low hash miners: large or small pool?

[lechuck]

does it make a difference for low hash miners (310mhs) if a pool has a very large hashrate or a small one? obviously blocks get solved faster with large pools, but the rewards are also smaller..

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[elrock]

It probably has no effect on total rewards, but I prefer to join the small- to medium-size pools.  It's just psychologically more satisfying for me to see rewards in .10 and .20 btc increments rather than .01 or .005 increments.

[drawoc]

It doesn't really matter, in regard to how much you earn. I would suggest a small pool simply because it's better for the network if we spread out hashrate between many smaller pools than a few giant pools.

[pinjas]

It doesn't really matter, in regard to how much you earn. I would suggest a small pool simply because it's better for the network if we spread out hashrate between many smaller pools than a few giant pools.

I feel similarly to this sentiment.  Being concerned about ddos, pool failure, or a pool getting 'too large' crops up in my mind and draws me to the smaller pools. 

[AnnihilaT]

come help grow my super small pool!

[Jack of Diamonds]

Take in account the current & next difficulties (1.3-1.6m).

They are brutally hard for small pools in terms of variance.
Sure, it evens out in the long term, which is months and years statistically.

It doesn't even out in the short term. A single difficulty can change in 7-10 days.

If your pool does under 50ghash/s, your earnings might drop to literally zero if the pool has bad enough luck (i.e. it might only find a single block during a difficulty level, or none at all)

The larger a pool is, the better it's protected against massive luck swings caused by raising difficulty level & variance.
Pool luck varies about 5-15% at the most on giants like Slush and deepbit.

On pools below 500 ghash, there are daily swings upwards of 20-50% or worse.

[JoelKatz]

Sure, it evens out in the long term, which is months and years statistically.

It doesn't even out in the short term. A single difficulty can change in 7-10 days.

Right, but this also means you have a chance at an unusually high payoff.

The larger a pool is, the better it's protected against massive luck swings caused by raising difficulty level & variance.
Pool luck varies about 5-15% at the most on giants like Slush and deepbit.

On pools below 500 ghash, there are daily swings upwards of 20-50% or worse.

Right, but I don't want to be protected from massive good luck swings.

Smaller pools have more variance, that's true. That's good and its bad.