MadeWillis - 3:36 pm on Jun 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

In regards to the OP

So the first organic position (even when site is yellow starred) is performing nasty

Are you referring to the personalized results? If so, you may actually not be ranked #1 to anyone but yourself. The yellow star only shows up once "you" click it. Be sure to log out of Google and disable your web history for more accurate results. I would even go so far as to check your rankings across multiple data centers.