One more thing you guys are misunderstanding about SSHE... when it says to raise from LP with those hands, it assumes there already were limpers before you. That's part of the starting hand chart stipulations (ex. 4-5 to a flop). It does NOT refer to when you should open-raise from LP and it does NOT refer to when you should defend against a steal. Those topics are not even covered in SSHE. You know why? Because it happens so rarely in loose-passive low-limit games!

The 20/40 games at party, I've found, are not as tough as I would have expected.

Table selection is EVERYTHING at 20/40, at least on the party network. One table might be chock full of really good TA players, another could have a couple of total suckers creating huge pots and paying people off left and right.