Waking a sleeping dog

Last night, I entered just one tournament, and played quite well, coming in second. I regret the way I played one heads up hand, however. I made the mistake of waking a sleeping dog. Here's how it went down:

Table '639013346 1' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: (1160 in chips)
Seat 2: neostreet (4840 in chips)
neostreet: posts small blind 100
Seat 1: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to neostreet [3d Ah]
neostreet: raises 200 to 400
Seat 1: calls 200
*** FLOP *** [Td 8d 7s]
Seat 1: checks
neostreet: checks
*** TURN *** [Td 8d 7s] [2h]
Seat 1: checks
neostreet: checks
*** RIVER *** [Td 8d 7s 2h] [Ad]
Seat 1: checks
neostreet: bets 200
Seat 1: raises 560 to 760 and is all-in
neostreet: calls 560
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Seat 1: shows [6c 9h] (a straight, Six to Ten)
neostreet: shows [3d Ah] (a pair of Aces)
Seat 1 collected 2320 from pot

My pair of aces was a pretty weak holding, considering I had to go all the way to the river to get them. There's no way I should have made a river bet, since any call or raise would likely mean my aces were no good. There's just too much downside to betting in this situation, and precious little upside. The only upside would be if my opponent had a holding weaker than aces, but somehow believed that I was bluffing, and called. That scenario strains credulity.

As is often the case in poker, a bad decision begot another bad decision. Instead of folding when my opponent went all in, I called. I guess I just couldn't credit that he'd had the patience to sandbag me this way, when I'd started the hand with over four times as many chips as him. If that's an indication of the skill level of the typical $80,000 buy in player, I definitely need to raise my game! (By the way, I'm always trying to raise my game, regardless of the skill level of my opponents :-) Things went south in a hurry for me after that. On the final hand, I flopped an ace high flush, only to lose to a full house. C'est la vie!

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 80000      1000           6        84     2   168000

delta: $87,000
tournament balance: $2,053,090
balance: $7,183,821