Vampyr, on 2011-September-06, 11:41, said:
I usually put the opponents' convention card under the bidding box, or on the side table, if available. This is not to ensure that they can't see it, but simply to reduce clutter. But it has occurred to me now that a side effect is that they can't, in fact, see it. So players who are worried that their opponents might take a peek at their own card can put it in these places, under their scorecard, open to a relatively uninformative page, folded, etc.
If I tried to put an opponent's system card on a side table, or somewhere else they couldn't see it, I'd probably lose a hand.
We have no regulation here regarding exchange of system cards. We have no culture that suggest doing so. In fact, when a player has a system card — they frequently don't, particularly at clubs — it's stuck in a plastic holder with his personal score, and he will only reluctantly allow an opponent to — momentarily — look at it, provided the opponent gives it right back. There's also the group who say, as a player rather superciliously said to me once, "I don't look at convention cards. I ask questions."