The EIP and the non-linear reward curve make upvotes worth less on posts with smaller payouts which pretty much make it impossible for anyone to vote on those. Instead, it's far more profitable from a curation point of view to go for the ones you know will get a ton of upvotes. Those that do show support pretty much also get punished for it with decreased curation rewards.
I agree with this! Math is math. Even so, I vote for a lot of people who never break the reward curve so I know I'm losing to the maximizers in the long run despite a few lucky curation picks here and there. Hope you don't leave steem though because serious sports gamblers here are a rare breed.