Solo Mining
Solo mining means you keep the entire reward of any block you find and receive nothing in between. It is the same work as pool mining with a completely different payout shape: rare and large instead of frequent and small.
The expected time to a block is easy to estimate. Divide the network hashrate by your hashrate, then multiply by the block time. Say the network runs 100 TH/s, you run 1 TH/s and a block comes every 60 seconds. You hold 1 percent of the network, so you expect one block every 100 blocks, about 100 minutes.
Expected does not mean scheduled. Finding a block is random, so the time between blocks varies widely. There is roughly a 37 percent chance of finding nothing within the expected time, and you can also find two blocks close together. Over many blocks the average holds. Over a few, luck dominates.
That is the real trade-off. In the long run, solo and pool mining pay about the same. Solo puts all the luck on you. If your expected time to a block is days, solo can work well. If it is months or years, you may wait a very long time with nothing to show.
A common misconception is that solo pays more because nothing is shared. It pays more per block, but you find far fewer blocks, so the average is the same before fees. Another is that a long dry spell means something is broken. Check that your shares are accepted. If they are, the wait is just luck.
On HeroMiners you choose solo with a prefix on your login, so you keep the same address, the same ports and the same miner. The How to Mine page shows the exact format. The solo calculator estimates how often a given hashrate would expect a block, so check it before you switch.
