"The Casino Answer Book"
by John Grochowski
Forward by Frank Scoblete
Copyright 1998

Page 116

Question # 10

In dealingthe cards, The Machine...

A: Deals a "Shadow" hand behind Your origional five Cards; any draws come fron the cards "behind" your discards.

B: Deals in Sequence off the top of the deck.

C: Continues to shuffle the remaining 47 cards untill you set your discards.

Answer: 10 B (Page 126)
This has changed in recent Years. The origional Video Poker Machines were programmed to deal 10 cards at a time, with 5 cards as a shadow hand behind the five cards you saw on the screen. If you discarded the card in position #1 all the way to the left of the screen, it was replaced by the card "underneath it in the Shadow position #1.

That took away a lot of the reason for Second-guessing. If a player had a Jack of Clubs and a King of Spades in Position #3 some early Video Poker books said to hold only the Jack. (today we'd hold both the Jack and the King.) If the Player threw away the King of Spades and a King of Clubs popped up in it's place, the player in the know could say "I wouldn't have drawn that card if I'd kept the King anyway". On New Machines however, the Cards are delt in sequence. You see five Cards on the screen. If you discard one card, reguardless of position on the screen, You'll recieve the next card off the top of the deck. There are still some old Machines out there that deal the old way. It doesn't make any real difference as long as the cards are Random.

Paul Hegge