Balatro

the fuck? it's one of the stronger decks out there. the +1 hand vouchers can undo it's only weakness and if you build a strong joker combo you shouldn't need to play more than 1-2 hands anyway.
yellow deck is the real shitter. it has literally no advantage

Vagabond

yeah I love it. once the flushing starts it never stops. four fingers joker works too (any straight or flush can be made with 4 cards). the first gold stake I got was with the checkered deck and obviously I flushed it all the way

maybe I'm getting too greedy skipping too many blinds

That's only IF you get the voucher, otherwise being down a playable hand can make the early antes a pain to get through if you don't grab a decent joker right away, and in my experience it's very easy to go several rounds rolling straight junk and barely scraping by, where having one less hand makes all the difference. And that's not mentioning the fact that one less hand is one less dollar of interest which also makes it slightly harder to get your economy going.

personally I only skip a blind if there's a double tag, polychrome joker, $25, or negative joker tag. usually leaning to getting polychrome jokers and $25 early on and later getting all the negative jokers preferably with a double tag that I can

Burnt Joker instantly makes me change tracks to High Card strats and I adore him for it.

been a while since I played but if I recall right there are some good synergies with stone get the stuff that buffs single card hands, multiplies based on deck size etc

you only need one mult joker to get through the first two antes even playing one hand a round. almost any shitty common joker does the trick

I limp to the end only to die to the ante 8 boss but MY GREATEST ALLY takes care of it for me.

baseball card always got my back

oh
banana

you play a bunch of different hands, obviously
you generally start by aiming for playing the same hand like flush multiple times so if you have that at 6 or so just from playing ante 1 and 2 you don't need to go out of your way to make the number bigger. It still has the downside of being a rare joker that does almost nothing the blind you buy it and prevents you from playing other jokers that require a certain hand but the effect is strong enough to be worth it.

I keep getting stuck at exactly ante 11 with the 7 million small blind but I know what the problem is just need to grind it out. Skipping too many blinds, not using interest, upgrading hand level a ton and playing all enhanced cards but ending up with mediocre joker setups because I'm not rolling enough for them.

High card is best girl

fuck yeah, that's a great card and I always take it. Certificate outranks it though because you can get 2-3 upgrades a round for your preferred hand with the blue seals and burnt joker only upgrades once
the big problem with that joker is that hands that are tied at the same frequency also reset its bonus so in my mind you absolutely need to charge it before it becomes viable.

Ahem.
FUCK BOSSES

if you want the letter e to appear in your score you need to stack xmult cards, there's no other way. you need a shitton of steel cards with red seals, polychrome jokers and xmult jokers. upgrading hands is great because it increases both your chips and mult and doesn't take joker slots or card slots in your hand. burnt joker and certificate are great jokers in this sense and telescope voucher is great as well. ideally your preferred hand should be at least level 10 by the time you're at ante 8. high card build is the best because if you play high cards you can have more steel cards in your hand at any time

skipped the tutorial because it was too small to read on my switch

not looking up and strategy guides or tips

having a total blast with the game

You didn't beat the game

uhhh anons what the fuck does THIS card do

It has to be this guy, chad enables so many different things with stuff like lucky cards, lucky cat, photograph, triboulet, glass, 8 ball, business card, wee joker, other things. I know I probably overrate lucky cards a fair bit but the amount of 20$ payouts I've gotten makes me value them in another league to bonus and mult so I always steer my run towards luckies if possible and pog the fuck up when Chad appears

you just need to think about how many hands you actually play over the course of a run. You have 12 different possible hands you can play, but the 3 secret ones and straight flush are a bit unrealistic and one of them is your most played hand already giving a total of 7 you can play. If you have a count of 6 plays for your highest hand that's at most 35 more hands for the rest of the run. Assuming you find it at the beginning of ante 2 you only have 21 more blinds to go through. While you might take 3 or 4 hands when you first get it in this example it caps out at 8x mult on your final hand so you should only be taking 1 to win blinds toward the end. And of course once you have obelisk you're more incentivized to build your deck toward the secret hands to have even more hands you can play.
Think of it as a pivot joker where if you found some basic flush or straight bonus that you used to get you through ante 1 or 2 and you see obelisk you already stacked your most played hand and can drop what you have and take it while pivoting to a sort of generic hand build. If you see it much later than that it can still work, but due to needing to ramp up with hands you haven't played much it can be hard to win later blinds and get it going.

