Is it really possible (or should I say likely) that BTC-Guild with 25% of the mining could go seven shifts with zero blocks found. just previous to that it went 6 blocks before it found three.
It seems like they may be having problems and just not notifying anyone. (Through their news)
It was two really bad rounds (~4 hours each) in close proximity. That is not unheard of, and it can be quite a bit worse. The blocks were 7/8x difficulty worth of shares. Pools have had 10x difficulty worth of shares to solve blocks before. And as stated for nearly a whole page in the pool thread: There is absolutely nothing wrong with the pool. Luck cannot be controlled, and when you have two bad rounds close together it makes the luck for the nearby shifts take a complete dive. At least the shifts on BTC Guild are long enough that even with those two huge rounds, no shares went unpaid, whereas on ghash.io and BitMinter it is possible to have a share get paid 0.00000000 BTC if rounds like these were encountered.