steveb - 5:29 am on Aug 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

Exact matches of the first part of titles is the only way to compete for a phrase, but exact matches in later words in the title perform better if that exact match is actually in the body of the page, which normally is rare.

As always, these things are not black and white. Exact match of later words does obviously help, but it is a weaker scoring point for Google than domain authority, and exact match of domain name for most of the words in the search.