A friend of mine is an IP lawyer who put in several challenges
on behalf of clients. He said that he made his first challenge literally in the first
fifteen minutes of the WIPO challenge website being open, and he said that his invoice
number was already in the 70s to 80s range (they are in numerical order).He also
said he put in a challenge one week later and a decent amount of time has passed,
and he hasn't even been assigned a number yet (WIPO is already up to 400 challenges,
presumably all made in the first few days alone).
Therefore, if you are going
to play the "I'll just challenge last" game, it's still just luck because you will
have no idea who's challenged a name (possibly even seconds) before you or after
you, until you've paid your money. Also, I can almost guarantee (based on Afilias'
reputation to date) that they will extend the sunrise challenge close-off deadline
to a random date in the future, opening up the possiblity that the respondent/challengee
can then get retribution and challenge you.
Cheers,
Dave