[1050 TH] BitMinter.com [1% PPLNS,Pays TxFees +MergedMining,Stratum,GBT,vardiff]

[christhegoth]

In response to the various 'chase luck' comments.


*rolls eyes*  Statistical probability does not work that way.


Ok, I'll explain:

Much as you cannot predict the future with 1 quarter being flipped 10 times you can make a safer guess if you flip 10 quarters at the same time for 10 times ( whilst gambling cash on them, which is the reality of how this one works ).

1 quarter, 1 gamble, 50% chance of winning.  And if you get an unlucky streak of 3-4 flips you lose it all.

10 quarters, 1 gamble per coin, 50% chance of winning per coin.  For all 10 quarters to go bad for 3-4 flips ( enough to empty your wallet ) is a lot rarer than for 1 quarter to go bad for 3-4 flips.  It's the difference between spreading your bet or going 'all or nothing' ( 1 coin is all-or-nothing, where-as 10 coins is bet-spreading ).


So...

You bet £25.00 on 1 coin coming up heads.  You flip 2 coins, so gamble £50.00.  If you get it right you get £25.00 per head ( simple 1:1 odds ).  If a tail comes up you lose the £25.00 on that coin.

For both to come up tails or heads the odds is 0.5 * 0.5.  So there is a 25% chance you'll win big, but also a 25% chance you'll lose it all.

For one to come up heads, and the other tails, is 0.5 * 0.5 ( 25% again ), but... there are 2 ways this can happen.  Coin 1 gets the head, or coin 2 gets the head.  So that doubles your chance to 50%.

Both tails and you lose £50 ( all you gambled ).
Both heads and you get your 50 back plus another 50.

A head and a tail? You pay out 25 on one, and get 50 back on another ( your stake plus the win bonus ).  But there are 2 chances of this happening.  So...

25% you lose it all.
50% chance you gain £0 over-all.
25% chance you gain £50 over all.

With just one coin you'd be looking at a 50% chance of losing £50, and a 50% chance of gaining £50.00.  Only 1 chance to make money, with no safety net.  All or nothing.

With 2 coins you have 1 chance to make money, 1 chance to lose it, and 2 for breaking even.


If you have modern mining kit like S3's you'll be making a small profit if the break even, and a larger profit if you win.  If you lose you may well break even.  Because s3's have a good power ratio.

An old S1 will see you running at a loss if you lose, breaking even if you break even, and making a small profit if you win.  Near enough.  As their power ratio is nothing impressive these days.


It's like betting on the horses.  Spread your bet and you will lose less if you get unlucky generally speaking.  Unless you're cursed and they all come in bad, but the odds of that happening are a lot less.

This is how you do it on the gee-gees:

Favourites Index

This is the forecast of how the favourite will perform in each race at a specific race meeting. Points are awarded for finishing in the first three in the following way: 25 points for win, 10 points for second and 5 points for third. If there are joint or co-favourites, we take the favourite as being the horse with the lower race card number.

Example

’At the Southwell Fibresand card consisting of seven races, our favourite’s prediction might be 62-65 points. If you believed that the favourites in all seven races stood a good chance you would buy at 65 for a stake of. When all the results are in the final tally is made up of 80. You would have therefore won 15 times your stake: (65 - 80) x your stake = 15 x £/€5 = £/€75. But, if the favourites index had made up at only 50 points, the same bet would have lost you 35 times your stake: (50 - 85 x your stake = -35 x £/€5 = -£/€175'


Or...

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.


For BTC if you mine 2 pools and one goes bad the other pool will still be there.  So you'll only lose half of your cash, instead of all of it.  The odds of 2 pools going bad at the same time are less than they are for one pool going bad.


This is why professional mining gear can mine 3 pools at once ( from one unit ).  It's a standard safety feature, just in case one pool goes bad for a bit.


And if a horse is having a winning streak it's very easy to read the results for it, it's competitors, and then make a judgement call on who to bet on.


There are no guarantees sure, but it also means if you lose you won't lose badly compared to an 'all or nothing' system ( where 3-4 bad rounds is you gone, as you're only flipping one coin instead of 10 per round ).


Doc wants s3's, and to do that he needs to make it look like a safer investment then a bunch of people yelling 'casino' because they did not do degree level math ( I'm sorry, but I have to be honest here ).

