Attempting honest self appraisal

[Cincy Peach]

Could the more experienced players help me assess these results?

I began playing about a year ago in a 5-10 casino game. The experience was mostly bad and I realized I could not afford to learn at that level. So I started on the poker website that has tables as low as .02/.04 and .05/.10. I lost my first two $100 deposits, but slowly built my third one into several hundred dollars over thousands and thousands of hands. I spite of the fact that I can now win on the internet, my win rate is less than one bet per 100.

Meanwhile, about a month ago I ventured back to the casino. I was astonished to find the game that seemed so intimidating before was actually quite soft. Several more trips to the casino have only reinforced this . . . over about 50 hours of play at $5/$10, I am up a little under two grand - about twelve BB per 100 hands. So my questions are:

1.) Have others found the internet to be more difficult than live play? this dramatically?

2.) How statistically significant are the 1,600 hands I have played in the casino recently? How many hands would one have to play before it is safe to conclude that the results actually are an indicater of skill level?

My wife, who HATED HATED HATED me gambling, is being to talk about quitting her job as she gains confidence in my poker, but I am not sure I share her optimism. I told her it would take ten thousand hands to have results we could draw conclusions about future expectation from, but I just picked that number out of the air.

Any thoughts would be sincerely appreciated.