How many hands should I have under my belt before......

[novamob]

I just started using Poketracker. How many hands do I need before I can can accurately assess my hourly rate and contemplate moving up? 10,000? 50,000? 100,000?

[Nottom]

30-50K should give a reasonable estimate if your SD isn't too high.

If you are winning 2BB/hour after that many hands you are almost certainly at least a 1BB/hour winner at that level.

[fluff]

For someone with average standard deviation (say around 15 BB/hr), you will need 3000 hours (3000 x 50hands/hr = 150,000 hands) to get your win-rate accurate to within 1 BB. So for instance at the end of 150,000 hands, if you have a winrate of 1.5 BB/hr, then you can be confident that your winrate is 1.5 BB/hr +- 0.5 BB/hr.

If however your goal is only to find out whether your win rate is more than 0 (ie, whether you are a winning player), something like 10,000 to 20,000 hands should be sufficient.