How Do You Know if You're Going to Play the Second Price Auction?

Economists had thought about auctions for a long time, and one of the seminal papers in this field actually shows that your revenues are going to be identical across first price and second price auction. The equilibrium in game theory is in some sense predictive of what play is going to look like. If i bid more than my value and i win, well i'm screw. I have to pay too much. But if i win, i still pay the second highest price, so it doesn't matter that i lowered my bid to day.