Hi starscat,

Don't be afraid to ask questions.  Without asking, one can never learn

All pools (excluding true PPS) require miners to find blocks before payments can be made.  Even slush's pool.  The reason you get paid on slush when you reach 0.01BTC is because the pool has found blocks to provide the funds with which you are paid.

Let's give an example that might help clear things up.  In our example, the pool finds a block a day, and your mining gear gets you about 0.001 coins per day.  Let's also assume that the pool's minimum payout is 0.01BTC.  Every day the pool finds a block, and 0.001BTC is marked for you.  10 days later, you've now got 0.01BTC set aside for you.  Since that matches the minimum payout value, the pool creates a transaction and sends that coin to you.

Now, let's take a look at that same example, except this time, the pool only finds a block every 10 days.  On day one, no block found, so there is no coin to mark as yours.  Day 2, same thing.  Repeat until day 10 when the pool finds a block.  In those 10 days, you've been constantly mining.  When that block is found, the pool sees that you've contributed shares equal to 0.001BTC a day, so 0.01BTC is set aside for you.  Oh look, that matches the 0.01BTC payout threshold, so the transaction is created and you receive your coin.

At the end of the 10 days, the exact same amount of coin has been sent to you.

Let's change it once again such that your mining gear would expect to earn you 0.01BTC a day.  In the first scenario, you would receive a payout of 0.01BTC every day for 10 days, resulting in a total of 0.1BTC.  In the second scenario, you would receive a single payout on day 10 of 0.1BTC.  Yup, exactly the same.

Please note, I simplified this and didn't include any network difficulty fluctuations in my examples.

Hope this helps!

Jonny