I've recently been looking at the hash speeds of other pools, and now I'm a bit confused as to how one goes about actually choosing a pool. This is my current scenario:
Pool A: Less people, lower overall pool speeds. Blocks can take anywhere from 30min to 24hours (zomg..) to be solved, but on average it seems like it's 1 block every 5-7 hours. At my hash rate I get around 0.07btc per solved block.
Pool B: More people, massively higher pool speeds. Blocks are solved frequently, taking at most about 2hrs, but on average it seems to be less than an hour. At my hash rate I get only 0.007btc per block.
I get much higher rewards per block for mining in pool A, but it's disheartening to sometimes be stuck with a 12hour+ block. Blocks are solved a loooot faster in pool B, but over a 24 hour period or so, it seems I earn less in total than pool A.
Which one should I stick with?
My experience over the past month shows that the important factors are pool uptime and to some extent, the pool hash rate. The smaller the pool hash rate, the closer you are to solo-mining. You also want a pool that is rarely down (ideally always up) to minimize idle time. In the long run, you will generally make the same amount of BTC in any pool, all variables being constant.