I also have normal discussions on a wide range of topics with the rest of the forum except you.
When your response is:
That makes absolutely no sense
... you sound condescending and trying to be a smart arse. Had you started with "In my opinion I think it's better to mine solo because a) b) c) ..." I wouldn't have considered you a troll. I mean look at your previous answer. Get the fvck down from your high horses. Show us you're just as good at argumenting "for" because you showed us you're pretty good at argumenting "against". That's easy.
Here's the thing, regardless of whether you feel personally slighted, you've not approached this at all properly.
You believe that I am suggesting people should mine solo, but... I don't suggest that at all. I merely suggest your statement was preposterous, because it was. In my opinion, you made the argument, so you should back it up (which you in this entire thread, have not done).
If you really think I should have to give reasons why your baseless statement is baseless, I can do that, and then we can argue and argue and argue (if you present counter-reasoning).
Quoted in entirety so that no context is removed:
I think Pool mining makes more sense the more hash power you have because you take out luck out of the equation. Example: if you have half of the hashing power of the network, you'll almost get half of the bitcoins generated if you mine using pools (minus the ones going to the "lucky solo miners"). If solo mining, and with a bad luck, you can get 0 bitcoins ... So, feeling lucky ... punk?
I will ignore numbers since you feel I nitpick them too much. What remains is the statement which I will paraphrase, 'pool mining makes more sense the more hash power you have because you take out luck.'
Let's look at 4 distinct scenarios:
.1%, 1%, 10%, 100%.
.1%, finding a block will take on average 7 days (21 days for 95% probability to find a block)
1% finding a block on average 17hours (2 days 2hrs for 95%)
10% avg 1.75 hours (5hours 95%)
100% avg 10minutes (95% 30mins, but you get all the blocks anyway, so it doesn't matter).
Now these numbers are for total hashrate moving 6 blocks/hr. The "flat" rate so to speak. You can already see that the more hashing power you have, the less likely it is that no matter how unlucky you are, that you will get "0" coins, not that it would matter, as the difficulty would remain flat.
So what about for network rate far above difficulty? As that's the scenario we are thinking about, that's a fair question. If the network were moving 12blocks/hr we get a simple halving of the above numbers. 24blocks/hr, 4x. All things are in proportion (the time to difficulty change is halved when your time to find a block is halved).
So, going back to our original numbers, assuming you were incredibly unlucky, and went to 95% every time (this is really very very unlikely to happen repeatedly, but for the sake of argument)...
100% Hashrate finds 2016 blocks (all of them)
10% hashrate finds 67 blocks (3 1/3rd% of all blocks)
1% finds 6.75 blocks (rounded down to 6, .3%)
.1% finds 0 blocks.
The more hashrate you have, the better you are doing while solo mining, even in the scenario of an incredibly unlikely string of awful bad luck (you can argue for one block going beyond 95% probability, and entering even the most extreme scenario, even 1% is almost guaranteed to find at least 1 block before change). This is the opposite of your statement, even giving you the benefit of the doubt for someone with the most improbable of bad luck.
Let's look at pool mining, the most favorable and least variable method is PPS, this typically carries a 5% pool fee (p2pool is an exception, but I'm not sure how long they will keep up their system as-is), so then how would this compare to pool mining. Here I will look at average rates rather than worst case scenario. Let's say your pool collectively owns 100% of the hashing power, and you own X% of that pools power, for ease of calculation. Solo vs. pool payout
100% hashrate: 2016 blocks vs 1915 blocks (this would actually be paid in coins, but I don't want #s to get too big)
10% hashrate: 192 blocks vs 191
1% hashrate: 19 blocks vs 19
.1% hashrate: 1 block vs 2blocks
Again as you increase in personal power, fees begin to take more of a toll.
All very simple calculations, but I don't believe you need to get overly fancy here. The opposite of your statement is true, the more hashing power you have, the better off you are mining solo, if you do not feel that you are the unluckiest person on earth.
So my original advice stands, in my opinion from the numbers above it seems that if you are low on the hashing power totem pole comparatively, I'd suggest going with a pool (and not a PPS, but that's personal preference), as you increase your personal stake, the better off you might be on your own, if you are ok with a little risk.
I feel I've met all your criteria in this post. I didn't pick on your numbers, I ignored them completely, I gave a (hopefully) non-condescending list of calculated reasons why your statement was incorrect, and gave a reasoned statement of what I think is the most rational course for people to follow based on their circumstances.
The reason I didn't do this in the first place is that it seemed obvious, and I've now written about 20x the length of your posts to do so. Hardly fair that I'm the troll unless this is done.
An interesting side note, that relates to the point I discussed with AMDD. Recalculating PPS pool above, assuming the pool has 20% of total network hashing power, and you have 10% (or 50% of the pool)
On average the pool will find 384 blocks, 192 of those will be blocks found by you. The share calculations are their own beast, but working with average times, it should take an "average" number of shares to find blocks in that difficulty window, so if you assume 50% of 95% total paid out to you, that is 182.4 Blocks you earn, out of 192 you found. Yuck. But one pays for security, as should be obvious.
