How does pool luck change with difficulty ?

[xZork]

Every time the difficulty goes up, every pool finds less blocks per hour. How do the pools alter the luck statistic to reflect the current difficulty? Maybe I am thinking about this wrong, but I would assume there would have to be a shift also or luck would plummet ever time the diff changed. Do all pools use their own system to base luck off of or is there a standard?

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[eleuthria]

Luck is based on shares submitted / blocks solved vs Network difficulty.  If you average more shares submitted per block than the network difficulty, your luck is bad.  If you average fewer shares submitted per block than network difficulty, it is good.

Difficulty mostly influences variance.  If a pool doesn't grow roughly in-line with network difficulty, they will see higher variance (higher highs, lower lows).  But they would still expect to average the same.

[xZork]

Okay, thanks. So it is all relative.

[bitpop]

Technically it should stay the same.

[xZork]

Please elaborate if you could, bitpop.

[eleuthria]

Please elaborate if you could, bitpop.

He's right, in that *expected* luck should always be neutral, regardless of difficulty.  Expected luck and actual luck are obviously not always going to line up, so you end up with my explanation.

[xZork]

It made sense, then I was thrown. By technically I assume that is in a perfect world, where luck wouldn't matter to begin with? Or maybe on a time line that extends so far that it isn't really that relevant... I must say I am a bit thrown still... and just as I thought I was understanding.

[bitpop]

It made sense, then I was thrown. By technically I assume that is in a perfect world, where luck wouldn't matter to begin with? Or maybe on a time line that extends so far that it isn't really that relevant... I must say I am a bit thrown still... and just as I thought I was understanding.

Well nothing changes right after difficulty changes. You should make the same amount as before right after. What's making you earn less is people adding hashrate, not necessarily difficulty changes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

[eleuthria]

It made sense, then I was thrown. By technically I assume that is in a perfect world, where luck wouldn't matter to begin with? Or maybe on a time line that extends so far that it isn't really that relevant... I must say I am a bit thrown still... and just as I thought I was understanding.

Over an infinite period of time, you would expect luck to be infinitely close to neutral regardless of mining speed/pool size.  Since that's not reasonable, you end up with the basic variance.  The smaller the pool, the more wildly it can move for a given time frame.

Think of it like a wave on a graph, steadily moving up and down, centered on the axis (the axis being neutral luck).  For a smaller pool, its stretched out so it spends a lot of time above or below the line, but it steadily moves between the two.  So if you take a given slice (2 weeks), you may end up quite a bit above or below the average line depending on where in the wave that 2 week period landed in.

For a larger pool, that wave is squished, so it fluctuates up/down very rapidly.  But since it's moving between the two so frequently, taking a 2 week slice of that graph will likely average closer to 0 since it never spends too much time away from the axis.

[xZork]

I really wasn't worried about the earnings so much when I made this post. It was the diff jump that made me think about how luck was effected in hand. While I don't have the time to read bitpop's link tonight, it is much appreciated and will be read tomorrow. It is as said before by eleuthria, but obviously hash rate has to be kept in mind.

Honestly, I expected my daily to be hit much harder. This is only my 3rd (diff change).

Thanks for the replies!

[bitpop]

I really wasn't worried about the earnings so much when I made this post. It was the diff jump that made me think about how luck was effected in hand. While I don't have the time to read bitpop's link tonight, it is much appreciated and will be read tomorrow. It is as said before by eleuthria, but obviously hash rate has to be kept in mind.

Honestly, I expected my daily to be hit much harder. This is only my 3rd (diff change).

Thanks for the replies!

Summary is to read the difficulty change as a gauge of how many miners there are, not as a sign you'll be making less, but the effect will be that you are making less, not because of difficulty, but because your hash power is getting % smaller and there is only one block every 10 minutes. What you make before and after a diff change is the same. Nothing changes when difficulty changes, at least for a day. Gradually you were making less the whole time and will continue to do so until you raise your % buy getting more hash power.

A diff change may effect you immediately though. Right before a diff change, blocks were taking less than 10 minutes - which triggers a diff increase. So afterwards, you are back to 10 minutes which will lower your earnings.