Just because you don't get how it works does not mean it does not exist.  An entire race industry, that's been alive for at least 2000 years, has tried and tested this one.  You never put all your eggs in one basket unless you can afford to lose big.



That's the math.  Think about that before you miss-sell Doc's pool to new people.

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[christhegoth]

If you want stable payments, use a big pool, if you want some excitement, use a small pool.  If a system was  put in place to smooth out the payments and eliminate "casino", why not just move to a big pool?

Funny how you are asking for stable payments while just a few weeks back Philip was insisting the solution was to offer solo mining where things are pretty much all-or-nothing super-casino.

Because people want Bitminter to grow.  So having 2 tiers ( 'casino' or 'safer' ) may see the big boys come over here ( and away from GHash ).  A bit of customer choice, rather than the rather unfriendly 'like it or leave' too many roll with.

[christhegoth]

In response to the various 'chase luck' comments.

That's the math.  Think about that before you miss-sell Doc's pool to new people.

You're missing the point...

I'm well aware that my example has nothing to do with "the luck" in searching BTC. It was just trying to make him understand that you cannot predict luck.

Flipping a coin is a sample example.

No.  So far we have people in 2 groups in this debate.

The casino crowd ( you can't chase luck ), and those who are willing to try ( and statistically some but not all will succeed ).

It's not impossible to move one of your miners once every 2 weeks to make an extra tenner.

Much as there won't be a pattern that's reliable short-term trends can be read and used for making a judgement call.  Like how Bitminter works in peaks and troughs, and averages into a luckier pool ( at present ) over a period of at least a month.  Well, that's the pattern so far; but it might not last.


I understand it fine.  Hence why I'm only gambling 1/3 of my hash.


If people see a bad pool they'll walk.  Do you want them to walk forever, or come back in 2 weeks time?

[jfederkins]

Will someone please wake me when all of this back and forth about luck finally ends?

 

[sticky]

Hey folks. I'm considering adding my 3 S3's to Bitminter. Should I create separate workers for each or point them all to the same worker? Along with that, what difficulty should I be set at? ( If I point them all at 1 worker, should it be something like 1528?) Sorry, I'm a newb to Bitminter and using multiple miners. 

[christhegoth]

Hey folks. I'm considering adding my 3 S3's to Bitminter. Should I create separate workers for each or point them all to the same worker? Along with that, what difficulty should I be set at? ( If I point them all at 1 worker, should it be something like 1528?) Sorry, I'm a newb to Bitminter and using multiple miners. 

Separate workers means you can see if one goes down, but if you use 1 worker it's still pretty obvious if 450 GH/s disappears.

As for minimum difficulty it's hash for the miner / 1.4 if I remember correctly, and is best set at the lower amount ( rather than combining all 3 ).

At present Bitminter is ahead of the game on luck ( profit ) , but it only comes out if you average over a month. Bad weeks & fortnights do happen, but then so do good weeks & fortnights. It's the average over a month that adds up. We ARE a lucky pool at present.


Correct me if I am wrong Doc

[sticky]

Hey folks. I'm considering adding my 3 S3's to Bitminter. Should I create separate workers for each or point them all to the same worker? Along with that, what difficulty should I be set at? ( If I point them all at 1 worker, should it be something like 1528?) Sorry, I'm a newb to Bitminter and using multiple miners. 

Separate workers means you can see if one goes down, but if you use 1 worker it's still pretty obvious if 450 GH/s disappears.

As for minimum difficulty it's hash for the miner / 1.4 if I remember correctly, and is best set at the lower amount ( rather than combining all 3 ).

At present Bitminter is ahead of the game on luck ( profit ) , but it only comes out if you average over a month. Bad weeks & fortnights do happen, but then so do good weeks & fortnights. It's the average over a month that adds up. We ARE a lucky pool at present.


Correct me if I am wrong Doc

Thanks for the info! I figured I'll play around in a small pool for awhile. More excitement here!

[christhegoth]

Hey folks. I'm considering adding my 3 S3's to Bitminter. Should I create separate workers for each or point them all to the same worker? Along with that, what difficulty should I be set at? ( If I point them all at 1 worker, should it be something like 1528?) Sorry, I'm a newb to Bitminter and using multiple miners. 

Separate workers means you can see if one goes down, but if you use 1 worker it's still pretty obvious if 450 GH/s disappears.

