I recently did a 6 hour trip in ONE direction to a store offering truly excellent rules. On DAY ONE I played a shoe game and on DAY TWO a double deck for a total of ~12 hours of play. Both were vast improvements to my standard poor choice of game (6D, H17, HE~0.6%). The catch was that they were S17 which I never played before. Upon realizing I had not prepared for this (BIG MISTAKE), I quickly looked over a generic strategy chart and learned the few differences and tackled the games with a 1-20 spread for the shoe game (HE~0.4%, pen 95%) and a 1-8 spread for the double deck game (HE~0.15%, pen 55-60%). I used hi low with ~50 index plays from Stanford Wong's book for these games.

Well, to be blunt, I got demolished. I lost a little over $2000. This represents ~15% of my current bankroll. I know I didn't do my homework fully but I have played hundreds verging on a thousand hours of the crappy 6D game and never had this bad of a streak. I'm truly surprised I did so bad considering the quality of the new games. How much of this loss can be attributed to the following?:

1) With the house edge smaller, I should have been spreading earlier (true count of +1 would represent an advantage in the shoe game and +0.5 in the double deck game). I waited to +2 to start spreading.
2) I didn't learn the rules of S17 by heart beforehand.
3) I used an inferior count system (hi low) to tackle the double deck game where PE is much more important than BC. I understand hi-opt 2 w/ ace side count is the ideal choice but I'm having difficulty finding indexes for this system (I understand how to keep the running count and adjust for aces, that's easy). Further, since the house edge was so low I thought the game could EASILY be beaten even with hi low.
4) Although the 95% pen was AMAZING for the shoe game, I was unsure if 55-60% pen was bad for the DD (I played mostly heads up and with one other player, occasionally a third would pop in for a short while). Again, I didn't think it mattered so much because of the stellar HE (0.15%).
5) At my home store I am only a 10 minute ride from home. I therefore tend to play until I'm satisfied with my result (either leave early if I'm up a decent amount or stay longer to chase losses). With the 6 hour trip I was forced to play a set amount of time regardless of the result (I possibly would have stopped after losing a grand but I was forced to continue play due to the distance I traveled and trying to get enough EV in to justify the trip).
6) I have literally no idea what my exact ROR is or what my optimal bets should be.
7) This store was SUPER sweaty and I didn't feel comfortable wonging out and played through every count. At my home store I wong out to my hearts content with zero heat.

In summary, ~ how much of my poor performance could be attributed to the above listed points and ~ how much was just normal bad variance? Where can I get a detailed explanation of applying hi-opt 2 with ace side count (full indexes), as I find myself more likely to try double deck in the future? Should I resize my bets now that I lost 15% of my bankroll? Thank you very much for any help. I'm only a beginner but very eager to learn!