Ticket to ride

Been playing this game online more often than Scrabble (unless Yen Nee is available for the marathon, which sadly is no longer the case).

How well am I doing? rated around 1420, ranked 771 on online play.
Have yet to see the top players and how they play, wish there was a ranking list to purvey.
Anyway, I am normally one of the better players around because I don't see a lot of 1400s in the playing room unless you want to go through everyone of their profiles just to find out.

A few tips and trick for advanced gameplay

America Map:
Build Coast to Coast and get those long distance ticket ASAP.
New York, Montreal, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Seattle and Chicago are the key cities to link up since they appear most often on the 20+ point cards. I once scored 199 linking all six of these cities while hoarding the destination cards that linked these 6 cities (which is quite lucky)

Europe Map:
Keep the Long Distance map and any short route within building distance of either end or in the middle. Be prepared to reroute our tracks creatively (and I do mean creatively). Identify weak spots in your chain and build those first.

More players (4 or 5 players):
Whether on the American or European map, just keep 2 cards (3 or 4 if they are all in close proximity) and build one long line up until the end, this is more productive than drawing new destination and building new tracks because you get to end the game quicker and penalize the slower players.

Less players (3 or less):
Draw new destination tickets for 1 or 2 turns, then build like crazy until the end. Try to finish all your trains on your second to last turn so that you can review all details before deciding if you need a last turn gamble on the unseen destination ticket.