I haven't been able to DL the manual yet. My computer's been doing funky stuff with the link here, and FileFront, for whatever reason, doesn't show any mirrors that have it. I'll try again later. I've been going by my experiences in KotOR and II, where these situations have never arisen.
If you say it's supposed to be that way, then alright, but I still don't think it makes sense. Why wouldn't a tiebreaker win a tie, even if the other party gets a tie after you played it, as long as it's your last card? And why couldn't filling all nine spaces merely force the person who filled it to stand/end play immediately? The first time that happened, I was on my fourth game in Arcade mode, 2 wins to 2 wins, I had a score of twenty, and the computer suddenly played 2 cards from it's hand, ended up at 28... and got the win because it had filled up all nine spaces. That's not a win, it's a cheap shot.