Heads Up Tournament, and some reckless play...

I drew Dennis in the first round of the Heads Up tournament. The brackets were:

Dennis/Gregg
Long/Lehman
Tieds/Moneymaker
Simpson/Dycka

I had said going in that our match would be the longest. I would think that the Simpson/Dycka match would be long too, and most people were done within 40 min. But not us...nope, we played for just over 2 hours! It was grueling, and Dennis is a tough opponent as he bluffs a hell of alot more in heads up, I guess you have to. I hit a couple of rough spots early on and lost confidence and was done about 700 chips. I then went on a spree of 2 pair flops and nut draws that developed and worked my way to be up 50 chips.

It was then that Dennis slowed down finally and I got to play my game, or at least control how it would be played. As long as I stayed patient I was sure that I could win this game. I eventually raised 4x the BB 7 hands in a row, regardless of what I had and wore him down until he came back at me preflop one hand and I had Q9. I called his raise this time and the flop came A94. I checked, he went all in, and I called. He said "oh...shit" and that's when I knew it was pretty much over. He had J8 i believe and almost hit runner runner straight, but did not.

I then played Long and was quite frankly tired. We battled back and forth, and I set the tone early with my aggressiveness. Against Long, I think you have to because he loves to push chips around when he has them. I turned a straight against him and went all in on the river after he raised my bet. I bet 250, and he raised to 700. I could have MAYBE gotten a little more out of him, but the play looked too strong in retrospect.

I got 99 and won a nice pot, and out of nowhere, I seemed to lose a lot of chips. I don't even know how it happened, but he must have chipped away at me, and I didn't even realize it. I guess calling too many preflop raises and folding when I miss. He raised typically preflop and I had AK. I decided not to go all in, but raise 700 more. He called, and the flop came all spades with no picture cards. I had no spades but pushed all in, and he called instantly with A6s for the nuts. I was drawing dead and that was it.

I then jumped into the NL cash game which was .25/.25 blinds and a max buyin of $20. I played almost every hand and actually won some of them, but for the most part I was the big loser. I just couldn't focus on the game when a raise preflop was cheaper than the BB for the game I usually play. But Tieds was right, and by calling that many hands, I wasn't leaving myself enough to play after the flop for the most part. Oh well, these things happen.