Masterful to a point, yes. Dooku was outmatched by Palpatine though -- he never thought that he'd be eliminated, because a two-man con requires both people to cooperate to defraud the victim. It must have been a horrible realization for Dooku that Palpatine was going to replace him with Anakin; I just wish Lee had been given the tiniest bit of screentime to do a reaction to that, because his death was rather weak in the movie.