Yup.. dealer getting overzealous on the language crosses the line for me, I would speak to a floor person

Not being allowed to rabbit hunt is fine though, even though he should not be rude about it

One thing that I think is pretty fuzzy here is the idea of "everyone" agreeing. It seems in some of these spots it was OP asking for something and then insisting that everyone else was fine with it without actually confirming it with everyone. There are spots where a player may not agree to something but also isn't that comfortable speaking up about it.

Absolutely .... my experience is that "everyone agrees to it" generally means one or two loud aggressive people agree to it.

And even if everyone actually says they agree to it, some of them may be agreeing because they don;t ant to be the one who speaks up against it.

In some states (like Maryland), it's not even the Casino's rules.

My experience has been that these loud aggressive types don't listen very well either. If you are quietly disagreeing, but not shouting back as loud as they are, they think you are agreeing. i can't tell you the number of times people are proposing a tournament chop, and myself or someone else says, in a normal conversational voice, 'no chop', and they just keep arguing for it, loudly. It takes either me grabbing the floor or raising my voice to yelling levels and saying 'The chop has been declined, play on'.

It is good that the house has rules, it keeps the loud mouthed boors from screwing up the game.

This pretty much nailed it. You were the dick and the dealer retaliated by also being a dick just to let you know you were being a dick. You didn't get the hint.

So what you're telling me is that you're ok with people colluding as long as it is in a foreign language? Foreign guy #1 and #2 fold preflop and foreign guy #3 gets into a big pot with you. By the river, the board is JKJJx and FG#1 says (in a foreign language loud enough for everyone to hear) to FG#2 "I folded the J". FG#3 goes all in for a 2x pot bet and you have Kx. I'm curious why you're ok with that?

OP said the Mandarin was spoken between hands. I would be OK with that, but definitely not while any action was live in a hand (even if all of those players have already folded).

The answer is players have zero say with respect to the rules.

If they don't allow the dealer to show what the river card would have been or let people speak in foreign languages, just because "the table agrees" doesn't mean the dealer is supposed to change the rule.

A good dealer will enforce the rules but if you don't agree with them, take it up with the poker room manager, not the dealer in the middle of a game.

My favorite move is when someone breaks a rule, pisses off half the table, gets told to stop by the dealer, then says "What, we aren't allowed to have fun here? This game is supposed to be fun!"

Fun for who?

Rabbit hunting is a waste of time. Get over it the hand is OVER!

Speaking English only at the table is to prevent players from collusion. Theres a ton of different dialects of Asian Languages and who knows what they are speaking.

I'm also ok with between hands. Let's be honest though, how much time is there between hands? A few seconds? The post I was replying to mentioned during the hand when a player was speaking a foreign language but it was ok because he was not in the hand himself.

It's not overzealous if the dealer is strictly adhering to the rule. I am uncomfortable with the idea of encouraging dealers to bend the rules in favor of fun players.

Casinos should charge $5 to rabbit hunt.

Rabbit hunting ban is not just about saving time. Rabbit hunting can reveal information about other players possible holdings.

There is a line - perhaps a fine one - between allowing something and encouraging something.

Let's take the "mandatory" straddle. It's something that the dealer can't enforce, but in every game I've played, I've never seen a serious problem with the players agreeing to a mandatory straddle and when people join the game ask them to wait until a certain orbit is complete if they don't want to participate. They can't forbid someone from joining and a few times people have said the equivalent of "**** you all I'm joining anyway and not straddling" in which case typically we just wait for them to lobby (because of course people who do this lobby a lot) and remember that Seats 3-5 owe a straddle and finish off the orbit.

Nothing enforced outside of social pressure. And if Seat 5 welches, that's fine, we eat the loss and next time we agree to a round of straddles wr exclude him.

The house doesn't need to encourage this, it just needs to not actively discourage it.

Like with the language issue in the OP, the dealer's job is to remind people they have to speak English. The dealer doesn't need to call the floor - they can simply remind the players every hand to speak English and wait for someone to complain further. Or, at a card table, anonymous voting is super simple, hust deal a red card and a black card to every player, they pitch a red card forward if they vote call the floor and a black card to look the other way. If anyone pitches a red card then the floor gets called.

Dealer is way out of line for threatening the players directly. Dealer has no authority to kick people out.

