Here's the thing. the percentage rate is NOT the only thing you want to look at here.. There are plenty of reputable smaller pools, some which charge as low as 1/2% to mine with them. These sound great at face value but the fact is, they simply do not find as many blocks as say btcguild. If you don't find block, then you don't get BTC, and you therefore water down the value of each hash you put into the pool.
Now, if you are using a pool which uses PPLNS, this is a problem, since the pool will only pay you based off of blocks found. so no blocks found = no money, or in the case of smaller pools less blocks found = less money.
If the pool is using PPS, this is MUCH for the pool, and possible yourself as well depending on how much reserves the pool has, what percentage rate they take from found blocks, and their luck. This is because in a PPS pool, if you mine X amount of shares, you get paid for X amount of shares regardless of whether or not a block is found or not. This is very dangerous IMO because you are
trusting that the pool doesn't go bankrupt based off of the following :
Pool has a sufficient reserve of BTC to weather the block where they do not mine coin.
Pool has a high enough percentage rake from the found blocks to sustain the reserve. and
Pool doesn't have absolutely terrible luck...
It is for these reasons why you do not see many pools still doing PPS, because it is just too risky, and there are too many players in the game now to assume a optimistic result. If you are considering PPS, you might want to read up on what happened to bitclockers.com
Case in point,
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/scam-alert-bitclockerscom-stopped-payouts-and-their-admins-dont-answer-144073Now with that said, BCTGuild, admittedly does own a large share of the network, but that is for a good reason. They have had the best luck at finding blocks and they are using PPLNS for calculating payments, so the pool should never go bankrupt. and this equates simply to a much higher / stable return for on each hash you contribute to the pool.
As for solo mining, if you do intend to keep your Jupiter after the difficulty goes to ridiculous and it is no longer very profitable to run them, then this may be the way to go if you don't mind burning the electricity. But at-least for now while we are in the thick of the gold rush, you are better off sticking with the pool model, and choose one that fits your level of risk.
You DO NOT make more money in the long run by mining on a pool that gets more blocks. You get paid PROPORTIONALLY to your hashrate vs. the rest of the pool's hashrate. In a big pool like BTCGuild, you will get smaller payouts more often. In a smaller pool, like Eligius or Bitminter, your will get less payouts, but they will be bigger. The only advantage to mining in a big pool is less variance in the short term.
