The key to winning these games: Have a an angle, and get in early enough that your angle is enough to overcome whatever small head start your opponents have on you. The more late you show up, the stronger your angle needs to be. When a game has been going and people have thus had the opportunity to build up for 10 years, you're going to need a pretty huge angle over anyone else, and I, for one, can't think of anything that massive that would have gone unexploited for that long.
Which is, of course, ANOTHER advantage that early-comers get: The ability to tap angles that have since been closed down. So, the question is, "Is it feasible to attempt to compete with people who have had 10 years of exploit everything that no longer exists, given that I cannot gain an advantage on sheer persistence alone since everyone ELSE is also playing 24/7?". I'm not seeing a "yes" answer to this question, but if you've got something, feel free to share.
More importantly, should we bicker about an unrelated game in this thread? Does the Codex have an Eve thread to bicker in?