Bitcoin Forum

I'm fairly new.  I see many pools showing their pool hashrate, the complete network hashrate and then each miner's hashrate.  If your miner hashrate is how you generate or contribute to bitcoin mining, how does the pool hashrate impact?  Are higher hashrates more profitable for the miner than pools with lower hashrates?  Or the reverse? 

If 2 pools were to have the same pool hashrate, but one has half the miners of the other (in other words, the miners have higher hashrates)  but you have the same hashrate on both pools, would one be more profitable than the other?

Thanks!

The higher a pool's hashrate the less your variance is (unless the pool is PPS in which case the pool size makes no difference.)  A small pool variance over the short to medium term means you could end up with far less reward, but conversely you could also end up with far more reward. Pool hashrate does not affect your expected earnings. The only difference between pools in expected reward over a long period is the pool fee and whether the pool pays out transaction fees to miners or not.

Incorrect.

A very small pool will effectively reward your work at a much later date due to finding blocks rarely.
The result is that your rewards can be based on a much later bitcoin difficulty, and thus expected to be rewarded much less.

If a pool doesn't find at least a few blocks each difficulty change, i.e. each fortnight, then this will be much more apparent.

For example, the last difficulty change was a bit over 13.5%
Any shares mined during the previous difficulty, but paid in this difficult change, will have an expected reward of 13.5% less!
If those shares are still unpaid for this current difficulty change, then it of course continues to get even worse next difficulty change.
For example, shares mined 2 difficulty changes ago 4.4% + 13.5% compounds to a 18.5% expected loss over those 2 difficulty changes, if the shares are rewarded now.

The longer this goes on, the worse the expected reward becomes.
For example, shares mined during the difficulty change that ended on the 10th of May, if they were rewarded today, that would be a compound 54% less expected reward for those shares - i.e. less than half the expected reward.

Excellent clarification. Thank you!

So, the simple answer for new people like me is: the faster a pool hash rate, the quicker I see a return, which means it has a higher reward value.

Correct?

So I want the  highest hashrate pool that I can find, with all other variables, fees, etc. Being the same.

No
The "other variables" are what matter and are different on all pools.

Let me rephrase.

If I am hashing at 6 TH/s  and have two optional pools
Pool A)
Pool rate is 500 PH/s
Pool fee is 1%
Ping is 76ms

Pool B)
Pool rate is 10 PH/s
pool fee is 1%
Ping is 76ms

With this scenario, the one that pays out faster would be Pool A, so if everything was the same Which I know is impossible,  Pool A would be the more profitable. I'm not looking for the exact answer covering every single variable, I'm trying to understand exactly how pool hashrate impacts.  The other items I already understand, or at least feel reasonably comfortable with.

So, for this given example, do I have it correct?  and if not, what is the right answer? (again, assume everything else is equal, even if reality never works that way.)

Well, since 10PH is pretty small these days, yes if you had no other choice, Pool A) would give you better returns while difficulty is increasing.
If difficulty was dropping, Pool A) would pay less.
If difficulty was static, Pool A) would pay the same.

However, you've left out a VERY important factor there:
The biggest pool misleads people by calling themselves a 0 fee pool, when in fact they are the highest fee pool.

If the pool keeps transaction fees, then you are losing out BIG time.
So the fee calculation, on many pools, is not what the pool says, but what you must work out.

Or, to put another way:
Start with this: The pool has xxxxxxTHs of workers running. To use your example, 500,000THs (500PHs)

Base payout per-block is currently 12.5BTC
Your payout percentage of that 12.5 BTC is: Payout=(Your hash rate/Pool hash rate) * 12.5

Say running 10THs in a 500,000THs pool, that earns you 0.00025BTC per-block found.
Running 10THs in a 100,000THs pool earns you  0.00125 BTC per-block found.

Yes the bigger pool will hit blocks faster with less variance in time between them but the payout for each one is diluted by the number of workers and the hash power they are providing vs your part of it.

On the flip side, a smaller pool will hit blocks less often  and with more variance in time between them but then again the reward is split among fewer workers so you get more per-block.

Over any statistically relevant amount of time, say 1- month or more, your monthly income from a very big pool vs a smaller one will average out to be the same. The fact that pools like Kano have a 0.9% fee is more than offset by the Tx fees distributed. Seeing over an extra 2 BTC in Tx bonus per-block is not uncommon, zero tx fee blocks do happen but are rather rare..