Leasing access to hashpower is cloud mining. Leasing access to a miner is rig renting.
They are both pretty bad and real owners pass the risk to you with a very low premium.
Mathematically, mining alone yields the same results as mining in a pool over a long period of time.
Pools are just people getting together and sharing the reward if they solve a block.
However, mining a pool reduces variance and since the network difficulty is always rising, it's not a good idea to go for the "long period of time".
Thank you. I guess what I am talking about is rig renting.
I realize that it is a transfer of risk, but at the moment I am willing to assume the risk. Making even much less in an absolute sense is acceptable to convert a capital expense (buying a rig) into an operational expense (renting one).
--Jacob
if you are looking for rig rental,try Hashnest
they offer equipment hosting with an option to buyback
do not even consider cloud mining services they are 99.9% scams
read this topic for reference:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=878387.msg9697654