Hours needed for certainty

I'm wondering how many hours one should log before they can start to be confident in their win rates. I recently returned to poker after stopping for 1.5 years. I've logged about 170 hours of play since my return. I've calculated my hourly rate several times, but one good or bad day seems to affect my calculations. When I reach 1000 hours, will my sample size be large enough to calculate my hourly rate? How about 500 hours?

BTW, I play mostly $20-40 Hold e'm at the Harrah's East Chicago Casino in East Chicago, Indiana.


Thanks for any information,

Ted

it takes more than just hours to be sure, you need to consider your standard deviation.


also, your hourly rate is an estimate only.


check out this post to see how you could do an estimate, once the lower and upper bound of your win rate is in the positive you can be 99.97% sure you are a winning player.


http://www.twoplustwo.com/cgi-bin/genpok_arch.pl?read=24301