Can I get some opinions on some funny rules & customs I've seen at my local French casino. I've only ever played in the UK and US so I don't know if I'm being a bit precocious or whether these Frenchies are actually nuts:

Marked cards - 2 of the aces in the deck became marked, probably by one of several players pressing their rings into them. As there were 4/10 players who had rings on their fingers, the culprit couldn't be identified. When it was brought to the dealer's attention he refused to change the deck and simply noted which cards were marked and flashed them to the table 'for future reference'. The floor endorsed his decision.

Cellphones - are allowed at the table as long as you're not talking on them. Apparently using the calculator is fine - maybe I should turn up with a tablet and pokerstove next time.

Rake - I've never seen a pot raked where the BB got a walk before.

Slowrolling - Seems to be standard and isn't even frowned upon by other players or management.

And yes, I'd love to play online instead but their dumb government rules state that the player pool must be restricted to French territory, so a player pool of about 10k.

Yup, all of what you said is standard in French casinos, some of the worst f***ing floor management ever. The worst is obviously the 4% UNCAPPED rake. I've played 10/20 in a French casino and saw 200€ go down in rake in a single hand!

Floor always side with regs, foreigners are going to be disrespected at least, dealers are horrendously slow and whine about tips, blatant collusion is hardly ever given warnings against, etc. Yet I come back every so often, because you get the most lol whales ever!

Exactly what you described happened to me with a marked Ace. They refused to change the deck, and I ripped the card. I got temporarily banned but I don't regret it one bit!

However, you don't need to be French to play on the .fr sites. You just need a French bank account

Yeah French casino floors are awful, awful, awful. Floor decisions always favoring the regs and accepted collusion is unprofessional and super tilting. Man, this brings back nightmares.

However using a phone during a hand and not removing replacing marked cards? Wtf? I used to play in 2 different casinos, and cellphones were not allowed during the hand, and marked cards were replaced.

OP, in what casinos did these horror stories take place?

My local casino out in North-West France, I've only ever seen one non-french player there. I don't exactly live out in the sticks, but of the 3 casinos nearest to me, only one has a poker table, the game just doesn't seem as popular as the hype suggests. But they sure love their slot machines.

Collusion is also a problem as some have said, but it tends to be the worst players, which usually means their mistakes rise exponentially. I remember setting a guy in on the flop, and after he lifted his hand from the table and showed the cards to the player to his right, mucked the nut flush draw getting about 3:1.