I've moved my reply here since it belongs here (as does Phil's ...)
I know kano has had a very small next to nothing tx fee block.
I don't recall if it was under 30 seconds for sure. I think the clock times were 9 or 17 seconds. He was close to a fee less block.
The smallest blocks we've found were
obviously those very shortly after another network block when the mempool was close to empty, but not empty.
There's always between 0 and 30 seconds of network time for more transactions to appear, so that's why it's VERY rare for work to be empty.
So would you rather hit 5 blanks a month. Or all the blanks have a small amount of tx fees but you don't get the 5 you lose one to a guy that went shortcut method.
This logic is incorrect.
A pool will find, on average, 1 block every 100% diff of work they do.
It doesn't matter if they are empty blocks, full blocks, or half full.
Bitcoin is not a race to be first to find a block, it is a random event.
You aren't losing a block to someone else.
Every hash you do has the same chance of finding a block.
When you find any block, the 'race' is to make sure your block gets out to the bitcoin network as fast as possible, so others will start working on top of your block, and not find another block based on the previous block, to replace your block and have an orphan race.
I would like to point out that lifetimes stats for luck on kano.is
are 101.17% for 2429 blocks
...
My point is once BTC became valuable or more valuable
Kano.is has had really bad luck.
You are ignoring the CDF[Erl] and not applying any statistical results to your "really bad luck"
It isn't really bad luck, it's quite well within expected probabilities.
kano.is shows CDF[Erl] which states quite clearly how expected the results are:
Description Time Mean Diff% MeanTx% CDF[Erl] Luck% PAPPS%
Last 5 Blocks 40.1wks 135.99% 107.59% 0.8079 73.53% 78.41%
Last 10 Blocks 49.4wks 129.76% 105.51% 0.8326 77.06% 80.58%
Last 25 Blocks 62.9wks 106.75% 105.22% 0.6542 93.67% 97.68%
Last 50 Blocks 79.6wks 118.79% 103.28% 0.9032 84.18% 86.16%
Last 100 Blocks 91.2wks 107.33% 102.20% 0.7731 93.17% 94.36%
Last 250 Blocks 131.0wks 104.61% 104.48% 0.7699 95.60% 98.98%
Last 500 Blocks 153.8wks 108.21% 108.85% 0.9643 92.41% 99.68%
Last 1000 Blocks 191.8wks 104.15% 109.14% 0.9040 96.02% 103.85%
All - Last 2429 Blocks 295.8wks 98.85% 104.67% 0.2866 101.17% 104.94%