Justin Sucks at Samurai (or - How I Miscalculated and Still Won)

A few days ago, Mike Garrett, Justin Easley and I started a game of Samurai on MaBiWeb. Justin was pretty aggressive towards the 3-totem city and the 2-totem city next to that, so we mostly left him to that. Mike floundered about most of the game with no clear direction and bad draws (though we all claim our draws sucked). I managed to get a number of pieces, though evenly between the three, and was worried I'd end up with lots of pieces and ZERO majorities. So, towards the end, I pushed to take all the hats. Now, in setting that up, I started looking at the remaining pieces and was pretty sure that Justin would kill us. Then near the very end, I thought we might tie. Sadly, Mike was forced into a king maker position. no matter how he played his last tile (because it would be his last tile), he determined the winner. I placed my last tile such that Mike's "best play" would be the one where he took a piece and thus gave me a piece as well (a hat). I then figured that Justin would end the game and we'd tie. However, I was wrong and won. We ended up with a tie with one majority each. We also tied on other pieces at 6 each. However, that last hat pushed me to a total number of pieces of 11 to Justin's 10. Mike's other move choices would not have netted him any pieces and Justin would have won. If this had been face to face, I think Justin and I would have been ok calling it a draw, but online all you can do is go with what the system tells you. It was a good game, but would have been better if Mike had "been in it".