Casinos, how about getting your dealers to agree on what the rules are?

Yesterday at the Venetian I was seated at a table with three players from Paris. (France, not Texas.) They were frequently chatting amongst themselves in French. I recall enough of the language from high school and college classes to know that they were talking about everything except poker.

(Side note: As far as I can tell, poker is so deeply rooted as an originally American game that other languages mostly adopt English words unchanged. As a result, it's usually not hard to tell when foreigners are discussing the game, no matter what language they're using, because words like "flop," "ace," "raise," and "flush" come up, varying only in the accent.)

Dealer 1 reminded them repeatedly to use only English at the table. About the third time, one of the visitors protested that the dealer was just shuffling the cards at the moment--there was no hand in play. The dealer told them that at the Venetian the rule is English only the entire time one is at the table, not just while there's a hand in play. This was a mild surprise to me, because it differs from the standard rule, and I can't remember ever hearing a casino employee announce this as the house rule.

The most vocal French player said that, like me, he had never heard the rule being used to prevent chat when there is not a hand in play, but the dealer reiterated at least five times that that's how it is at the Venetian.

OK, if that's the house rule, it's the rule. There are certainly legitimate arguments to be made for it (e.g., players could be reviewing signals that they'll use to figure out who has the strongest hand, and trap an unwary player between them). Also, if the rule is that English-only applies only when a player has live cards in front of him, a player who has folded could tell a compatriate who still has cards what he folded--information which would then not be available to others contesting the pot.

Anyway, the French chatter mostly stopped for a while. But maybe an hour later it starts up again, and a player complains to the dealer--a different one now, of course. This dealer tells the complaining player that he can't stop them, because none of the people speaking French had live cards at the time, and the rule only applies then.

Hmmmmmm. It can't be both ways.

Just a thought for poker room managers: How about having your dealers all tell players the same thing about your house rules? Or is that too much to ask?