This is not a bad beat rant

[Floyd Moseby]

Despite what it may appear to be, this post is not a bad beat request for sympathy. I do fully understand the possibility for and natural occurrences of large downswings, and the best players in the world fall victim to them from time to time. I am in one right now (hopefully towards the tail end of it), and have some questions about how it should affect my play moving forward.

After some recent and particularly grueling sessions, I put forth the effort of actually crunching the PT data and not just using it to get artificial reads on my opponents. I found and have corrected a few leaks, but for the most part my plays were fine and reasonable.

What I've been seeing a lot lately is that people are really playing back at me very aggressively in all sorts of situations, and I'm finding more and more reasons to fold my made (non-nut) hands. Against tighter opponents I naturally respect raises more, but this is even coming against loose players. I desperately want to avoid going weak-tight despite my losses. I'm in one of those stretches where I make TPTK on the flop (AQs for example), lead out the flop and turn with 1 or 2 callers, and get reraised on the turn when a guy makes 2 small pair. No scare cards are involved, and I don't see it coming. I have been reraising on many occasions where a PF limper reraises me on the turn and no overcards to my big pair hit, and it has been costing me (sets, 2 small pair, etc). Do I just ride it out, or am I right to start respecting all the loose reraisers unless I have the nuts? I hate to be a call-down Sally. I see people with total aggression factors of 3 and 4 with nice win rates, and I can't seem to raise anything without getting reraised vs improbable hands. Right now I'm good at building nice pots for other people to draw on, but I can't see letting people draw for free by checking in EP or MP. You see where I'm getting?

Most of my big money losing hands appear to be where I've got a made hand and just get caught from behind, but the size of the pots I've been involved with probably gave them the green light. I try to stay out of small pots when I can help it unless I'm stealing under good conditions.

I don't want a pep talk (I can get those if I need them), but I guess I just want tips on when to let go or call down in a big pot. It seems stupid just typing that question, but I'm losing a lot of money on those.