To all the newbies on here, I am one myself. I had all the same questions or concerns, but I will say I am here to stay for reasons beyond the obvious stated.
The ramp up: This concerned me because it felt "unfair" that my equipment wasn't getting the recognition.....until I understood how it worked AND why. I am no longer concerned.
Luck: This concept wasn't that hard to grasp once I realized that is indeed all that is factored into finding a block. Nobody bitches about not winning the lottery off their one or 10 tickets they bought (except probably DPoS2) when there are lottery pools with thousands of tickets.
If you want to "win" more, then join a large pool, if you want to increase your chances of "winning", but like bigger payouts, join a pool that averages your probability to suit your desires.
More terahash doesn't equal that many more blocks, just that many more lottery tickets. To complain about the cost of lottery tickets vs how many lottery tickets it takes for you to win is not the concern of the pool. I hear a lot of complaining about the cost of electricity and how it's not profitable to mine in this pool. It's not going to be profitable to mine any pool that consistently gets 600% bad luck blocks. That being said, there is no way that I know of to increase or decrease LUCK. You can only increase your probability by adding more terahash (buying more tickets). Other than that it is LUCK!
noun: luck
1.
success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.
"it was just luck that the first kick went in"
synonyms: success, prosperity, good fortune, good luck
"I wish you luck"
antonyms: failure, misfortune
chance considered as a force that causes good or bad things to happen.
"luck was with me"
synonyms: fortune, fate, destiny, Lady Luck, lot, the stars, karma, kismet; More
fortuity, serendipity;
chance, accident, a twist of fate
"it is a matter of luck whether it hits or misses"
something regarded as bringing about or portending good or bad things.
"I don't like Fridayit's bad luck"
synonyms: good fortune, good luck; More
a fluke, a stroke of luck;
informala lucky break
"with luck you'll make it"
antonyms: bad luck, misfortune
verb informal
verb: luck; 3rd person present: lucks; past tense: lucked; past participle: lucked; gerund or present participle: lucking
1.
chance to find or acquire.
"he lucked into a disc-jockey job"
North American
achieve success or advantage by good luck.
"I lucked out and found a wonderful woman"
The pool size: When I started in December, the pool size was around 25PHs and has been going up. There have been instances of VERY good luck where we hit 4 blocks in 2 days!! I was happy.....though my miners were not fully ramped up as I was adding more. I wish I could have had my full hash rate, but I understand the ramp up and reducing variance. There are people here who have been mining for a long time and it is kind of bullshit for someone to pop in for a couple days and reep the rewards off terahash that was not theirs, but as a collective and putting in your commitment, you actually JOIN the pool instead of visit it.
If it weren't for the ramp up, there is a chance that I would have been bouncing around to different pools. I was encouraged to check out Kano's pool from a friend in AUS as I'm in the US. I am more than pleased with the responses from Kano and the support from "members". I'm here to stay and ride out the bad luck while celebrating the good luck. I'm also not trying to pay my bills with mining, I would like to pay for the equipment someday, in increments and put away bits of coin until this shit becomes more mainstream. Kind of like how everyone wishes they did from the beginning, well guess what, I still feel that this is the beginning and there is a long way to go.
I'm in for the future and I'm in for Kano. Thanks for the support from everyone and to the newbies, please take whatever approach to mining that better suits your needs so long as you actually understand what those are.
MINE ON!!!