Choosing a pool

[macharborguy]

something to keep in mind when choosing a pool is to make sure you factor in what your hashrate and share rate is, as well as those rates for people who comment.  Someone may earn quite a bit from a pool, but without knowing their hash and share rates as well as timeframe, you have no real way of knowing if it is better or worse.

[Vladimir]

support smaller pools (as opposed to near 50% behemoths) for the sake of bitcoin security


If I were you I would look at a pool which is in no particular order:

1. proven itself i.e. has at least some history and credibility behind it.
2. has low fees
3. has high efficiency
4. has compelling additional features

The begemonths are usually not very good in 2 and 3 department.

As far as variance is concerned if a pool solves 1-2 blocks per day on average it should be good enough.

[Xephan]

I've recently been looking at the hash speeds of other pools, and now I'm a bit confused as to how one goes about actually choosing a pool. This is my current scenario:

Pool A: Less people, lower overall pool speeds. Blocks can take anywhere from 30min to 24hours (zomg..) to be solved, but on average it seems like it's 1 block every 5-7 hours. At my hash rate I get around 0.07btc per solved block.

Pool B: More people, massively higher pool speeds. Blocks are solved frequently, taking at most about 2hrs, but on average it seems to be less than an hour. At my hash rate I get only 0.007btc per block.

I get much higher rewards per block for mining in pool A, but it's disheartening to sometimes be stuck with a 12hour+ block. Blocks are solved a loooot faster in pool B, but over a 24 hour period or so, it seems I earn less in total than pool A.

Which one should I stick with?

If you want quick returns, picking pool B would make sense, sort of. Since you will see the rewards coming in faster, although like others have mentioned, in the long run, the two should return about the same amount.

However, as mentioned, for the long term stability/security of bitcoin, so that no single pool gets over 50% long enough to start manipulating things, I'd go with splitting contributions to two or more pools. Personally, I decided to pick a big pool and a small/med pool to average things out so went with bitguild for the big pool and still trying out smaller pools to decide which I want to go for with my second gpu.

[tmand]

Does it matter if you only have certain times during the day when you can mine?  I'm wondering about using one of the smaller pools, but if I can only contribute for a couple hours here and there during the day, do I still get a portion of the coin if they solved a block while I was not there?

[bitcoinaddict]

Does it matter if you only have certain times during the day when you can mine?  I'm wondering about using one of the smaller pools, but if I can only contribute for a couple hours here and there during the day, do I still get a portion of the coin if they solved a block while I was not there?

Yes, some pools will penalize you for this as they perceive it to be 'pool hopping'.

[tmand]

Yes, some pools will penalize you for this as they perceive it to be 'pool hopping'.

Interesting... because I don't have a dedicated machine to do this, nor do I have much horsepower, I think I'll stick to one of the bigger sites because of this...

[Duffman]

I use deepbit and btcguild (2.5% 'donation') depending on the luck because they pay you for invalid blocks.  its worth it.

[tmand]

I use deepbit and btcguild (2.5% 'donation') depending on the luck because they pay you for invalid blocks.  its worth it.

What's your opinion on the two?  I've heard people like deepbit because of the immediate results (and I guess because it's so huge), but the 0% fee of btcguild sounds nice too 

[Kosty]

I use deepbit, because money I can see the money coming in every hour
On the other hand, I'm very tempted to either start mining in BTC Guild or Triplemining.
Triplemining was the first pool for me to contribute in, but at that time it took over 50hours to find a block, which was pretty frustrating for a beginner.

Now that I found myself a dedicated 5870 @ 445MH/s, I'm reconsidering BTC Guild or even an other smaller pool. Any suggestions?

[Duffman]

What's your opinion on the two?  I've heard people like deepbit because of the immediate results (and I guess because it's so huge), but the 0% fee of btcguild sounds nice too  

I think that because deepbit has such a high collective hashrate it can solve more blocks and get luckier because of it.

btcguild is awesome 'cause of the 8 decimal payouts and the fact that you can choose what to give back.  I do recommend going with 2.5% or more because you don't wanna have spent 5 or more hours on a block that ended up being invalid and not being paid for the work you did.  I'm mining over there now to see if their policy that intends to stop pool-hopper from taking away from 24/7 miners is working.

the improvements made to the pool are scaring me 'cause so far I've mined over 800 shares and none have been rejected.  I normally expect a 2 to 4% reject rate.  its amazing.

edit: finally, the 880th was rejected, so 1/880 = a .114% reject rate.  way to go eleuthria!

