Ok so then if the round luck is tied to finding a new block, then why does it affect the amount of shares paid during that round. The miners are still processing shares and shares are still being processed, but when a round luck stretches 10 - 12 hours long it seems the shares go flat line also.
Is there a conciliation between the round luck and the shares awarded.
What i see is the round luck severely affects the shares rewarded.
So i am lost hehe...
The shares accepted should not "flat line", they should continue to go up for as long as the round continues. Your earnings for that round will, however, "flat line" as the luck turns from >100% to <100%.
Looking at the round that ended when Eligius found Block Height #311302, this round took about 30 minutes and there were about 3.15 billion shares accepted by the pool. This comes to approximately 6.3 billion shares per hour, or 105 million shares per minute. So this is the baseline hash rate of the pool.
On average, the pool expects to find a block once every 17.34 billion shares. (This = Bitcoin difficulty.) So this comes to the pool expecting to find a block every 165.1 minutes, or around 2 hours and 45 minutes.
In the round ending in Block Height 311302, the pool accepted 3155503232 shares, which 3155503232/17336316978 = 18.201% of number of shares expected to find a block. Take the inverse of .18201 (i.e., 1/.18201) and you get 5.4934 = 549.34% which is the "Luck" shown.
In the block ending in Block Height 311364, the pool accepted 55,282,473,728 shares, which 55282473728/17336316978 = 318.88% of the number of shares expected to find a block. Take the inverse of 3.1888 = .31359 = 31.36%, the "Luck" for that round.
Now to the shelved shares.
In the second-to-last round, ending in Block Height 311302, the pool accepted 3.15 billion shares, while it paid out 17.34 billion shares. This means that the 3.15 billion shares accepted during those 30 minutes of that round were paid out, as well as an additional 14.18 billion shelved shares got paid out when the block was found. Looking through the round history, and given the run of good luck up until that point, it seems likely that these shelved shares came from the round ending in Block Height 311,175, which was a round that took 12.33 hours, and the last significantly unlucky round before the round ending in Block Height 311302. Although the shelved shares paid out could have come from older blocks, if the shelved shares from the round ending in Block Height 311175 had already been paid out (which would not be difficult to figure out given a spreadsheet or just some time with a calculator).
In the most recent round, ending in Block Height 311364, the pool accepted 55.28 billion shares, while it paid out 17.34 billion shares. The 37.94 billion excess shares were shelved, and they will be paid out when good luck allows them to be paid out. The pool will need at least 3 "good luck rounds" in succession, in order to pay out these 37.94 billion shelved shares. Over the last 24 hours, the pool had 9 "good luck rounds" in a row, which was outstanding and which paid off a lot of shelved shares.