Quote from: popinjay on March 20, 2014, 11:06:17 PM

Quote from: flounderella on March 20, 2014, 10:04:22 PM

How come we don't find blocks for hours and then boom boom, two in a row, and then wait again? Just curious how or why it happens.... seen it with other pools too.

It's completely random and based on the pools hashrate. Right now I think BTCGuild has about 16-18% of the total hashrate. That means every block we have a 16-18% change to get. If we don't get the current block then the next block starts and we have a 16-18% chance to get that one. That being said, we could go on a run of 4-5 blocks in a row if we were really lucky (akin to flipping a bunch of heads in a row since we should only be getting one of those blocks). Or we could go 20-30 blocks without getting one if we were really unlucky. In the long run in all averages out .

Problem in bold !

Isn't that the problem now? "long run" may have been months, now 6-9 weeks and profit has mostly evaporated, unless the btc price has also dramatically risen?

Or is that time frame still long enough that mining on a small pool is still viable, even with some bad luck?