Joker? BALATRO know her!

Finally beat the red deck! Wahoo!

I think in this case I concentrated all my celestials on pair but using the joker that scores all the cards you play.
I also had the joker that gives you a bigger hand and no discards, which is pretty underrated in fact.
Then I had it retrigger face cards while adding a bunch of boons through steel and glass cards.
Well, it worked. It also meant that playing was a doddle - I just had to have a pair in my hand and I could just play my strongest cards next to them without having to think too much

This game is most fun when not having to think much imo. High-card build with bonkers jokers the best way about it

i finally started playing this instead of just watching my roommate play it. could not get past ante 6 with any deck... until last night, when my combo of jokers was so good i got to ante 12 with the red deck

my hand of choice was straight, which i upgraded to a ridiculous extent thanks to the space joker

I find straights the hardest hands to get consistently. I only bother with them on the deck with no face cards.

straight is pretty dang good if you get Four Fingers and Shortcut

i dunno, i seem to get straights more than things like four of a kind

straights are more likely than 4 of a kind, the hierarchy of scoring is in order of the probability, so flushes are slightly more rare than straights, full houses more rare than flushes etc. etc.

in poker, but not in a game where you can edit the decks

yes v true

The spectral card which changes all the cards to the same rank is very helpful for 4 and 5 of a kind, and potentially flush five as well

ok this game is ruining my life but i finally beat gold stake (with abandoned deck). that's the first time i ran across a Wee Joker (add +8 chips every time a 2 is scored) early on, and i combined it with DNA to create many, many 2s, and the Ride the Bus joker is perfect for abandoned deck so the mults were crackin

Wee Joker was adding 650+ chips by the end of ante 8!

sorry. this game...it's not right

This rocks so dang hard pic.twitter.com/xckNR6yvG7

— localthunk (@LocalThunk) May 15, 2024

Yeah the game was literally breaking my sleep cycles -- I'd wake up super-early (4-6am) without being able to go back to sleep because I *had* to play. I'm kind of glad gold stake turned me off because now my sleep has gotten loads better.

I finally won gold stake. Madness on ante 1, plus 3 eternal X-multiplier jokers. More luck than skill.