I'm not a big miner but I mined on 2 pools minimum 24 hours each and the both paid out approx 50-65% of what was expected so I'm mining something else for now.
I don't have time to test every pool out to find one that acyually pays approx what is expected, so may I ask which one are you using?
I run https://www.megamineros.com/CSC and its a small pool. In the long run it does not matter that much if you mine on a big or a small pool. Short term a small pool can be more erratic but on longer time spans like a week or more there is no or little difference. The last two weeks did have large fluctuations and there are higher spikes in finding blocks, that is all caused by the coinhoppers. They really impact difficulty and are damaging the stability of coins. Also this complicates the calculations on which the predictions are based.
What can be a danger is having one pool getting too big and getting more than 50% of the network hashrate. That can really endanger a coin and miners should spread out over the various pools and not all stick to the same. Mining is not only about finding coins but also in handling transactions, ... if the network goes down the coin dies with it! In cgminer you can load balance your mining power over various mining pools and thus helping the network stability and its future.
Yes It should average out, I'd be happy at 110% block find rate, but huge swings over 24hrs don't seem right, especially when those swings carry on for more than 24hrs and are always in the negative. I just looked at block percentage totals for three CSC pools, all are between 140% and 180%, indicating much longer than expected average block find times. I know that is over a very short time frame but that is indicative of the actual payment I was getting over longer 24hr + windows. I was on one pool for approx 72 hours before I realized I was wasting my time there.
Without going to every CSC pool to find one that has a block find time least 110%, I'm assuming something is wrong with the hash/diff/block payout or something. If it is all attributed to coin hoppers then fair enough but a real shame.
As a comparison the pool I am on now, mining a different coin, (that has a larger hashrate but still has +- 25% diff swings) the pool is at 102% block find percentage now and paid roughly 100% of expected coins for 2 weeks straight with only minimal daily payment swings, and has been since I last posted in this thread. I think the coin retargets diff every 4 mins.
Edit: BTW if you see GhettoMiningCo pop up, that's me.
Well I was mining Tag and it has forked twice with lots of orphans. The CSC pools I was bitching about seem pretty good now lol!