[tmand]

btcguild is awesome 'cause of the 8 decimal payouts and the fact that you can choose what to give back.  

That's definitely something that would be useful, considering my crappy abilities

I do recommend going with 2.5% or more because you don't wanna have spent 5 or more hours on a block that ended up being invalid and not being paid for the work you did.  I'm mining over there now to see if their policy that intends to stop pool-hopper from taking away from 24/7 miners is working.

Can you explain more on what you mean by these two things?  I assume by the 2.5% you mean giving a percentage back to btcguild, but how does that end up helping you?

Also, I'm definitely not a pool hopper by any stretch of imagination, but I don't have a computer I can use 24/7 for mining.  Would this new policy affect me?

Thanks for the help!

[Duffman]

I do recommend going with 2.5% or more because you don't wanna have spent 5 or more hours on a block that ended up being invalid and not being paid for the work you did.  I'm mining over there now to see if their policy that intends to stop pool-hopper from taking away from 24/7 miners is working.

Can you explain more on what you mean by these two things?  I assume by the 2.5% you mean giving a percentage back to btcguild, but how does that end up helping you?

Also, I'm definitely not a pool hopper by any stretch of imagination, but I don't have a computer I can use 24/7 for mining.  Would this new policy affect me?

Thanks for the help!

when you pay 2.5% or more to the pool, you get paid for your work even when the block turns out invalid.  its like payment insurance.  most pools won't pay you for the invalid blocks.

the stats are now delayed an hour like at deepbit.  pool hoppers know that they get paid more for doing the first share of a block than doing the millionth so they try to get on the pool that has done the least number of shares.  so when they find out btcguild is starting a new block, they'd jump on there.  so with the delayed stats, they won't know when the new block starts and can't pool hop on the pool anymore. (well, without guessing)

someone that doesn't pool hop shouldn't be affected, except for getting more profit (in theory).

[Dargo]

One pool worth trying IMO is Eligius. Personally I like the fact that you don't have to create an account (instead you just use one of your public keys to connect to the server). They also have a great stats page, and after you paste your public key the first time, your can just add the page to your favorites menu. So you can check your stats very fast without the need to enter those uber complicated passwords. And your earnings are very secure (so long as your wallet is secure) - no need to worry about someone hacking your account. It's also PPS and pool hopping friendly if you like that (not a plus for me). One thing to keep in mind, though, is that if the pool runs into a series of long blocks (or significant down time), this can delay payment - this doesn't bother me, but it is an issue for some. I've also tried Deepbit and BTCGuild and both of those are great too. 

[superpc]

In the long run, you will get more income from Pool A than Pool B.  I would go with Pool A.

[Donald_Norman]

+ 1, pool A. Most verifiers (miners) make their value from rising bitcoin prices which is due to a secure network, not to small edges between pools

[MegaBux]

I've recently been looking at the hash speeds of other pools, and now I'm a bit confused as to how one goes about actually choosing a pool. This is my current scenario:

Pool A: Less people, lower overall pool speeds. Blocks can take anywhere from 30min to 24hours (zomg..) to be solved, but on average it seems like it's 1 block every 5-7 hours. At my hash rate I get around 0.07btc per solved block.

Pool B: More people, massively higher pool speeds. Blocks are solved frequently, taking at most about 2hrs, but on average it seems to be less than an hour. At my hash rate I get only 0.007btc per block.

I get much higher rewards per block for mining in pool A, but it's disheartening to sometimes be stuck with a 12hour+ block. Blocks are solved a loooot faster in pool B, but over a 24 hour period or so, it seems I earn less in total than pool A.

Which one should I stick with?

My experience over the past month shows that the important factors are pool uptime and to some extent, the pool hash rate.  The smaller the pool hash rate, the closer you are to solo-mining.  You also want a pool that is rarely down (ideally always up) to minimize idle time.  In the long run, you will generally make the same amount of BTC in any pool, all variables being constant.

[simonk83]

I mine with Eclipse Mining Consortium because there are no fees and the owner does an excellent job with support, bugfixes, etc.  It's a small-medium sized pool and has awesome features like payout in either BTC or paypal and notifications via sms and email.

Yep, me too   Inaba is very responsive to issues and open to suggestions.