Items are completely fair. They're used very skillfully, and without them, hit spam becomes a completely vaild tactic, which is stupid.
Ah - yeah, first to 7.
Tricks are sort of an "exploit" of the ability to chip in the game.
They're sort of like a trick shot in pool.
You can chip the ball in the net, chip it around the goalie, follow it, and shoot it in, and many other things. They change the metagame entirely, they can be blocked, and they revolve around my team/game as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f19ZQAjfts Here are a few examples. Everyone used these, we learned to defend and we learned to do them ourselves.
... Landon, can I use your wiichuck for playing? Mine doesn't work very well.
A little bit of trivia for anyone intrested: Biglou, a prominent Brawl Luigi main, came from an old WiFi clan called [wt] - Wii Troopers. They played Brawl, Mario Kart Wii, and Strikers Charged. They were some of the pioneers for Strikers Charged, they went undefeated for a long time, and they're members went down as some of the legends. Nowadays they play Xbox games.
But... yeah. Lengthy post from me