How many ticks below the the current price do you place your lay bets?
Depends, usually 4 .

At what stage is this? 1 hour, 5 minutes, 2 minutes?
Roughly 5 mins as a rule.

Are you finding that the lowest or lower priced ones are the one coming in?
Prices are all over the place, it doesn't seem to matter.
Which leads me to believe that there is a bit of smart place money about.

Todays results were....

21 bets for 4 winners and 12 place getters.
Return for the win = $16:00 (small loss)
Return for place = $23:80 (small win)
These are Unitab divvies.

The winners were 2.50, 3.30, 6.20, 4.00.
The biggest placegetter paid 4.20.

This is pretty much what I have ben seeing for a while now, it seems to sort of hold it's own for the win, but for the place it definitely seems to be a winner.

__________________
Jose'.