Initially Gurushots is great fun as you progress up the ranks. Then it starts to get old. One is playing a game of which the rules are mostly a closely guarded secret. As you progress up the ladder it gets harder. Finishing in the top 100 of a challenge requires a lot of game currency. This can either be built up slowly and painstakingly by participating in challenges or bought with real money. At this point my eyes are giving up. I just don't see myself spending my hard earned cash on trivial pursuits like this. I get it that the proprietors of GS have bills to pay, but so do I.
Before I get accused of not cutting it, I have reached the exalted rank of Master in the game. To reach Guru, I only need to achieve one more goal. There lies the rub. To win a challenge requires a lot of in game currency. And a lot of time. I really mean a lot of time. As in constantly following the challenge and making adjustments to your entry. Oh yes, you need good pictures as well. This by itself is no guarantee though. In general the standard is very high but I have also seen some average looking stuff doing well.
How and why does one adjust your entry? Let me try to explain. It is rather complicated and obfuscated. Gurushots works on votes from participants. You get more votes when your photo is more "visible." When one clicks to vote, you get to see the pictures that are deemed more visible first. One way to be more visible is by swapping pictures in a challenge. A newly swapped picture is more visible. As time passes (two hours or so, I guess) it gets less visible. That is when you have to make a swap to be more visible again. The new swap starts at zero votes, they do not accumulate. The trick seems to be swapping often. Just before the challenge closes, you swap back to one that has the most votes. You can also buy more visibility for a specific picture. When you swap it out, you lose that visibility. If this sounds complicated and tedious, that is because it is complicated and tedious.
Challenges are set up by gurus who gets to pick the theme. Sometimes the theme is completely open. Sometimes it is can be widely interpreted. My favorite is street photography. Some themes are ridiculously narrow in scope. One example I can think of was "European capitals" but I am sure that were worse - I have chosen to forget them. During the run of a challenge the guru picks his favorite. Most of my efforts that got picked were ones that I did not hold in high regard but that is the way it goes. What a guru pick does for visibility, I do not know.
The most obvious way to gain visibility is by voting on the merits of other submissions in a challenges. You do this by either clicking/tapping on a photo or passing it by. There is no option to down vote. This means that if you are critical and objective, you have to look at more pictures. Sometimes a lot more, as there can be some [S}bad{/S] really average stuff. Not so bad on a desktop, but dreadful on the mobile version. One therefore tends to say: "lets get it over with and up vote everything." At one stage you could up vote a picture before it even loaded but they introduced a delay to stop that. The result is that some dreadful stuff get a lot of votes by blind luck, or so it seems to me. To top it all, the exposure meter indicating visibility of a photo is buggy in the mobile version. After voting the meter might not update. Or the meter might show full in the general view while actually quite low. So one taps/clicks back and forth to double check. Not good.
Don't even get me started on off topic photos from those who participate in everything, in search of in game currency. At least one can mark photos as off topic when voting. I was once guilty of that myself. The topic was tulips. I didn't have anything suitable but I was chasing currency so I submitted a flower that looked the part. Sure enough, I got a warning message about it. At least that part of the system works then. And then there are the adult photos. You have to mark your photo as such when submitting. Sometimes participants do not do this. Other times very innocent non-adult pictures get marked. My guess is that the participants want to raise their visibility by doing this, but I have no idea how effective this strategy is.
Gurushots has a social network component. One can follow other participants and be followed in turn. Having lots of followers probably helps your visibility, but I have not explored this. The only sure way to gain followers is by following others, it seems. Yet another mystery.
So while I have a reasonable idea of how to do well, I have only a vague idea on what it takes to win a challenge and become a guru. Trying to finish well can be emotionally draining. One submits and swaps away, really playing the game, only to see your masterpiece slip down the rankings. You might run out of currency. Or life might get in the way for a while. You stay away for a few hours to do some work or get some sleep. When you get back, you re out of the running. This is bad enough when you only want to finish in top five percent. When trying to finish first, it would be a different game - literally.
In the end, when you reach guru status, more work lies ahead. You then have to pick topics, set up challenges and judge them. Just how many, I have no idea.
Here endeth the rant. I have not take part in a GS challenge for a few months now. My mobile phone consumes less data. I have more time for other things. Like reading, taking photographs or posting on forums.