All Stars needs to do is not display player names in the lobby, or at the very least don't show how many tables someone is playing.

It is extremely frustrating they haven't taken action so far to protect players against this exploit.
This thread is a month old and they still haven't blocked player names in the lobby.

If i fast fold i don't care who gets the blinds.

lawl

And what if you are in the big blind, and have not fast folded but the Small blind has and the btn knows this when you have a bad hand?

No yet.

Think about stack size.
Obviously when you have auto top-up on and are below the max buying on more than one table, or you have exactly the same stack on 2 or more tables, but I am sure this would not be a problem most of the time.

As far as the OP goes, I think from a hypothetical point of view it's an interesting exploit, as many posters have stated, practically it is probably not something to be worried about.

without fast fold i woudlnt even play zoom unless im looking to multi table it... but yea what happens to the 1 tablers?..... i want my fast food option tbh & thank you very much

initially i was sceptical, but now i'm realising that OP has an extremely valid point. lots of needless bashing, mostly from people who haven't understood the logic behind his arguments.

i'm concerned about this because zoom is being considered as the ONLY game to run at highstakes by pokerstars. any edge is sizable in such games.

also, with a relatively small pool, one wouldn't even need a program to occasionally gain such knowledge to make a -EV raise into a +EV one - you would see it for yourself every so often, just by looking.

now... for those who say pokerstars could analyse the data to see who was exploiting fast-fold, should they be taking action against someone who is doing so by manually observing a player to have fast-folded at his tables? (as opposed to someone using a program networked to other players to calculate it.) because it seems to me that using knowledge gained from playing on 2+ tables is not something that should be punished, whereas using a networked program clearly should suffer consequences.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if Stars didn't display how many tables players were on in the player pool, wouldn't that prevent people from figuring out if someone fast folded, or at least make it much more difficult to exploit?

This is true but highly sophisticated and for marginal edges. You would have to have a large amount of players because in order to change your decision you would have to know a lot about who has folded. Specifically because marginal suited hands do not get folded that easily, people wait.

Additionally, there is an easy way to thwart this system. The later in position you are, the later you fast fold. (Because if you never quickfold, you can't be exploited)

I don’t think so, as I said you can use the stack size to differentiate between each entry. If they are on one table with $26.35, and then appear at another table that one of your bots\colluders are on with $26.35, it would be a pretty safe bet to assume that they have folded on your original table. I would imagine that having the exact same stack size on two or more of your 4 tables would be pretty rare other than when having the initial buy-in or less and using auto top up.

Gave up after 3 pages. Did the OP ever respond to the point about not actually knowing if they fast folded if they are playing multiple tables or did he continue to duck that?

NVM just realized post above me explains this

i wonder if this exploit works/worked in other implementations (rush, fast fold, whatevs) as well?

Being able to exploit this and steal more blinds in LIMIT poker would be a huge advantage

it really is more than a marginal advantage one can gain from this.

knowing someone is gonna fold is better than moving up a position. although, yes, when you're in early position it doesn't mean as much.

but say you're cut-off and see either small blind or especially button folding? you can play a wider range but still get credit for a CO range - if it's just the small blind folding, it's not as useful, especially vs a loose button. but if the button folds, then it is a MASSIVE advantage.

is that enough to convince anyone?

yeah like poker nerds have 49 friends lol

nah. not me. i am not convinced.

As I see it, this could be a potential issue, though I believe the risk factor is very low.

The information provided by such a network of colluders will provide a little information, but not tons. Basically this type of network could possibly point out that X player is sitting on 2 tables when he's registered as only playing in 1, and thus he's quick folded on the older table. The more tables the player is registered in, the more assumptions need to be made which lowers any advantage. If PS took away the ability to see the number of tables that a player is registered in, the available data would be even less.

The underlying factor in all of this is that the information gained is proportionate to the number of colluders and the overall size of the field. The larger the ring of collusion and the smaller the field, the more effective it would be. At the same time, the more likely they are to get caught.

What's more, if you have a number of colluders on the same table with the same information, they are going to be fighting over the same quick folds and that diminishes the edge gained right there.

