Larger reward when the round lasts longer?

[newMeat1]

I'm mining in Slush's pool, getting a measly 11Mh/s. It seems strange that I bring in larger rewards when the round drags on for a really long time, like an hour or more.

Shouldn't I earn more on short rounds, because the pool is taking in more BTC faster?

[anewbie]

You earn a share of the bitcoins in each block Slush's pool finds.

With 11 MHsh/sec you may be hitting a timing issue on very short rounds.  If you check out a block just as one is found, by the time you hand it in, it is stale.  Do the same thing at the end of the round, and two of your accepted hashes weren't counted.

Over the course of a large round, that is insignificant.  In a short round, it may not be.

[Nythain]

While your per round reward might be larger on longer rounds (presumably as your shares become more valuable due to others hopping out of the pool), your over all earnings will be less, because in the time it took you to make that slightly larger reward,  you could have made 2-3 or more slightly less rewards.
Example:
Round A - Time: 2 hours Reward: 1btc

Round B - Time: 30 minutes Reward: 0.6btc
Round C - Time: 1 hour Reward: 0.8btc
Round D - Time: 45 minutes Reward: 0.7btc

Sure the numbers were exaggerated a bit, but they get the point across... multiple smaller payouts in a certain time frame will almost always end up totaling more than one larger payout taking up the entire time frame.

As for the exact variance, given slush's score system and the tendency of miners to pool hop after rounds have gone on longer than miners would prefer, the larger reward for longer rounds is expected as others shares diminish and yours hold the same value. Also, there's the luck and timing factors already mentioned.

[newMeat1]

I guess I see the error in my logic now... In a perfect world, if reward was based just on Mhash/s and nobody was pool-hopping, I would earn the same reward no matter how long the round took.

I don't think that pool-hopping is an issue. When I watch the stats for the pool, they hardly change. And that sure seems like a lot of work for a few fractions of BTC's.

[grue]

I guess I see the error in my logic now... In a perfect world, if reward was based just on Mhash/s and nobody was pool-hopping, I would earn the same reward no matter how long the round took.

I don't think that pool-hopping is an issue. When I watch the stats for the pool, they hardly change. And that sure seems like a lot of work for a few fractions of BTC's.

I got a script set up that does it for me :3

[error]

I think the problem is that you're at 11Mhash/sec. You aren't going to generate much of anything with that, especially on short rounds.