Judged Comps: Enter Early or Snipe Late?

zackary71

Hi
Been away from Comping for awhile after a successful 2010. (5 wins from 8000 entries,worth c.£8k:)
Anyhow I digress. I've started again but only focusing on Effort/Judged/Caption/Tiebreaker Comps now. I've done well on them in the past & the number of Compers competing in random comps nowadays makes it too much hard work for little gain!
The dilemma I often seem to face is whether to post an entry early and show my hand, or wait 'til near the end. I realise this is more relevant where entries are in the public domain eg.caption and twitter comps. However, a case in point is a comp I'd done a good entry for, where I held it back. Sure enough a little used word I had included appeared in another Comper's entry...so I changed my effort. The flip side I suppose is put it out there early & hope to blow other potential entrants out of the water/put them off entering!! So what do you do?