Solo mining chances?

[Brainslug]

Hi everyone, I started to take an interest in BitCoin just recently (2 weeks ago or so) and even though I have a rough idea of how this whole concept works, there's still one thing that I can't wrap my head around: Are the _chances_ (not the speed) of finding a block when solo-mining equal when you have a low-end equipment (e.g. a GTX275 with 66 MHashs/s) compared to an actual rig built only for mining? I'm having problems understanding how exactly a new block gets accepted into the block-chain. IIRC the hash calculated has to start with a couple of 0, but is that the only requirement? Or is it also determined by how much work calculating this hash was put into?

Sorry for the newbie questions, I read through the wiki and the beginners guide on the forum, maybe I missed the part where exactly this is answered. If so I'd be happy if you could give me a link to the explanation.

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[jhansen858]

lets say that you do a SHA256 hash on something,

Now that is going to output basically a random number with 256 digits

Now, I tell you, I want a hashed output that starts with 15 zero's

Your thinking holy shit, I'm either going to have to get real fuckin lucky or I'm going to have to make 4 quadrillion attempts at hashing this input and finding that one value that will give me the output with 15 zeros in the first bits of the 256 but number.

once you get that very rare number you announce to the network that you found the solution.

Everyone goes, oh hai you just won the bitcoin lotto.  Heres your bitcoin reward.

They take that last hash output and make that the seed input for the next block and everything starts over.

So if you manage to find that very special value before anyone else then you get the 50 bitcoins.

When you join a mining pool any time anyone finds that value, they share the 50 bitcoins with everyone in the pool.  People who submit more shares get more of the 50...

So the question is would you rather get 50 once every year or 1/365 of 50 every day...

[Brainslug]

Thanks, that's the clear cut answer I was looking for

[nocoiner]

I wouldn't recommend solo mining, as difficulty is high and will continue to increase.

Join a pool and start getting something back from your efforts.

[phillipsjk]

I would recommend solo mining. Think of it being like buying lottery tickets

[nocoiner]

I'm not specially risk-averse, but for me in general terms a lottery is a tax for the dumb. You are paying a lot of money (in this case in electricity) without even knowing if you are going to get something back. And the probability gets lower day by day.

If you have a supercomputer which gives you enough processing power to get (in average) a block a day, that's kind of predictable.  If you have two overclocked GPUs, it may happen that you never get a coin back.

[phillipsjk]

My strategy is to buy bitcoin this year, then possibly invest in mining/general-purpose hardware to protect the network in about a year.

I plan on wasting about 12Watts on (intermittent laptop) mining this year (currently burning closer to 100 using desktop CPU mining).

By the end of the year, I may even investing in panels and batteries to run 12Watts exclusively from solar power

I guess my point is, you can choose how much you "waste" on mining with no expected return.

Note that my CPU miner strengthens the network, even if it never processes any blocks. With (currently) 70 connections, it relays transaction announcements and block history to other nodes.