So to give a very brief bg on myself, I'm new here to bitcointalk, but far from new when it comes to btc whether it's mining or exchanges. I've also been on and off bitcointalk quite a bit over the years but just recently created an account.
My question isn't merely a question about which pool is "better" as this can widely vary based on luck, consistency, total hashing power, etc. Rather, I wanted to get some input from miners who've either been in my particular situation before or mine similar to how I do currently and have experience doing so on both mining pools (BitMinter & CKPool). Currently I mine about 6-8 hours a day using my "mining farm" with a collective hashing power of 25TH/s give or take. Now with both of these mining pools, it seems that they tend to balance each other out over an extended period of time if you run your miners 24/7, 365 days a year which isn't viable for me on many levels (price of power, the sheer noise levels, heat levels, etc). However, from what ive seen, mining sporadically can either equate to a good day or a horrible one with almost no btc gained depending on "luck" (seems to happen more with BitMinter). Now obviously ymmv with both systems on any given day, but given my style of mining and the amount of hashing power, which of the two pools do you guys think would be more stable in terms of profitability? Id much rather have less changes of a slightly larger layout in exchange for more consistent payouts. There's nothing worse than spending all that money on the expensive ass miners, depreciation of equipment, and an outrageous power bill only to catch the beginning or tail end of a mined block for 0.02btc or receive nothing at all...
Like I've said, it seems as though BitMinter has more potential to have literally 0 payouts on unlucky days while as Kano doesn't have as "extravagant" payouts but is more consistent. Has anyone had extensive experience with both mining pools with a similar setup or utilizing a similar amount of hashing power on both pools? If so, what do you recommend, and why? Id be very interested to hear others strategies who are in the 20-50TH/s range of available hashing power but don't leave their miners on all day. Is it typically better at certain times of the day? Info/speculations such as that would be greatly appreciated