What is your longest downswing/upswing due to variance?

[trader01]

Here's the question: variance obviously plays a big part in texas hold'em, with players getting "hot" or "cold" for periods of time, but I haven't seen much talk about the maximum number of hands that anyone can honestly attribute to variance.

For example, if someone gets "hot" for 100 hands, that's clearly variance and cannot be attributed to that poker player's skill - clearly anyone can get a good run of cards over only 100 hands. Similarly, if a player's profit graph is straight down for 100,000 hands, that is clearly more than just "bad luck" or variance - if someone is going straight down for that many hands, it's because they are not playing the proper strategy or don't know how to play.

So the question is, at what point (in terms of number of hands) can we say that a player's skill truly starts to show and that the slope of the graph is not due to variance? Similarly, how many hands would constitute the maximum reasonable run of "abnormal" good (or bad) luck that a player can expect to see from time to time due to variance?

I'm interested to hear any stories...