Yes Pool Luck is an interesting topic. As far as I know, all the well know and large pool are "persistently" haveing 5~25% below 100% luck.
Almost never do they get over 100% for a reasonable period average...... I do remember the days when BTCGuild have a persistent 105% luck.
I was wondering, since most pool nowadays have below 100% luck (and that luck of everybody average out must equal to 100%), it must be either:
(i) pool stealing, by diverting part of the pool mining power to another private pool; or
(ii) some other secret miners / pools / hubs, were able to mine with a more efficient implementations, thus having some kind of statistical edge over the other major pools; or
(iii) miscalculation of some kind?; or
(iv) act of god ... really ... everybody is bad luck ....
I also recall to have read from the news that a professor published a paper, suggesting that the larger the pool, the more feasible for it to implement a kind of mining strategy where after it has mined the block, it withhold broadcasting it while working on the next block, and only boradcast it sometime later, so as to give itself some kind of head start with the next block, because without being broadcast, other miners will keeps on stupidly mine on the same block where indeed the block was already taken by the stealthy pool .... pool luck has become suspecious and all pool's luck drop soon after that news. Coincident?
Luck is luck. It's neither good nor bad, it just is.
You are incorrect in your assumption that luck must average to 100%. It most certainly does not. Luck is simply a measure of how long a pool took to solve a block vs how long it is expected for them to solve that block. The calculations are based on probability. It's the same calculation used by online calculators to figure out what your ideal expected earnings are:
Difficulty * 2^32 / hash rate = expected number of seconds to solve a block
Because of the nature of mining, you may be over that time, or you may be under it. It's not some super-secret organization or pool operator maliciously commandeering miner's hashing power for nefarious reasons. It's not stealing, or diversion of resources, or miscalculations. It is just luck.
If you truly feel so strongly that there is something going on out there in the pools, you're very welcome to start your own and mine on it.
Dear Johnny,
Sorry wasn't ment to be an accusation, just fair discussion and proposed possibility.
I understand that mining pools are out there suppose to do business, and they have to make a profit. I always honor this point, that "you are open for business, and to have a profit is legit".
I don't mind paying fees. I am only suspecious on how the 0% fee pools can operate.
So I just propose some "possibility". You see, I also put "bad luck" as one of the possible reasons
Just curious. I am no IT expert, and have no idea whether this will work / was indeed in place.
Can it be "technically" (I have to stress, I am not accusing any legit pool out there actually doing so) done that say:
1. 1000 miners point there miners towards "Axx-Pool" with say 1 TH/s each; thus total hashing power should be 1 PH/s on the pool;
2. The Axx-Pool then show 1 TH/s on each miner's dashboard and graph and all the fancy stuff;
3. The Axx-Pool somehow, say, mine with these 1 PH/s on a "load-balance" strategy, with say 95% towards the publicly known address of the Axx-Pool, and 5% to a secret "Private-Axx-Pool" and keep that part?
From my limited IT knowledge, I think this is technically possible. Not sure if it is actually being done by any pool however.