P* does not burn a card. This from Lee Jones. The whole article is here:
http://www.cardplayer.com/magazine/article/15087 Question: Do you (an online poker site) shuffle a single deck of cards and deal from it, or do you take a random card each time?
Answer: It varies. PokerStars shuffles a 52-card deck, and then starts dealing from the top. Some other sites do that, as well, while other sites choose a card randomly from the deck each time a card is needed. Either approach works just fine as long as you don't put the cards back in the deck ("without replacement" is the official probability and stats term). And you can bet that the deal is just as random (if not more so) as the shuffle done in a brick-and-mortar cardroom.
Q: Do you "burn" a card before putting out (for instance) the flop in an online game?
A: PokerStars does not burn a card. I'm not aware of what other sites do, but it doesn't make a bit of difference either way. Note that the purpose of burning a card is to protect the deck; that is, if a card is marked, by leaving a burn card on top, nobody can see the markings on the card that will actually be used in the hand. This obviously is unnecessary in the online world. Since burning a card would take a microsecond (one-millionth of a second) or two, it doesn't affect the performance of the game, either. Note that a site choosing to randomly select a card from the deck each time it wants one has no way to "burn" a card. I suppose the site could randomly select a card and then discard it. Personally, I couldn't program that with a straight face.
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