Heads Up: Over Betting

I love heads up play. Full Tilt has 4 person heads up tournaments. I LOVE THOSE! Booked a win in one last night. Which I made the bad beat I took right before that easier to take
--- 18 person $8 token tournament. First hand I"m dealt JJ in the SB- Button raises 3 times BB. I re-raise 3 times that. He pushes All-in. Too me that says, no AA or KK since he'd want to put in a smaller raise to keep me on the hook. Maybe QQs, but could easily be a coin flip, and I'd risk a coin flip early to double up and have a nice healthy stack. Wasn't a coin flip... he pops, Kd-3d. Hits his K on the river. I'm out. I took it OK. Stayed around the table to talk some sh-t. Was not suprised to see that guy knocked out 3 people later. So I hoped into that 4 person HU tournament.

Anyway on to the Subject matter. I had some time this morning while my daughter was waking up and jumped into a $5 heads up match. Blinds are low, and I'm widdling the guy down. Every once in a while, I'll check the flop, he'll push 300-400 into an 60 pot?!?! Unless I have a hand, I'm folding. Even if he is bluffing. I'm not going to lose 2/3rd of my stack for 30 chips. So I wait until I get a hand, have him do it, and pop him back. He folds. Sure, he'll get some back, but still. At least he didn't do it every hand. Probably when he hit low or middle pair, or had a small pair. We checked a lot of hands down when he had nothing. But I just couldn't see the benefit of doing that, he would win VERY little, unless I had a strong hand.

He liked to slowplay Kings (which he got twice). Once he won a little bit off me: I hit middle pair, and he bet min amount on flop and turn and made a 1/2 pot bet (still small I think half pot was 80) on the river. 2nd time he slowplayed them, I flopped (or turned, forget which) a straight. Got him down to 400. Few hands later, he went all-in with J4 and I had AT, which held up.

The Lesson: In Heads Up, don't overbet the pot early on. You'll only get called by a strong hand. If you're bluffing you're going to lose chips, and if you have a monster, you won't action that often.