This thread seems to be full of people using negatives when they mean positives.

@Joel if you say reduced variance is the only benefit that makes it sound like a trivial thing, try turning it around, what are the benefits of solo mining? No fee pools, pools that have been around for a long period of time (why would they scam YOU?), etc. Stale shares isn't even a real thing, as every share that does not complete a block is worthless in solo mining, so there is no comparison. Basically every "benefit" of solo mining is either addressed or purely hypothetical.

@Everyone telling me you can not mine blocks, hey thanks for telling me exactly what i said already. Now on the other hand, statistical probability makes it entirely improbable for you to NEVER mine a block with certain amounts of hashing power (i have had > 5GHash for some time now). if you want to quibble with probability you probably don't want to learn that that is what makes our universe run more or less. But you can run a ridiculous bad streak while difficulty mounts making it less and less likely for you to outgain what you would have gotten in pooled mining.

And that's just it, the real benefit of pools. There is a real tangible benefit to returns NOW rather than possible returns later. The two are not equal in an accelerating growth model.