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Mostly for fun, I put together a 13 GH/s mining setup two weeks ago.

I started mining with Ozcoin and mined block 242128. Sadly, being in a pool, I just got a normal share.
https://ozcoin.net/content/block-history-bitcoin

Then I switched to Eclipse and a few hours ago, I mined block 243360. Again, being in a pool, I just got a normal share.
https://eclipsemc.com/block_stats.php

Now, I have some philosophical questions: If I had been solo mining, would I have still mined these two blocks? Did choosing to mine in a pool cost me $5K? Am I clearly a lucky miner and should begin solo mining immediately? Should I buy a lottery ticket? Or did I use up my luck and need to stay in pools forever? Should I look both ways twice before crossing streets?

Could someone who understands the nature of luck please help me with these confounding questions?

If you had managed to solve the blocks while solo mining then you would have mined them but you had no way of knowing you would get so lucky.
Also with 13 GH/s you will get a very high variance, I think it's not worth it with such a slow speed nowadays. With the increasing difficulty you might as well never solve a block.


One could say so but the chance that you will again mine 2 blocks in the same span of time with current difficulty with current hardware is very low (you can say you got very lucky (or unlucky depending on the way you look at it)).


You just got very lucky here but in the long term the profits will even out (the greater the time span the higher the probability that you will mine the amount of BTC that corresponds to your hashing speed and mining difficulty).


No for all of these questions, solving one block doesn't affect the probability of solving another block because these are independent events.

i hade the same on 1 rig with ltc solved 10 blocks ( 500ltc ) for the pool and only ever got 45ltc out of the pool  >:(

Random chance is not a philosophy.

No, you would have not mined those blocks if you had been solo.

When mining, you're hashing something called a Block Header (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_hashing_algorithm), which contains something called a Merkle Root, which contains all the transactions for that block, including the 25BTC reward fee.

You change the address for the reward fee in the transaction list, and it changes the Merkle Root, which changes the block header, which changes entire hash (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2#Examples_of_SHA-2_variants). When you're talking about something that's basically a giant lottery with 1-to-19.3M odds, changing one thing resets those odds.

Sounds like you've been very, VERY lucky. You should go back to Ozcoin and have your luck help us out some more. ;)

It's theoretically possible for you to solve a block with every single hash your hardware produces, but the chance of this happening is so low it's equivalent to 0.  You got lucky, and there's no (practical) way to tell if you would have been as lucky solo mining. 

Your hardware would have been hashing different data if you were solo mining so under the exact same conditions otherwise (i.e., almost impossible since it probably would have taken you a different amount of time to set up solo mining, different network latency means you getting block data at slightly different times, etc, etc) you probably would not have have been as lucky.  Of course there's no practical way to determine this.

The probability of solving a block/expected time to block does not change based on whether you're pool or solo mining.  Mining is a random process and your ability to solve a block is only estimated by the rules of probability.  Your hardware is performing the exact same type of calculations whether you solo or pool mine, and those calculations should have the same probability of producing a valid block regardless of the data contained within the block.

Your chance of rolling any number on a standard die is 1/6 but it's not terribly uncommon to roll the same number a few times in a row, or even 10 times in a row. (similar to how you mined two blocks) The 1/6 just means that when rolling a die an infinite amount of times, each number will account for 16.667% (1/6) of the total numbers rolled. (I think? not a probability expert here, haha)

You will see your block solve rate converge to the estimated rate determined by your 13 GH/s hashrate if you continue mining (whether you switch between different pools and/or solo mine) for an extended period of time.  There will be fluctuations but over time it will average out.  The purpose of pool mining is to smooth those fluctuations which has the effect of damping the highs as well as the lows. 

Sorry for the long reply... hope it was marginally informational!

tl,dr: Basically the same thing everyone above me said

Luck isn't something that determines circumstances. Circumstances are what determine if you are "lucky" or not.

Problem solved.

Ouch. that must be painful..

I doubt your going to be able and mine another block you would seriously be one lucky guy if you did tho lol.

Up to you, stay in the pool and get a steady supply, or go solo mining.

Cliff notes: no, dont solo mine. For sure, you wont ever find another block now.  ;D

Yes, buy a lotto ticket.

Also, if you stopped working for Opencoin and promoting Ripple, you might get more respect around here. That shit is wack man.

Chaos theory says that if you did anything differently (like solo mined instead of pool mined) then you wouldn't have mined those two blocks. Especially since the getworks will be different from the pool and your local bitcoind (at least I think they will be).

On the flip side, if you solo mined, you might've mined 10 blocks in a single day!

The saga of my "luck" continues. At a crappy 14GH/s and with the increased difficulty, I just mined blocks 249485 and 249587. Still in a pool (EclipseMC), so I netted 0.042 BTC for my efforts.
http://i44.tinypic.com/33ky61c.jpg