Yeah - my estimated earnings climbed from .0131 to  a whopping .0135 per block 

My activity count is almost identical to what my post count was before the change.

Call me crazy, but I'm one of the rare posters who actually tries to stick to meaningful and helpfull topics when I post...

Bitminter has a payout threshold as low as 0.01 and with its PPLNS it's seems to be a good backup pool IMHO

bitparking needs your spare hashes - admirable pool - only 2-4TH/s normally but they offer NMC, DVC and IXC when you mine BTC.

https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/1976.msg2565283#msg2565283

I'm confused, people are complaining about the increase in the pool's hash rate because their return per block has gone down? If our hashrate goes down, doesn't some other pool's hashrate go up and they get more blocks while we get fewer blocks?

Personally, since the entire Bitcoin hash rate is rising, i think that i'd prefer a smaller piece of more blocks. the only way to increase or maintain your earning rate is to increase your own hash rate.

Exactly

Your hash rate should be stable - it will fluctuate slightly depending on individual worker luck - but if you had about 2 GH/s last week, then you should still have 2 GH/s this week. This is regardless of difficulty increases, increases in the pool hash rate or increases in the network hash rate.

That is the easy bit - your own hash rate is a relative constant.

Now, assuming your own hash rate remains constant (and you are not adding in lots of usb miners - so you stay at 2 GH/s):

1) If the pool hash rate increases but the total network hash rate stays the same (so in other words, other existing miners move their rigs over to slush's pool)?

Then you should expect to find blocks more frequently - but your share of the payouts will go down slightly. Net effect is you earn the same over a week.

2) If slush's pool hash rate remains the same but the overall network hash rate increases?

Then you should expect to find blocks less frequently - but your share of the payouts will remain the same. Net effect is you earn less per week.

3) More typically, if slush's pool hash rate increases and the total network hash rate increases proportionally?

Then you should expect to find blocks relatively consistently - but your share of the payouts will go down. Net effect is you earn less per week.

Sorry I beg to differ. Difficulty is simply a reflection of hash rate - not the other way around. Hash rate is the master - difficulty comes into play in an attempt to make 1 block be found every 10 mins. If someone plugged in a 100 TH miner into the network then it would take a while for difficulty to adjust - but your reward would go down straight away.

Actually, it does because the higher the hashrate relative to yours, the better the odds that someone will fing the next block before you do and you'll have to start all over.

Oh sure, just what we need, someone who actually knows what he's talking about. Who left the gates between the pools unlocked? heheheheheh