  We define a virtual projection of a Reed-Solomon code $RS(q^{l},n,k)$ to an
$RS(q,n,k)$ Reed-Solomon code. A new probabilistic decoding algorithm that can
be used to perform fractional decoding beyond the $\alpha$- decoding radius is
considered. An upper bound for the failure probability of the new algorithm is
given, and the performance is illustrated by examples.
