Quote from: ccualumni on February 04, 2014, 02:59:08 AM

I am having a blast mining and am on information overload.

The one thing that seems to be missing is how much people are currently making mining.

Since that does not appear to be a hot topic, my question is about selecting a mining pool.

Is there a way to figure out which pool is going to make you the most money?

I understand that are certain parameters that are out of your control, but in general which pool is the best to join?

Are you better off with a smaller pool or a bigger one? When does the economics make sense to change pools?

I am guessing that there has to be a break even point (not sure what it would be called with mining) where you get too many people in a pool because when the pool pays out there is not enough for everyone. In other words, if we have a certain hash rate with 50 people in the pool, it will be a better payout with 500 people in the pool with the same hash rate.

Has anyone ran the numbers or tried to calculate what the "perfect pool" is?

Just curious what everyone thinks about this.

There will always be enough. Pools with bigger hashrate will give you less BTC per block, but will find blocks more often. So there really is not much of a difference.

Try to join a decently sized pool (so that it can hit blocks fairly consistently), but try not to get on the biggest player - it's better for the general economy if the hashrate is spread evenly between different pools (to minimize the risk of 51% attack).