Effectiveness of the collusion aside, anyone participating in this type of ring is begging to be caught. Other than searching for suspicious patterns (which PS does already), PS can easily monitor the programs running, and the internet connections which are taking place on a computer. Unless the network is extremely sophisticated and designed so that it's different on each computer running it, this can be detected very easily. And of course, the more people involved, the more likely it will be that something slips or that an account in the ring is found doing something else shady and other associated accounts are monitored more closely.

All that to say, this does not seem to be much of an issue. It's just a complicated way to collude, with a high chance of getting caught. I do agree that PokerStars should remove from the lobby the info on the number of tables each player is seated at in Zoom, since that info really isn't necessary.

I see it being a concern if there are only a handful of players in the pool, but if there are hundreds of players it seems really impractical to keep tabs on everyone. I still think they should hide the number of tables players are on even though that won't completely solve the problem.

why do you need a network? i guess you guys dont play highstakes... there could quite easily be a total of 10 players in a particular stake. i'm not suggesting you need anyone to help you - i'm saying that it will be obvious from simply watching the tables you play at.

they are trying to make highstakes poker zoom only. it's extremely important that they get it right. these games must not be open to such abuse.

obviously it's not of importance when playing 1/2 or whatever. i should have made my context more clear.

Yes, if the player pool is very small you could do this manually. But that is not what the OP was about and that is not what the general concept of Zoom is. Again, removing the info on the number of tables the player has joined would help, but playing Zoom on a very small scale has other issues on its own which I'm sure PS is considering before switching to that for highstakes play.

his post was about the same exploit, except that collusion is the only way to achieve it at stakes with a larger player pool. i personally think that it is more problematic at highstakes than at lower stakes with a colluding network. also, you're right, there are a number of issues that need to be looked at before zoom can be used for highstakes. it has a lot of upsides too.... i'm not against the idea per se. i just think they need to do something about ironing out problems firstly. here is a suggestion, although it won't stop people colluding as OP mentions:

after a player fast-folds, they cannot join a new table that has anyone else on it that is still to act on the table where the fast-fold occurred. with a small enough pool, this might delay a new table for a couple of seconds, sometimes until the fast-fold becomes reality, depending on who is left in the hand. this could mean starting a new table excluding the fast-folder, or excluding those who have yet to act - perhaps either could make more sense in the right situation.

I think this is how it worked on Rush.

why does amount of tables and stack sizes need to be listed in the lobby at all?

you could just have a player list and no other info at all.

would that solve the problem?

the lobby doesn't need to come into it. you just need to see the same, unique stacksize on two tables, meaning he fast-folded the earlier hand.

There's a reason Pokerstars doesn't allow you to observe the table. It isn't because it would be difficult to program. It's that merely observing a table can give away information about players actions. Since all players are observing the tables, you can potentially take advantage of this with an exploit I described.

The only way to resolve this issue is to remove Fast Fold. This would mean that players were put at a new table when they performed a normal fold.

When real money is involved, security needs to be solid. Fast Fold is fundamentally flawed - there's just no way to make it secure. Your money is not safe when playing on Zoom tables.

Right now there's a $1/$2 Zoom table running with only 56 players (9 man tables). You wouldn't even need 10 people using this software to gain a huge soul crushing edge. The advantage gained is equivalent to being able to see whenever people ticked the "fold" box on normal tables (with there being 0 chance of them unticking the fold box). You wouldn't stand a chance against a player who knew when others were going to fold. This advantage would be present not only pre flop, but on the flop, turn and river too.

If I was in charge of security at Pokerstars I would shut down the Zoom tables until Fast Fold was removed. The players' money is not safe. I do not believe that they have the tools to determine if a player is using software like I described because in order to detect such cheating they would need to record if a player Fast Folded or just normally folded in their databases and they would need to also record the exact time of all the actions in the hand (to determine if a player raised before or after another player fast folded and so on). But it's not just this - it's the fact that even if you did have this data it would be impossible to differentiate between winning players and cheaters. Winning players are more likely to raise if there's going to be a fast fold ahead of them, just like cheaters would be more likely to.

What makes this exploit lethal is the fact that you never need to know who you are colluding with. A rogue poker site could sell software that allowed you to see when others were Fast Folding. You would never come in contact with anyone other than the rogue site which sold you the software.