I've sat back and watched a few good ones. I use a few strategies:
-Never go past 6 rounds (since a lot drop out at 5)
-Never go past round 3 if there's more than 1 other bidder still in. One of them's bound to be an idiot.
-I check out the stats for my opponents, you can generally spot token farmers/buyers from the quality of the squad, plus factor in nationality (I'm not going to go into national stereotypes here - though me being listed as from New Zealand must confuse some ) and available funds
-There's generally 2 types of bidder in the knockout rounds*. The last-second sneak play merchant, and the scare-em-off by bidding as soon as the round starts to show he really means business type. Against the former I try to bid early in the round for the 1st 2 or 3 rounds, and then hold for a last-second bid in the hope that the other guy assumes he's won on the previous round. Against the latter I let him place 1st bid and follow along mid-late round, hoping he'll give up before round 6.



* though at the start of last season I came up against a guy who re-bid any time someone else placed one. He'd blown through 10 tokens by round 3. I broke my own rules (it'd been a good day's token farming) and stayed in to round 8, purely to make him burn 2 tokens to my 1 each round.