Home tournament - heads up - Should I have let it go?

[pj4533]

Over the weekend I was in a home tournament. Field of 32, buy in 60$, 1 rebuy within first 3 hours. I did rebuy.

Little background: I consider myself a mediocre player at best. I have alot to learn, but I have been improving over the past few months. Most the players in the field were friends that I had played with at one time or another, so I had a read on some of them (as far as how they played, not so much physical tells). I also realized they knew I play fairly conservative, so I was using this where appropriate.

At anyrate, I fought my way to the final table, where I doubled up, and was in good chip position by the time everyone made the money. At that point I was about 3rd, out of 6 remaining, with the chip leader to my right and second stack to my left.

Long story short....I end up getting heads up. And pushing my opponent to the point of extinction. I didn't have much of a read on him though, other than knowing he liked to play very aggressive, but he was switching his style up a bit too. While I am mediocre at non-short handed play...I have always struggled at heads up play. I was trying to lean on him with my chip position, but in retrospect, I was raising with good frequency, but not raising enough each time.

He ended up doubling up, and then taking another large pot. So he then had a dominating chip position over me! The heads up play had gone on for nearly an hour now.

After clawing back a bit, blinds were at 50$/100$, my chip position was roughly 1200$ or so, he had over 2000$. I got KJ offsuit on the button/SB. I raised 150$, making it 250$ to go. In previous hands this was enough to push him off if he had nothing. Should I have raised more here heads up?

He thought a moment, then went all-in. I realized I wasn't being eaten by the blinds at this point, and I figured him for a low pair, because typically he would try to get me to call a small raise if he had a monster pair. If I could win this pot, I would be back to a dominating chip position, but obviously, if i didn't I would be out. I called. Pocket 7s, vs. KJ. No face cards came up and I ended up taking second in the tournament.

In retrospect I made a bunch of mistakes in the heads up portion of play, especially when I had the chip lead. However, only looking at the final hand, should I have folded, letting him take my raise when I realized that it was a coin-flip, and not wanting to go out on a coin flip?

Any thoughts would be excellent to hear.....if you have other questions about the situation please let me know!

thanks,

-pj

[boedeker]

from the post, i assume that you thought he was better than you at short handed play. furthermore, given the fact that you thought he had a small pair, which he did, then why not take a stab at doubling up there?