Players don't come to the poker room to be socially pressured to play a different game then they signed up for. It's ok with me if you all want to straddle. But if you tell a player it's a mandatory straddle I'm going to let them know that it isn't mandatory. And if you are abusive to a player because they choose not to straddle then you are going to have a conversation with the floorperson about our expectations for patron's behavior. Again I have no issue with players who politely encourage others to straddle but you don't get to make the rules (unless you get the management to change the rules .... Which might be an option).


So in your mind the penalty for repeated ly violating the rules should be that you are repeatedly asked to not violate the rules?

And no we are not voting on whether I call the floor. My job is to protect the integrity of the game even if a player doesn't understand why it's important.

Nobody is asking anything of the dealer. More often than not, the request is, "We're in a round of live straddles, if you don't want to join, do you mind waiting for 2 hands until we're done?"

Oh, come on.

We all know some rules are often broken, and that there should be wide discretion applied.

Talking a foreign language in the middle of the hand is not one such rule. It should be very strictly enforced. Talking a foreign language in between hands - if it's actually against the rules, which it's not in many places - should be treated very differently.

Another example would be string betting, where some places have different rules than others, and a perfectly clear, well intentioned bet may be technically against the rules. Of course the dealer should come down really hard on someone who emulates TV poker: "I see your 100 ... (dramatic pause) ... and raise you 50!" But a dealer who's going to be a rules nit and call the floor over minor infractions that nobody at the table has complained about is going to quickly earn the ire of players.

I appreciate this response. As a very recreational player, I choose where I play in large part because they still spread $1-2 when every other nearby room has moved on to $1-3. People straddle, of course, but I've never encountered a table where it was "mandatory" and would be unlikely to keep playing if that was the case. And players voting on rules seems like a recipe for disaster.

You're not voting on the rules. You're voting whether or not to enforce a minor rule.

And to be clear, as a very recreational player myself, it's the exact opposite - I get to play poker once every few months, I don't want to spend 10 minutes of every session having the floor read the rule book to my table because people can't let minor rules infractions go.

My HU opponent says "sixteen" and puts out 60? I'm fine with skipping the rule book and letting him do whatever he intended.

Someone slides out a stack and half falls over, they pick up the fallen half and puts it past the betting line? I could probably call string and get an eyeroll-laden ruling in my favor, but I won't.

Yes, I'm "breaking the rules." No, I'm not destroying the integrity of the game.

If you don't want to slow down the game, then why suggest some cockamamie anonymous voting idea? If a player violates an English-only rule, I think it should go something like warning, second warning, dealer calls the floor and deals a hand while waiting for the floor to come, floor talks to the player, maybe asking him to step away from the table, floor tells dealer if the player does it again, he's gone. I'm fine with that, even if it leads to a fun player getting the boot. It's also far removed from the strawman idea of a ten-minute lecture on the rules.

I often play in places where it is the dealer's responsibility to call out string bets and enforce the rule against them. I prefer that to putting the onus on players to call a string bet on their opponents.

Can you explain the difference between voting on the rules, and voting on which rules will be enforced? In what way is this practically different?

He wants to pick and choose when to enforce and who to enforce the rules against.

Well, hell, that's even worse than voting on the rules.

That's a pretty mean spirited interpretation.

I want to pick and choose when to enforce certain minor rules, yes. Who does factor into it, yes, and of course there is the danger of being so personally selective that the system doesn't work.

But here's the practical difference: at any point anyone can ask for a strict ruling, but if nobody wants a strict ruling, everyone can be happier with a lax ruling.

Fundamental to all of this but nobody but me has acknowledged is that some rules are simply more important than others. And those of us who have played in multiple places know what the minor rules are because they tend not to be universal. Betting lines are not universal. Forward motion is not universal. English only outside of a hand is not universal. It's okay to be a little lax with these minor rules, especially if it means a great deal to the omgrulebreakers.

Since everyone's big into analogies these days, I'll just say this is akin to breaking the speed limit.

We as a society have just accepted there's a reasonable zone for OMFGBREAKINGTHERULES. If I get pulled over for doing 70 in a 65 zone, I'm going to be a little miffed - even though I was totally OMFGBREAKINGTHERULES.

Of course, there's a soft limit on that grace. If I get caught doing 80, I kind of accept that's bad, but I still feel like I drive safely at 80. Those psychos who drive 90 in a 65 zone definitely deserve to get pulled over, though.

Just because I advocate the police not ticketing people within 10 mph of the speed limit doesn't mean I want the Wild Wild West where nobody respects any rule and people can drive drunk at 150 with no consequence. I'm just saying that for a relatively minor infraction, can't we all just agree on some squishy area where we know it's technically against the rules but we're not going to spend time enforcing it?