are you using save states to save time in setting up? if so, that may be the reason. i did and i got 3 attempts in a row where i got the same card.

If you are using savestates, it's probably why.

Likely that rolls are not truly independent events, but that series of rolls are preset and chosen by some mechanism such as a timer for when the game starts. You'd have to check the ram of the game to figure out specifically what might control this.

There's a a Texas Hold 'Em Poker I've ran on GBA before where the hands dealt were like the same every time. Some of these GBA 3rd party releases are pretty shoddy and filled with minimal programming.

As a side note, will y'all put the emulator and version you used for your runs going forward? It would be much appreciated.