Since my status has changed to guru around a bit over a month ago, I think it is interesting to see how I feel about the game from a guru perspective now.
Being a guru doesnt change the experience you have, you still have to compete with others whether better photographers or not. You sometimes also see gurus win when other non gurus had equl or better pictures- probably won with a better strategy and use of swaps etc.

There are different types of gurus out there, some really professional ones in the sense of responsibility when running a challenge- I put myself in this category, and others who are a bit more careless.
I explain what I mean by that.
One of the advantages of being a guru is that you get ro run challenges (it doent go very smoothly as there are more and more gurus, so it can take up to 3-4 weeks to run your challenge), it is very thrilling to see how people submit their photos and you can select the better photos- sometimes very difficult.
You dont see whose picture it is, just like the non gurus- so its anonymous.
I take time to go through all the pictures and enlarge the ones that fit best to check on quality and details. I check every singe photo I select for copyright- there are a lot of cheaters out there... so I report them and their account is closed most of the time, or picture removed.
This is our responsibilty as a guru, but other gurus do not spend that much time, are less selective or more carefree.
For those of you that think only gurus are selected, I can confirm that this is not the case.
From the three challenges I ran- it turned out I had selected many champions, masters, and sometimes other categories. There are professional photographers or amateurs who just start with the game and they may only be a challenger for example, but the quality of the picture is indeed excellent, so a guru pick is deserved- you can see who you have selected once it is voted.
So from a anonymity perspective, the game is fair.
Another positive aspect of the game is that you actually learn something or are reminded of what makes a good photograph.
When selecting the photos for a guru pick, I take into consideration, composition, quality and details like is there a piece of the subject missing, is there enough room between end of the frame and subject, any distracting elements etc.
There is a lot of strategy but also good luck involved and rules are changing often.

It can be very disappointing, but rewarding as well.
There are now vote-a-thon contests that bring the level of the challenges down, as it encourage people to submit crap and off topic photos to participate in as many challenges as possible.

At the moment I am trying to take down one step and see how things are evolving.

Hope this helps.