Well, I don't really see the pool's performance as a problem in reality.
And getting some more small miners wont help the hash rate much either.
The luck here at the pool has been poor for ... 25 blocks ...
The luck has been WORSE at other pools for a lot MORE blocks than that.
The the whole point of the CDF and CDF[Erl] numbers - are to be able to compare pool statistics properly.
I'm not trying to hide information, but I do get the feeling that people mine at some pools because those pools don't show that sort of information - probably due to the fact that it would show those pools in the bad light they actually deserve.
In pool mining, the number of shares and blocks is what counts determining luck, not time.
Out first block took ... 22 days ... and everyone got paid about 179% PPS for all their mining for 22 days i.e. they didn't lose out because the first block took 22 days, they simply had much higher variance due to no pay for 21 days and then the equivalent of 179% of those 22 days pay in 1 payout (I got 1.10126283 BTC for my mining on the pool for the first block)
Yep that's not happening at the moment, but it just means that you need to understand variance no matter where you mine.
People who decide that they must mine at the largest pools are either expecting too much of the variance of mining (i.e. don't understand BTC mining and didn't understand what they were getting into when they started mining) or have an unrealistic expectation (lack of statistical understanding) of PPLNS variance.
PPLNS here means the pool is VERY resistant to closing down even when it's only got one PH (at the current difficulty)
The only real tangable risk would be me not being able to afford to run it.
The hardware costs to run the pool are still below the fee - by a bit
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
Yeah I get slave wages for the time I spend on the pool, but that's ok since I'm the one who started it and runs it
![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
That would change if the pool hash rate went up a lot, but how it is at the moment is OK by me also.
If you can't handle variance, then yep a smaller pool (pretty much any pool with less than 5-10% of the network) is gonna be a problem for you at some stage or other in the future.