It does things to pokemon

Sets money to $0 every round, but halves all blind scores.

It's not about the money..

This right here. Even better if you pair it with pareidolia

any early starting tips? I just got it today and lost around ante 4-6 on every deck (yellow being my newest)

nice

burnt joker my beloved

black deck is overwhelmingly considered to be the weakest deck.

This is one thing that fucked me up early on. This Joker (every played card is scored) is a huge newbie trap without having one of a few specific other Jokers to play off of (like Hiker or Flower Pot).

The archetypical Balatro build has one chips joker, one scaling +mult joker and the rest xmult joker. It's fine to stray from the formula but you definitely want to prioritize xmult.
You generally want to make your build hand independent so that you can compensate for shit luck, so the best hands to try to scale with planet cards and joker effects are high cards or pairs. But early game it's fine to focus on flushes and straights. 4 of a kind or the secret hands are a meme unless you're playing the erratic deck.

it gets raped

Uranus, the Two Pair planet, scales way better than the other planets for some reason. Two pair strategies are incredibly reliable if you can get it up to level 5+.

what is the best deck and strategy for grinding gold stickers? i'm at like 100 out of 150
and before you ask yes i'm certified autistic

Bought the game last week, just finished my 3rd run. This one was by far the most fun, went with a deck that turned everything to a face card and just about every other joker buffed face cards in some way. Was finishing boss blinds with a single high card card. Very cheeky, very satisfying

Good ol' Blue Deck is the most reliable in my experience. An extra hand is an extra dollar every time if you don't need it and salvation if you do.
Other than that, the Anaglyph Deck is a second gamble on top of your gambling, sometimes you won't get tags worthy of looking at, but when it works it works like nothing else. The next five jokers will all have Negative? Yes please.

Lost on a bonus ante when this fucker decided to reset at the worst time.

you don't play videogames

For me it’s Drukard.

that's an interesting take and I appreciate that you decided to write it. but doesn't that mean that it's a highly contextual joker like I said in my first post? it definitely doesn't work out every time
just keep playing and you'll unlock better jokers. it gets better from then onwards. or better yet just stop playing because this game is a glorified skinner box and you're the unwitting subject

This card sucks, fuck you.

this and scholar are my go-to play even if I know something like mime/baron is infinitely better

It is contextual but it's strong enough that you can force it a little bit as long as you can survive the next blind or two. It has an insane ramp up scaling that is very difficult to match.

mime/baron

The myth, the legend.
Never gotten it to work myself. Mime is just useless without an incredible amount of prep work that I never naturally do.

Come home

I liked jokerless more than the main game, going all out on glass cards is fun.

diamonds are debuffed

half your deck is now invalid

inb4 just reroll the Boss, bro

into clubs are debuffed

Noob trap

boomer balatro

no thanks

lose money goyim

No

yup, i relied on this one too much at the beginning and it ended up fucking me later on

Try and go for J1 Chips, J2 Chips, J3 +Mult, J4 +Mult, J5 xMult. It's not as rigid as that at all, but for learning and on low stakes, trying to learn the game and getting to know each joker in this way will help you get through. Note also that +Mult and xMult are not the same thing, some new players don't realize this.

Tell me a good video poker app, I wanna fake gamble.

I'm a Hiker-chad. Unfortunately I haven't found a way to make it viable on an endless plasma deck run. I guess getting it early and thin out your deck asap is a must.

skill issue

get a good face card run going

all face cards debuffed

finally get the god stack

anti-face boss on ante 11 with no reroll

Goddamnit.
Was fun while it lasted though. I got 8mil on one hand.

as a certified anaglyph autist, negatives are a massive trap and you're better off burning all your stocked up doubles on either some big money play or free guaranteed rares

Balatro

to be fair "get your best stacking joker early and thin out your deck asap" is the play for just about any run that is trying to get past ante 12 or so.