As for minimum difficulty it's hash for the miner / 1.4 if I remember correctly, and is best set at the lower amount ( rather than combining all 3 ).

At present Bitminter is ahead of the game on luck ( profit ) , but it only comes out if you average over a month. Bad weeks & fortnights do happen, but then so do good weeks & fortnights. It's the average over a month that adds up. We ARE a lucky pool at present.


Correct me if I am wrong Doc

Thanks for the info! I figured I'll play around in a small pool for awhile. More excitement here!

No problem.  The graph below shows how our payments work out:

https://bitminter.com/stats/rewards

We've just entered a period of what I expect to be 'bad times' that will probably last about 2 weeks.  Then we should get 2 weeks of good times.  This is based on our results so far, as shown on the graph.  Peaks & troughs, good times & bad times.

During bad times the s1 miners have A LOT of trouble making ends meet.  With an s3 you should be fine for making some profit in bad times.  In good times you'll rake it in.

Hence why you need to keep it patient and average over a month

[jjdub7]

Doc (or anyone else that can confirm) -

As long as BTC difficulty is higher than NMC difficulty, the pool will create a NMC block for every BTC block we find, correct?  Ignoring stale/orphaned and considering current conditions.

[theweiss]

All of this talk about luck and changing pools is stupid.  Its like switching slot machines at a casino when yours isn't paying.  You can never know if you're 1 hash away from solving a block or 5 billion so trying to "figure it out" is dumb.  I understand that some people have very internal loci of control and they think that they can change their luck if the pool is having a slow few days but you can't. Not "but what if I...?".  YOU. CAN'T.

Bitminter is - by far - the best pool around.  Yes, the GUI is nice, lots of good hardware is supported and the donations are more than reasonable but the real benefit to this pool is the Doc.  Where else is the owner / manager of the pool this accessible?  The guy responds to just about every question (even dumb ones about luck) and provides thorough and thoughtful answers and comments. 

The marketing of the pool isn't the issue the problem is the first mover advantage of the other pools.  They've been around a little longer so every how-to and bitcoin mining tutorial that was written early on in the days of mining instructs people on how to access those pools.  Most people stick with the pools they started with and find all other pools to be inferior.

[DevonMiner]

Yes, the GUI is nice, lots of good hardware is supported and the donations are more than reasonable but the real benefit to this pool is the Doc.  Where else is the owner / manager of the pool this accessible?  The guy responds to just about every question (even dumb ones about luck) and provides thorough and thoughtful answers and comments.  

Agreed, I love good stats, and BitMinter does that and makes it easy for me to analyze my performance/ROI (However depressing it looks at times when difficulty increases ) . The good Doc has to field a great array of questions ... from simple to complex ... and each is given equal thought and reply ... within a good time frame.

[-ck]

Doc (or anyone else that can confirm) -

As long as BTC difficulty is higher than NMC difficulty, the pool will create a NMC block for every BTC block we find, correct?  Ignoring stale/orphaned and considering current conditions.

Yes

[DrHaribo]

Separate workers means you can see if one goes down, but if you use 1 worker it's still pretty obvious if 450 GH/s disappears.

Yeah, that's why I often tell people that using separate workers is most useful if you have them in separate locations. If something fails then you will know where to go to fix it.

If you have 2-3 machines stacked on top of each other you'll probably do fine with 1 worker. If one of the machines fails it won't take you long to find out which one it is.

We've just entered a period of what I expect to be 'bad times' that will probably last about 2 weeks.  Then we should get 2 weeks of good times.

That's not how random works.

If you think random events are predictable then go ahead and try to make extra coins by predicting which pool will be lucky. But please don't tell new users that this is how it works.

[cenicsoft]

We've just entered a period of what I expect to be 'bad times' that will probably last about 2 weeks.  Then we should get 2 weeks of good times.

That's not how random works.

If you think random events are predictable then go ahead and try to make extra coins by predicting which pool will be lucky. But please don't tell new users that this is how it works.

Doc, might be a good time to write a FAQ on luck and simply reference that URL on the site every time the discussion of luck comes up.

[christhegoth]

Separate workers means you can see if one goes down, but if you use 1 worker it's still pretty obvious if 450 GH/s disappears.

Yeah, that's why I often tell people that using separate workers is most useful if you have them in separate locations. If something fails then you will know where to go to fix it.

