I noticed the pool starts off with difficulty of 1024 and then after a while mine drops down to one and then climbs up before stopping at 4.  Realistically does the miner need to be able to have accepted shares at the 1024 difficulty before having any remote chance of solving a block.  I read posts about "lottery" mining with low hash miners, but I don't exactly see it that way because each mining node is competing against all the others.  So while in theory a low hash, could take "years" to mine a block, that doesn't account for the competition from other miners that will solve them before.  With your other pool you alluded to needing at least 1PH to have a pool.  Does the same apply for solo mining.  Not 1PH, but something along the lines of being able to accept shares at 1024 difficulty?