About mining pool selection

Question

I am looking at some different pools.

Is it true that the larger the hashrate that the mining pool has, the greater the amount of mining?

So should I use a pool with a high hash rate?

Answer 1

Is it true that the larger the hashrate that the mining pool has, the greater the amount of mining?

More hashrate means more work.

The more hashrate a pool has, the more likely (more frequently), it is to mine blocks.

An example:

If the network hashrate is 300 MH/S (that is the hashrate of all miners mining Monero), and the pool hashrate is 3 MH/S, the pool is expected to mine a block roughly every 3 hours.

300000000/3000000*120/(60*60)

Your payout of the blocks mined is based on how much hashrate you contributed to the pool. Thus, the larger the pool hashrate is compared to your own, the less share of the rewards you get.

Over time, it shouldn't matter which pool you use, you'll end up with the same reward. Pool mining, as opposed to solo mining, just guaranties a regular more even payout schedule (i.e. regular small amounts vs more spread out larger rewards). And the same logic goes into comparing different pools. If you use a pool with a larger hashrate, you are going to get more regular, but smaller payouts than using a pool with less hashrate. Over time, you'll get the same amount.

So should I use a pool with a high hash rate?

Hopefully above answers this now, but I'll labor the point. If you need/want small frequent payments, use a bigger pool. If you are happy with less frequent but bigger payments, use a smaller pool. If you have reasonable hashrate and can wait longer, solo mine. It all boils down to frequency and size of payment.

Now, there's one other thing to bring up. Decentralization. It's bad for the currency overall if too much hashrate is controlled by only a few large pools. This is why it's encouraged to mine with the smaller pools (or better still, solo mine) - to increase decentralization.