the.com/cards on the table

means To be completely open and honest about your intentions, plans, or position, holding nothing back.

from Lifted straight from card games like poker, where your 'hand' is the cards you've been concealing — the strategy lives in not revealing them. To put your cards on the table is to abandon that concealment, flipping your hand face-up for everyone to see. The phrase moved from the card table to everyday speech sometime in the 20th century, keeping its gambling logic intact: showing your hand is normally a weakness, but saying it outright, as a deliberate act, becomes a kind of power move — honesty used as a tactic rather than a surrender.