How does one go about picking a mining pool? (New to RVN and mining in general)

I have an old GTX 1050ti and I have been looking into starting a small mining rig. I have been looking around and from what I can tell 2miners and a few other major pools seem to try to make them selves look like the only option. I want to support the decentralized nature of crypto and I'm not exactly how to maximize returns.

How do pools work and what should I look for to get the best returns out of my low end hardware?

Also, I get that this is probably a dumb question with an obvious answer somewhere but I cant really find any solid answers.