If you have 2-3 machines stacked on top of each other you'll probably do fine with 1 worker. If one of the machines fails it won't take you long to find out which one it is.

We've just entered a period of what I expect to be 'bad times' that will probably last about 2 weeks.  Then we should get 2 weeks of good times.

That's not how random works.

If you think random events are predictable then go ahead and try to make extra coins by predicting which pool will be lucky. But please don't tell new users that this is how it works.

With respect Doc your Rewards Graph clearly shows peaks & troughs, and this does show up in the payments too. Hence why it's so important to average over the month.

Is there a better way of describing it?

[Duce]

Separate workers means you can see if one goes down, but if you use 1 worker it's still pretty obvious if 450 GH/s disappears.

Yeah, that's why I often tell people that using separate workers is most useful if you have them in separate locations. If something fails then you will know where to go to fix it.

If you have 2-3 machines stacked on top of each other you'll probably do fine with 1 worker. If one of the machines fails it won't take you long to find out which one it is.

We've just entered a period of what I expect to be 'bad times' that will probably last about 2 weeks.  Then we should get 2 weeks of good times.

That's not how random works.

If you think random events are predictable then go ahead and try to make extra coins by predicting which pool will be lucky. But please don't tell new users that this is how it works.

With respect Doc your Rewards Graph clearly shows peaks & troughs, and this does show up in the payments too. Hence why it's so important to average over the month.

Is there a better way of describing it?

Yes, random.

[christhegoth]

Separate workers means you can see if one goes down, but if you use 1 worker it's still pretty obvious if 450 GH/s disappears.

Yeah, that's why I often tell people that using separate workers is most useful if you have them in separate locations. If something fails then you will know where to go to fix it.

If you have 2-3 machines stacked on top of each other you'll probably do fine with 1 worker. If one of the machines fails it won't take you long to find out which one it is.

We've just entered a period of what I expect to be 'bad times' that will probably last about 2 weeks.  Then we should get 2 weeks of good times.

That's not how random works.

If you think random events are predictable then go ahead and try to make extra coins by predicting which pool will be lucky. But please don't tell new users that this is how it works.

With respect Doc your Rewards Graph clearly shows peaks & troughs, and this does show up in the payments too. Hence why it's so important to average over the month.

Is there a better way of describing it?

Yes, random.

Here we go again.   Ok, I'll use the words 'random' with 'monthly average' should I chat with newbs.

But I assure you the larger investors will want more than that.

[AaronS]

Just because a graph has peaks and troughs does not mean it is systematic.  Any "two-week cycle" you are seeing is something your mind is imposing on the data.  Do a Fourier analysis and I am pretty sure you will find there is no reliable pattern.  I can say this with conviction because it is a random event and by definition will have no pattern.

[christhegoth]

Just because a graph has peaks and troughs does not mean it is systematic.  Any "two-week cycle" you are seeing is something your mind is imposing on the data.  Do a Fourier analysis and I am pretty sure you will find there is no reliable pattern.  I can say this with conviction because it is a random event and by definition will have no pattern.

That 10 day bad patch, clearly shown on the graph, is a certain width. Compare it with other peaks & troughs & there is something there.

However, if it's only 10 days long ( for example ) then any pool-jumping will be pointless.

If you're above average for a month that's worth a look at.

Luck-wise for the past 2 months we've been average. We gained the lead we have due to a 2 month-ish period before then where we had good luck. The gradient on the bottom graph shows the changes. Which is differentiation, not Fourier.

We had a steeper gradient 2 months back to get to the gap between green & yellow we now have. That gap has stayed fairly constant in size since, which clearly shows us shifting back to average ( or it would have got bigger or smaller ).

It still means you have to use monthly averages to get a real view of what's going on.

[DrHaribo]

That 10 day bad patch, clearly shown on the graph, is a certain width. Compare it with other peaks & troughs & there is something there.

You're imagining things. It can look like there is a system or pattern when you look at a small set of data. In reality it's random.

However, if it's only 10 days long ( for example ) then any pool-jumping will be pointless.

No, it doesn't matter how long. If you could pool-hop based on predicting luck then you'd make a lot more coins. But you can't.

There's already many users struggling to understand random/luck. Some believe bad luck doesn't occur naturally and ask if the pool is broken every time we have bad luck.

Don't make it worse by suggesting luck is predictable and follows a certain pattern. It doesn't.