling me shady. I just saw him saying that he wasn't shady, not in contrast to anyone, but in general.
My posting history is a mixed bag. In one post, I'll be a complete jackass. In the next, I'll be patient and helpful. In the next, I'll be both. And so on.
In the spirit of disclosure, I'll say that my join date on these forums was essentially the day that I learned more about bitcoin than just the name. In that time, I've mined about 100 bitcoins, and I've spent about 25 of them on various things like shirts, tokens, computer parts and dollars. I wrote and operate my own bot, which is not at all like a traditional trading bot. It has been far more useful than profitable. Since it started, it has made a profit of about a half bitcoin (minus the value of my time, which is apparently zero), and hasn't made a trade in several weeks.
My question to Desolator was, and remains, "What about these trades makes them unfair?".
The larger point that was I was getting at was this: On the exchanges, each party gets to set the exact conditions for the trade. You tell mtgox, or tradehill, or whatever, that you want to buy or sell, how many bitcoins, and the worst price you'll accept. You never pay more than you specified when you buy, and you never get less than you asked for when you sell.
In what possible way could anyone consider a trade which happens under the
exact conditions that they specify to be unfair?