...PPS, Pay Per Share, pays you for each share you submit regardless of whether a block is found.
I appreciate your insights, os2sam.
You might be calming my concerns, but let me ask further. What are "shares" in this context? Do different miners submit different amounts of shares?
A share is what we submit and hope is a block solution. It's a hash and if it meets or exceeds current difficulty it will find a block, most don't. A USB Block Erupter submits approximately 333 Million shares per second and an S9 submits about 14 Trillion shares per second.