Question:    When I hold and draw, are the cards dealt off the top of the deck, or do they "line up behind" the dealt cards?

Answer:    The very first video poker machines dealt the first five cards that are displayed, then immediately dealt five more cards that were effectively "behind" those cards. Thus, if you discarded the center card, you would draw the card that had been the eighth card off the deck, regardless of which other cards were discarded. I call that ‘parallel dealing’ in online video poker. When players found it out, they complained that they were being cheated because the card they needed to make a big payoff might be locked up behind one of the other cards. But, their thinking was wrong, because the deck is randomly shuffled before each hand in online poker, so that the needed card is just as likely to be the eighth card in the deck as it is to be anywhere else. If it's the eleventh card, or any later card in the deck, then it's unavailable, no matter how the cards are dealt.

To quell the wrath of players in online video poker, however, the manufacturers changed the program to take the draw cards off the top of the deck. I call that ‘serial dealing’, and that's how all the poker machines have worked, at least, since the last fifteen years. In fact, Louisiana gaming regulations now specify that dealing method.