The Balatro Thread

[Touring Mars]

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Balatro (video game) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

As if Balatro was not enough of a time sink, I thought I'd start a thread on it here for players at GTP to share their experiences, advice etc.

I only bought the game on PS5 5 days ago, and it's already giving GT7 (and everything else for that matter) a run for its money in terms of competing for my attentions.

This thread is for general discussion of the game, but please make use of the spoiler (and ispoiler) tags if you think something merits it. My buddy at work has already dropped a couple of spoilers while we've been chatting about it 😅

@Spacegoat @Joey D @-Fred- @RYAN @Stilva @Touring Mars

 

[Joey D]

I bought it during the Steam holiday sale, and it's the best thing to play during conference calls, which I have no desire to be on. It's challenging, but not so challenging that it's impossible. I have something like 20 hours on it, which is a ton for me with a game.

 

[FuriousDemon]

I got it around New Year's on the iPhone and I managed to beat it with maybe 4-5 different decks. It was very exciting early on, but after about a week with it I pretty much haven't opened it up. It's a cool game, but not as replayable as I thought it would be. In the end, it's pretty much poker with a twist. I'll probably try it out again, once they release that shiny big new patch.

 

[Touring Mars]

I got it around New Year's on the iPhone and I managed to beat it with maybe 4-5 different decks. It was very exciting early on, but after about a week with it I pretty much haven't opened it up. It's a cool game, but not as replayable as I thought it would be. In the end, it's pretty much poker with a twist. I'll probably try it out again, once they release that shiny big new patch.

Yeh, I think there is plenty of scope for expansion.

I've beaten the game 3 times now, and each time I've not made it past Ante 10 - it's very cool though, as you start to realise that just 'winning' is not enough, but that you need to be thinking much earlier on in the game about how to cope with the exponentially higher scores required to survive.

My trick in the last two games has been to level up the lower ranked hand types - particularly Two Pairs by spamming Uranus. That produces amazing scores by Ante 7 or 8, but it starts to become a bit of a problem when you encounter Boss Blinds like the one that just killed my most recent game, where you can only play each hand type once - I was getting something like 300,000 points per hand of Two Pairs, but I needed 1,200,000 in 6 Hands - easy if I could just spam Two Pairs, but almost impossible when I could only play it once.

Lesson learned though - spamming Uranus can be a lot of fun, but it becomes more painful as time goes on.

 

[FuriousDemon]

Yeh, I think there is plenty of scope for expansion.

I've beaten the game 3 times now, and each time I've not made it past Ante 10 - it's very cool though, as you start to realise that just 'winning' is not enough, but that you need to be thinking much earlier on in the game about how to cope with the exponentially higher scores required to survive.

My trick in the last two games has been to level up the lower ranked hand types - particularly Two Pairs by spamming Uranus. That produces amazing scores by Ante 7 or 8, but it starts to become a bit of a problem when you encounter Boss Blinds like the one that just killed my most recent game, where you can only play each hand type once - I was getting something like 300,000 points per hand of Two Pairs, but I needed 1,200,000 in 6 Hands - easy if I could just spam Two Pairs, but almost impossible when I could only play it once.

Lesson learned though - spamming Uranus can be a lot of fun, but it becomes more painful as time goes on.

Yeah for sure, you need to plan ahead. Sometimes though, that would get me in trouble since I'd plan too far ahead and lose in the first like 3-4 Ante