I'm wondering, with high variance on p2pool or another somewhat smaller pool, is it possible to actually lose money? Like in the long run luck is irrelevant, but what if you have really bad luck and then the difficulty goes up 30%?
In this situation do you lose money because of high variance?
Yes you can. Consequently you can also gain money. Contrary to what people will insist on, it does NOT even out in the end because difficulty keeps rising. However luck determines if you're ahead long term or behind long term in an irretrievable way. If diff did not continually rise and rose-and-fell or stayed the same it would even out.
Additionally Semaster has been tracking = amounts of ants on 3 pools from the beginning of this year
TL;DR P2pool has generated more coin, but this was also when Eligius and BTCG was being block-withhold attacked.