Scrabble Me Please

Do you know how hard it is to make any decent word when four out of the seven letters you have are I's? I do. And I found this out the hard way last night when I played Scrabble for the very first time.
What?
Yes, I am 28 years old, I pride myself with my lexicon and I love board games, but for some reason this game was one that I had never played! Even so, I have heard so much about it that I wanted to try it anyways so I picked up a cheap version at the store the other day and waited for the perfect time to break it out.

Staring at my letters, willing a word to come out of six vowels and one consonant.. while he simply adds an S to a previous word for easy points. Tsk.

For quite some time our scores were neck in neck. He'd get 15 points, I'd get 10, He'd get 7 points, I'd get 12.. then my letter rack filled with I's and my scores went down to 4, 3 even 2..
Towards the end of the game, his score now 20 points above mine, I only needed one letter, an I (ironically), to have a 66 point word to steal the game..
He wistfully said "if only I had a T..." to which I replied "if only I had an I..."
He looked at me, calculatively.
"Wanna trade?"
I looked at the board. Chances of him using the letter I was going to use were very slim, being that Q generally needs a U to make any legitimate word. There are four total, two were on the board, one was in my hand. No, he doesn't have one I thought.
"Oh yeah I'll trade you" I said, eagerly.
But what does he do?
Not only did I give him a good letter, but he used it to get a 37 point word in the space that I was planning on using, rendering the trade useless for me. Never again! (even if it did have us rolling on the floor laughing)
By the end I lost by 3 points. Something that I'm not particularly proud of, but with the standard being best two out of three, who knows what will happen next time ;)