The only way to win by a cent is to put your bid at that.

If the current price is $5 and your max bid is $30 and I put a max bid of $100, it will make the current price $31 - $35, whatever the increment is.

To get ebay to accept a bid of one cent over, you have to explicitly set that. Let's say, I'd actually pay $30 as well. $30.01 isn't materially different. So if I put in $30.01, my bid becomes higher than yours.