The Big Money: The Pennies Add Up at Swoopo.com - washingtonpost.com

Swoopo.com is "an online auction site that fiendishly plays on every irrational impulse buyers have to draw them in to what might be the crack cocaine of online shopping sites,...[combining] the addictiveness of auctions and the chance of lotteries into what may be the most devious way to separate folks from their money yet devised.

...Some of the ideas behind Swoopo have been explored in a theoretical way by game theorists. The reluctance of bidders to say goodbye to their "sunk cost"... has been found to draw bidders deeper into the game. Swoopo plays off those insights to efficiently get people to make bad choices. It's the evil stepchild of game theory and behavioral economics."