A few things of note:

- If everything is behaving properly here at the pool, and luck is the only factor, it's only a matter of time before another "bad luck" block shows up.  With the lower hash rate here, the pool could easily go a week w/o a block and it'll still be "normal".
- Despite the last 4 blocks being significantly better than "normal" luck, the pool is still 1.52 blocks behind "expected" for the month.
- If luck is indeed the only factor, if/when pool rash significantly increases, you will receive more payments of lower value, more regularly, making your payouts a wash.  Aside from the transaction fee issue because of many small payments hitting your wallet (which can be worked around if you aren't in a hurry).

And lastly, on a different note, these next few weeks could be very interesting.  583 blocks to go until the next difficulty change, and, as of now, it's looking to be about 8% decrease in difficulty.  That's not only very good for the normal reasons, but also because the big fork comes not too much after that.  If a lot of BTC hash power flips over to the fork, block time on the "real" chain is going to slow down, big time.

Speaking of which, Kano, what are your plans for the pool regarding the fork?

M