When I first read up on PPLNS, I didn't think I would like it. The reasoning being that with my limited mining capacity and the fact that this is my main PC and therefore can't be expected to mine full time, I Imagined the unfortunate scenario where I keep submitting shares that don't make the cut and therefore don't get payed out. I understood that other shares would get payed out multiple times and that my earnings should still average out to full PPS value but I just didn't want to face the prospect of some of my work going unpayed.

At that time, I figured that N would have to be rather large for me to stay on such a pool. I decided I would leave if N was less then difficulty and was really hopping it would be closer to 2 x difficulty. With N = 8 x difficulty, every single share returned to Eligius within the last year would have been payed at least once. As far as I can tell, only Eligius-De was ever unlucky enough to have blocks go longer then 8 x difficulty.

Alright so I guess I can live with PPLNS but what about the current system, how's that working out for me? So I just did some calculations based on the last 10 blocks on stats page for my address and here's what I found.

Over the last 10 blocks I got payed at an average rate of 0.00001716 BTC / Share. At current difficulty, the expected pay rate is 0.00002282 BTC / Share.

So the current system is costing me 25% of my expected earnings because the pool had some bad "luck" over the past couple months. Until we can catch up and start a new buffer, no sensible person should mine here because of what is essentially a 25% fee to pay off people that already quit mining here.  Yes, there is still the very remote possibility that the pool's luck will swing around and pay out all that EC but I'm not going to hold my breath.

With PPLNS, past luck has no impact on future payouts, so there is no bad time to join such a pool since "luck" only affects payouts on the previous couple days worth of shares.