Some wondered about this. What I notice is the new version spreads
out the distance between the hole cards (on the left) and the draw
cards. It is natural in programming for the order of the cards as
laid down to equal to the order of the virtual deck in a stack in
memory.
In the earlier version, the hole cards occupied the 5th and 6th
position (order of the cards as laid down), the 3 draw cards on the
middle right occupied the 1st 3rd & 7th postions, while the 3 draw
cards on the far right occupied the 2nd 4th & 8th positions. This
means that the middle right pile is a total of 7 card postions away
from the hole cards, while the far right pile is a total of 6 card
positions away.
In the new version, the hole cards occupy the 6th and 7th position
(order of the cards as laid down), the 3 draw cards on the middle
right occupy the 1st 3rd & 5th postions, while the 3 draw cards on
the far right occupy the 2nd 4th & 8th positions. This means that
the middle right pile is a total of 9 card postions away from the
hole cards, while the far right pile is a total of 7 card positions
away.
What this means is if cards had a tendency of clumping or gravitating
together after being "shuffled" in memory, the newer version of the
program gives you a wider dispersed hand. In any video poker, it is
our nature to constantly put together cards of similar suit or rank
or consecutive rank. The program with the assistance of (but not
complete control of) random number generation has to redistribute old
hands to prevent a lot of clumping of suit and rank, or in the case
of a nothing hand, the clumping of a lot of bad cards, or the
gravitation of a previously played hand to come back together
slightly after being dispersed. Ever play poker with someone with a
brand new deck of cards and on the first hand he gets a straight
flush and you're not surprised? I would bet that this change was
made on the basis of statistical analysis of billions of hands, not
on the intrinsic design of the program.