Phil,
It had been discussed in more than a few occasions in the past that those of us in the West Coast, don’t really stand a chance of scoring on the very few and limited stuff unless we hook up with a proxy speedster located on the East-ish. The server lags don’t work in our favor and the extra second or two makes an enormous difference in the placement. Of course many other factors also weigh in but we start off at a huge disadvantage.
Pre-orders for the win-win unless you want the one of type of stuff. For those lotteries were suggested but at the end of the day, Nathan is the boss and he favors / prefers FCFS because the other methods can be too laborious and too arcane for CPK.