Couple of months? The whole of 2020 they haven't found a single block! They are way past the average, they are just having a REALLY bad luck, and the opposite just occurred to another pool with even less hashrate that should on average find 1 block per year, but already found two in a row this year.
So yes, good luck for some, bad luck for others, in the end it all averages.
But what does this mean for the miner? Variance. With solo mining, you are playing this game alone, like you are your own pool. And your little hash rate probably means it will take you years (on average) to find a block. But you can be lucky, or not...
So those doing solo miner simply don't care to lose their money mining, its a lottery to them. You see many using obsolete miners in the unlikely event they get lucky and hit it.
When you are in a pool, you will get compensated according to the share of your hashing contribution. Higher hashrate pools find blocks more often and can pay more often.
So to simplify: solo mine means you might never see any reward while with a pool you are going to get a small but more constant reward.
PPLNS pools only pay when they actually find blocks, while the others (PPS) assume the risk to pay even without finding anything but need to keep a large sum as reserve always, which is why they have higher fees.
Thanks for the in depth analysis and explanation of this critical subjects.
But here is what I want to correct. I don't want success in mining a block by a pool and failure in mining another block by a pool to be termed ' Luck' . yes we know its a game of probability but probability of success can be increased.
I believe if a smaller mining pool succeed in mining two blocks whereas a larger pool have not mine even one, it's purely based on some factors, strategies and knowledge which the smaller pool have over the larger pool.
That's where success lies and not luck...
With regard to solo mine or joining a mining pool depends on how much money we have in establishing our mining farm. If we wanted to solo mine then we better allocate millions of dollar in order to compete with the mining pool, if we don't have that budget then it is better to join a mining pool, why aim to solo the block reward if the possibility of finding a block in our current hashing power is less than 1% and this possibility will continue to decrease as the difficulty increases. I think it is logical to join a mining pool or better to create a mining pool if we wanted to earn extra. There is power in numbers we should always remember that.
If an entrepreneur want to own a mining farm, this is what he will do.
1. He will write a well projected business plan.
2. He will meet investors and pitch to them.
3. He'll raise cash to own a solo mining.
4. He can now employ people experience in mining or crytro to work with him.
This is another way to own a profitable solo mining farm
[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]