There are to pooled mining, each with its own benefits and detriments. Assuming you are a dedicated miner who does not then the scenario you describe should be an 'edge case' that should rarely if ever occur. That said, common payout schemes include: • PPS - Pay Per Share. Each submitted share is worth certain amount of BTC. Since finding a block requires shares on average, a PPS method with 0% fee would be 50 BTC divided.
It is risky for pool operators, hence the fee is highest. • SMPPS - Shared Maximum Pay Per Share. Like Pay Per Share, but never pays more than the pool earns. • ESMPPS - Equalized Shared Maximum Pay Per Share.
Like SMPPS, but equalizes payments fairly among all those who are owed. • CPPSRB - Capped Pay Per Share with Recent Backpay. - Proportional.
When block is found, the reward is distributed among all workers proportionally to how much shares each of them has found. • PPLNS - Pay Per Last N Shares. Similar to proportional, but instead of looking at the number of shares in the round, instead looks at the last N shares, regardless of round boundaries. • Score - Score based system: a proportional reward, but weighed by time submitted. Each submitted share is worth more in the function of time t since start of current round. For each share score is updated by: score += exp(t/C).