http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=4644808

i originally thought my picks were much better than my opponent's triple pick, however he grew much bigger and quicker than me. In fact, if he secured strategic positions such as xinjiang, he could very well have won it.

WHose picks would you have thought were better? his triplepick or my picks?

His picks were very good early game, triple-picking is usually quite dangerous but the only way you could 've screwed him during picking is getting one of his top-3(or caucasus but how likely is that) and preferably getting ant or countering it.
(his fourth pick could've given him early income while fighting in Asia)
Afterward he was still on the defensive though, if your armies slipped passsed him(which they did) he d lose most if not all of his bonuses in a few turns, the other way around would've taken much longer to make a decent cut in your income
your fourth pick in west china had too much potential to be wasted.
(australia takes some time to get too but was decent and since it could be a counter)

tl;dr: triple/clusterpicking usually gives high income but is also risky.

The best moves/picks are the ones your opponent doesn't expect, which means that bad picks can actually be better, so i cannot answer the original question,
but i agree, if he had secured xinjiang he would likely have won.

i think his picks would have been very good if he did not waste troops in europe. could have take xinjiang instead and won

or perhaps my picks were just bad, no presence in wastelandless russia was certainly a bad call

You did, he just hit 6/6 3v2s so he got ahead. He had no safety and worse intel.

true, now that i looks more precisely it seems my opponent got quite lucky with his 3v2s...

thanks guys for your help!