I do recommend going with 2.5% or more because you don't wanna have spent 5 or more hours on a block that ended up being invalid and not being paid for the work you did. I'm mining over there now to see if their policy that intends to stop pool-hopper from taking away from 24/7 miners is working.
Can you explain more on what you mean by these two things? I assume by the 2.5% you mean giving a percentage back to btcguild, but how does that end up helping you?
Also, I'm definitely not a pool hopper by any stretch of imagination, but I don't have a computer I can use 24/7 for mining. Would this new policy affect me?
Thanks for the help!
when you pay 2.5% or more to the pool, you get paid for your work even when the block turns out invalid. its like payment insurance. most pools won't pay you for the invalid blocks.
the stats are now delayed an hour like at deepbit. pool hoppers know that they get paid more for doing the first share of a block than doing the millionth so they try to get on the pool that has done the least number of shares. so when they find out btcguild is starting a new block, they'd jump on there. so with the delayed stats, they won't know when the new block starts and can't pool hop on the pool anymore. (well, without guessing)
someone that doesn't pool hop shouldn't be affected, except for getting more profit (in theory).