I believe you are wrong about the payouts. The machines indicate that the cards are drawn from a regular deck so I think it uses a random number generator to choose the cards. The casinos make enough money off of regular BJ tables - they don't need to cheat you and of course they don't have to pay a dealer. I don't really care for the machines but when you go to a place like the Bahamas and the regular table minimums are $25 the I have no problem sitting at one of these $3 machines.