About how many hours can you say is enough?

[NYTyler]

I have been in the past a successful small stakes No Limit Hold’em player playing mainly at the $1/$2 NL tables in Atlantic City and some of the clubs in New York City. Forgive me if this question has been hashed out before but I have searched on 2+2 and not found the answer and reasons to the answers to my primary question.

During 2006 (around 650 hours in cash games) I did very well, both in tournaments and cash games (where I was primarily playing small stakes no limit). My hourly rate was up after having played literally hundreds of hours. Then sometime around the end of February 2007 my results began to slowly deteriorate. I am not talking about huge losses; there were periods with some sharp downward variance but also periods of good streaks and wins. But overall, I just slowly started to loose and couldn’t really climb out.

I know that this game is about the overall long-term picture. Luck is involved and is a factor but skill is a bigger factor and skill will win out over luck in the end.

Now as my results have worsened (haven’t lost my roll and gone kaput yet) it has been a slow steady seep. Something in my game has changed and I can’t put my finger on it as to quite exactly what it is. Part of it is mental though. I have had to spend more money than I would like to in my personal life and my bankroll has had to suffer because of that. So I am playing more nervously than I would like to by not having as many buy-ins in my roll as I need to feel totally comfortable. But I still can’t pinpoint what it is in my game that has changed drastically (I have played about 665 hours in cash games in 2007). Keep in mind that my slow walk downhill has not been a drastic spiral downward but just a slow annoying frustrating seep.

This brings me to my primary question. How many hours can poker players say is enough to say this is no longer variance, but it is something wrong with my game. How many hours until you say I must bust myself down to another level and straighten everything out. I am not only interested in people’s numbers here but also the reasons behind it. This I think will help shed some light on my problems. Is this just variance? Or should I legitimately be concerned and consider busting myself down to a lower level?