Summary
- In Balatro, forget about counting cards and focus on building a strong deck strategy for survival in the game.
- Utilize the option to check the deck contents for better chances of drawing desired cards during gameplay.
- Experiment with different strategies, combos, and cards to uncover the game's depths and have fun exploring its possibilities.
Balatro is a recent deck-building game about playing a weird game of poker repeatedly. The game will make more sense for those who already play some traditional card games, including poker, but it’s otherwise a completely different experience.
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For one, there is no need to count cards in Balatro. Remembering the value of the different poker hands is also unnecessary, and each hand has so many cards that scoring a good hand is just a question of time. To balance things out, the game overall can be quite brutal, requiring players to build a deck that, at the end of a run, generates dozens of times more points than it did at the start.
1 Always Check What’s Inside The Deck
Hover Or Click On The Deck To Do So
Balatro is ultimately a game of chance. By clicking on the deck, either mid-match or while in the shop, players can check which cards they are most likely to draw. Resting the cursor on the deck gives a quick look at the suits and numbers present while clicking on it allows players to take a much more detailed look.
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What makes this bit of insight extra useful and a real must for any player trying to improve at the game is that the cards that have already been played during a previous hand are shown as absent from the deck. This allows any inclined player to calculate the chance of getting a better hand by discarding without having to count cards.
2 Pay Attention To How You Use The Tarots
You Can Skip Even After Opening A Pack
In most roguelike deck-builders, misusing a bonus card just means wasting an opportunity to make a great play. But in Balatro, it can be highly detrimental. For example, don’t use the Strength Tarot to boost the rank of an ace! One wishes it would go up to 15, but it goes back down to a two. Ace is both low and high, after all.
Another mistake many Balatro beginners will inevitably make is using The Tower, which turns a card into a suit-less, rank-less stone card worth a free 50 Chips. That sounds great, except players might have needed that card to complete a Straight or a Flush. Oh well, the next run will be better...
3 Forget About Counting Cards
It Gets Too Hard Very Soon
One of the most important skills in classic poker, like most traditional card games, is counting cards. This makes sense: it’s just about the only skill that transfers seamlessly between different games, and the standard 52-card deck is quite predictable. The same isn’t true for Balatro.
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Each run might start with a normal-looking deck, but soon enough, the game will start to spit out two or more identical cards in the same turn or buffed copies of existing cards. Note that this is usually good news: Pairs and Three of a Kind form the basis of some of the best hands in the game.
4 Use Any Chance To Break The Game
Jokers Can Make Or Break A Run
This isn’t an honest, relaxing game of poker. Balatro is a never-ending struggle for survival. Fair play isn’t how fans reach the end of a run. The game won’t play fairly either, with Boss blinds that completely disable some decks or require to one-shot the round with one hand.
The only way to survive a full 8-ante run is to luck out or break the game mercilessly. Get infinite Tarots, then boost the Mult score for each Tarot used. Make every card a face card, then score each of those cards twice. Jokers are players' best friends, but Tarots are just as important for some good old deck manipulation.
5 Don’t Specialize Too Much
But Don’t Spread Cards Too Thin
It’s tempting to put all the eggs in one basket, building a stronger combo that only works with a specific kind of hand, but when it works, players can one-shot every encounter. But that’s not the best way to approach this game. More than anything else, this is a game of survival, adapting and overcoming every situation.
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That said, while it’s always good to have a plan B just in case a boss’ blind completely disables one’s main Jokers or poker hands, the latter games of each run require a strong, dedicated strategy. Winning a run requires breaking the game, so don’t worry about building that boss-ending infinite combo.
6 Play More Card Than Necessary For A Free Discard
Throw Those Cards Away, They’ll Come Back
Playing anything that contains less than five cards in Balatro already feels like wasting a turn. And although that isn’t true for scoring, players might be wasting some of the potential of those hands. A small poker hand can be worth lots of points in Balatro, but it can also be used to discard some cards for free.
For example, by selecting two random cards on top of a Three of a Kind, the game will still register that hand (as long as nothing bigger is played) while discarding the two superfluous cards. This is a great way to get rid of unwanted cards and draw another pair without using a discard.
7 Experiment And Make Mistakes
And Try To Have Fun While You’re At It
The best part of Balatro is uncovering all the different things in the game: Jokers, Tarots, Spectral cards, and whatnot. The same goes for the strategies and combos, which are the heart of the game. The best way to approach the game, then, is like an explorer, one interested in discovering more so than victory.
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It certainly helps that the fastest way to unlock major parts of the game is to play and, most importantly, to lose. Buying the wrong cards is sometimes a great idea, too. Some Jokers, for example, only become useful when combined with cards that are unlocked by playing that Joker and the same is true for Advanced Planet cards.
Balatro
- Released
- February 20, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- LocalThunk
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Android, iOS
- Genre(s)
- Strategy, Digital Card Game, Roguelike
