My group really enjoys this alternative system for two reasons: 1) it protects them somewhat from the vagaries of dice rolling because they have some choice over what cards to play when and 2) it allows them to play somewhat tactically from their hand by storing/playing trump suits as appropriate.

A couple of suggestions: Before starting with this alternative, the GM should decide how tough s/he wants to be on players trying to make inconsequential cliche checks in order to slough bad cards. Depending on the tenor of your game, of course, this may or may not be an issue. In crisis situations (combat or other conflict) I allow a player to "focus" his or her energy; i.e the player may choose to take no action other than discarding her edge in cards and drawing an equal number of cards from the deck.

One other suggestion I offer is that a group use two decks of cards for this system, but only one set of spades. I have found that with only a single deck, the GM is quickly holding all the spades (after all, in most groups there are more players than GMs playing a lot more cards) even when s/he doesn't want or need them. Another option might be to limit the GM to no more payback cards than players in the session. Once the GM's hand is full, additional spades played are discarded as normal.

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