Hand strips
A hand strip is what you get when a player’s avatar appears at the edge of the display with the cards in their hands beside it. This page is about what that strip shows, and what it does not.
Hand strips can be switched off, and the switch is on the phone, not on the display. See Settings.
Where a strip appears
Every player goes to the edge of the screen their area falls towards on the table: whoever sits on the right of the table goes to the right edge, whoever sits at the bottom goes to the bottom. If two of them would fall to the same edge, the display moves them apart.
The strip sticks to the screen, not to the table: pan or zoom and the strips stay where they are.
What a strip shows
| Element | What it means |
|---|---|
| Avatar disc | the player’s picture, framed in their own colour |
| Dashed ring | an empty seat, nobody has sat down here yet |
| Cards on either side of the avatar | the cards in the player’s two hands, facing outwards |
| +N | how many more cards they hold beyond what fits, counted per side |
The cards go on either side of the avatar, laid out as if you were looking at the player from the middle of the table: one side is their left hand, the other their right hand, mirrored. Which screen side each hand falls on depends on which edge of the screen the player sits at, and all four edges are arranged so that the viewer always sees the true left and right.
At most ten cards per hand are visible in one strip, and the rest are counted by the +N, per
side. The cards hang partly off the edge of the screen, so that the strip does not take much room
away from the table.
If a player holds a lot of cards in one hand, that side does not grow without end: the cards slide more tightly over each other, and the other side is unaffected. If one hand is empty, that side takes no room: the strip looks exactly as if they only had one hand.
A faded strip: the connection dropped
If a player’s phone has disconnected, their strip appears faded. Their place and their cards stay, it only signals that they are not present right now.
Whose turn it is
Two rings light up around the avatar of the player whose turn it is, in their own colour. That is visible after the large avatar flash following the hand-over has passed, see The screen.
What you can see of the cards
By default, their backs: the people around the display cannot see who is holding what in which hand.
There is one exception: if a player deliberately flips a card in their own hand (either the left or the right one), everybody sees it face up on the display, on the side of the hand it is in. This is how you show something on purpose: a player shows a card to the table without putting it down.
The curtain does not cover the hand strip
If a player draws the curtain, their area disappears from the display, see The table. Their hand strip stays, though: their avatar and their cards run along the edge of the screen just the same.
This is not a leak: the cards in a hand stand back up anyway. There are two cases where something of them is visible after all, and both are deliberate decisions rather than a way around the curtain: when the player flips a card in their own hand, and when somebody has switched the reveal all hands option below on.
Reveal all hands
The phone can switch the display into showing every hand openly. Then every card is face up, and the strips get wider, because the cards no longer slide over each other.
This switch does not appear for everybody: only an account with administrator rights sees it. It is meant for teaching, demonstrations and debugging, not for play.
What the hand strips take away
With the hand strips on, the display fits the table more narrowly, so that the strips have room along the edges. Switched off, the table reaches the edge of the screen.
That is why the size of the table jumps when you press the switch: it is not a fault.
If the cards do not appear
It happens that with the hand strips on only the avatars are visible and the cards are not, neither for the left nor for the right hand. This is a known fault, and there is nothing you can do about it at the display: the place and the size of the strips are right, only the picture of the cards fails to arrive. The party itself is not harmed by it.