I wonder how many expert games did you guys win before winning your first genius.  The only person I discussed this subject with EWQMinesweeper told me hundreds, yet looking at the rankings I see some people with scores slower than my on expert and int winning that level.  At what point is a player ready to win genius level?

I can't remember exactly but it certainly wouldn't have been hundreds.

It depends on how you try to play - It's a lot easier to lose a genius board, compared to the other levels, so if you're careless or trying to play too fast for the board, you could play quite a few genius boards with no wins to show for it.

However, about half to two thirds of genius boards can actually be solved without any guesses, when treating them as a thought based logic puzzle like sudoku (although doing that could just fill your table with times of 999 at first).

I would say someone is ready to win genius when they're using more than the basic logic on expert (ie, things like looking one move ahead to rule out possibilities)