i hate these stupid situations where it's the casino's job, the floor, the dealers etc to police this **** and of course it always comes back to the players to have to speak up, and it makes it uncomfortable for them and everyone else. Do your job casino employees. Thank you!

Woah. I'm saying at *most* the floor would just give a warning. So calling them would basically be a waste of time. Yeah, they can say "whatever they want" in the cloak of their foreign language. But doesn't mean they should, and doesn't mean they're completely cloaked either. I know a decent amount of that language, and someone else at the table could know exactly what they are saying and speak up. Like what happened in my example.

Fwiw, my girlfriend would never be railing me, at the poker table.

I speak a decent amount of that foreign language, but wasn't paying full attention at the time (stacking chips, etc.) than to pick up a few words. I wasn't even the one who brought up the issue in the first place. The other player at the table brought up the issue and referred to OPTAH, not me.

And, I knew they were very most likely talking about the hand that just took place anyway.

The (real) issue is the player speaking the foreign language boldface lied about what he was saying (which one player thought violated OPTAH). But got caught by one player at the table, who speaks that very language fluently. Maybe the OP, psandman, could chime in here, as this scenario is kind of what his first post was about.

Again, what business is it of yours what the guys were saying?

Who cares if he lied about the conversation? It was none of the table's business what they were saying.

Again, I was not the person who even brought it up at the table.

If they spoke in English then it would have been everybody's "business". They said it out in the open for everyone to hear. Another player understood the foreign language, so it was his business too.
Lying about what they were saying is foolish at best, per the reasons I described above.
I'm done conversing with you itt. There's a differencw between public and private convo. Speaking another language besides English does not make a convo "private".

I'll see if the OP wants to chime in.

Not really. If I understand what you are saying happened .... after a hand two players spoke in a foreign language and then one lied about what was said. But I have no problem with that happening. Because in between hands we allow players to speak privately. Now if this was happening during the hand ..... its a different issue.

Yes I agree. People can speak privately all they want in between hands.

But they talked loud enough for the whole table to hear, except spoke in a foreign language. If everybody can clearly hear you, it's not "private".

It's a minor issue of course, and I merely brought it up for discussion. Thanks for replying.

But if you allow private conversations then there is no reason to allow foreign language conversations.

Foreign language conversations are essentially private conversations among the people who understand the language (That may include people who the speaker doesn;t mean to include .... but thats his problem)

Having private conversations between hands is not ok in the WSOP if it's being telecast, apparently. From last year came this tweet when Doc Sands and Erica Moutinho were seated next to each other, whispering between hands (when neither of them had cards):
That sparked a twitter flurry of people trying to figure out what rule this couple had broken where Matt Savage backed Jack in his tweets, but then couldn't back that up with any rational explanation as to why he was taking Jack's side.

A good summary of the twitter flurry can be seen here: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2011/...nst-rules.html

In a tournament setting you start to get into some hazier areas about private conversations. And even open conversations. While there is really no effective way to police provate conversations they do pose the risk of at least appearing to suggest team play may be afoot.

Becaus ethere really is no way to effectively police these private conversations we sort of pretend that there really is no issue ..... then something like WSOP story you refer to happens which draws attention to the problem and they fashion a quick remedy by saying hey guys this looks bad knock it off.

Fair enough, but once you start saying "well that's clearly acceptable", then what if she asks a follow-up question...I know that your situation was clearly not the type of spot where we've got any concern, but you are a reasonable person - we wouldn't need such hard line rules if you and other reasonable people were the only ones around - most of us naturally understand why the rules exist and why procedures are followed - we don't need the english only rule to know that speaking in a foregin language at a table is bad.

But alas, there are plenty of unreasonable people out there, and that's why we have to have rules, because otherwise these people would not stop speaking in another language. Once you add some subjectivity to the rule, you invite them to get annoyed or try to complain or argue that they too should be allowed to speak in a foregin language, and they'd say that your ordering coffee in spanish is no different than their blabbering in french to the person across the table still in the hand. Then you'd have to actually explain the difference and I'm sure any floorman, room director or dealer can tell you how fun that gets.

It sucks, but bright line rules need to exist. Just know that the guy in question is not only a jerk, he's the exact type of unreasonable idiot that we need to have these rules in place - he can't understand subetly or the differences between ordering coffee to a spanish cocktail waitress and talking to someone about one's cards to another player the same table in mandarin.

There is something that bugs me, both as a manager and a player. If someone doesn't speak English, find someone to explain it to them. It doesn't matter how many times or how loudly you tell someone English only if they don't understand what you are telling them. Granted, it is pretty rare to have someone that doesn't speak English, but it does happen.

And it's purely hypothetical, but what would happen if two of them clearly made conversation during hands that affected play? And I'm assuming we're talking the Jamaican english, which is still techincally an english language, as oppsoed to Jamaicn creole, which I'm led to believe from Wikipedia is techincally a different language, so therefore would be no different than speaking French at the table.

Edit: Saw you already responded. Since wikipedia is never wrong, they say that Jamaican english is relatively close to normal english, so they're probably speaking the Creole (Patois, or whatever it's called)...but who knows, and I'm sure it's entirely not relevant to this thread.

I'm going to guess that you aren't multi-lingual. I speak Italian, understand French and if someone is speaking about a narrow subject in Spanish, I can follow the conversation. I've played a bunch of live poker and listened to lots of conversations without the others being aware I could even understand what they were saying. I've never heard anyone cheating.

I think this is the difference in our opinion. You're assuming with no knowledge that they are almost certainly cheating. I know that most of the time they aren't. I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm just saying that the fact they are speaking another language at the table doesn't mean they are. In fact, one of the rare times I've seen someone telling someone else their hands, one guy looked at his friend and he said, "I'll PM you." I was almost certainly the only one at the table at that time that knew what that meant. And they were certain some old fart didn't know what they meant.

You've never been at a table where the dealer chastised a player or two with "English only, please" only to be told in a very thick cockney accent filled with glottal stops and no D or T sounds, "we ARE speaking English, you bloody fool--we invented the language, doncha know, and we just let you yanks use it"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dABo_DCIdpM

That was a typo. iT should have said not doing it as a plan to cheat. The rest of what I wrote should have made it clear that my concern is that they are saying things which shouldn;t be said much like people do in English ..... not as a plan to cheat ....