Straights and Full Houses need to give slightly more

[scrunt]

it's honestly strange that a full house's score is basically equivalent to a flush and a straight's is LESS than a flush when both are less consistent and easy to get than flushes. I don't think flush needs to be nerfed, I think giving these two hands a slight buff would help with the common complaint of "flush meta" with the early game (and sometimes the entire game)

[packy17]

There can be a significant chip difference in both of these hands depending on what cards are played since face cards give 10 and numbered cards give their number. A full house with only faces/aces is usually worth just as much as a flush. Same goes for high straights.

[scrunt]

Originally posted by packy17:

There can be a significant chip difference in both of these hands depending on what cards are played since face cards give 10 and numbered cards give their number. A full house with only faces/aces is usually worth just as much as a flush. Same goes for high straights.

it doesn't make up for the comparative ease of building a flush and the fact that a flush with high number cards can also achieve this. lot of times your straights will give less or more than the flush you could have made instead

[Goblin]

Straights are statistically easier to make than flushes, that's why they're the lower scoring hand in actual poker as well.
Full house isn't "basically equivalent" because it has higher chip score and scaling.
Plus as Packy said, there are more higher scoring full houses (aces and any face cards or tens) than ANY flush in a normal deck - the only one that would be equivalent in chip score would be a royal flush which isn't a flush anymore. So the strongest flush is A K Q J 9 for +49 chips, and there's four of them in a deck. Meanwhile there's way more max score full houses you can make, plus even suboptimal full houses will be higher because of the inherent chip bonus over straights.

And in another thread I already did a deep dive in how jokers related to flushes are on average weaker than almost any other kind of hand's specific jokers. Flushes are only stronger early game and fall off more easily - plus they have more bosses that counter their focused strategies.

[Whink]

Well in this game flush are more consistent than straight, the fact is straight deck is not viable.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by Whink:

Well in this game flush are more consistent than straight, the fact is straight deck is not viable.

Weird, I've won plenty of runs with straights (and straight flushes) despite it being "not viable".
The scoring for straights (+30 chips) increases faster than for flushes (+15 chips). With both at just level 2 they already switched which one scores higher. Even full house scales slower.
Every joker related to straights (+120 chips, +12 mult, x3 mult) is better than the flush equivalent (+80 chips, +10 mult, x2 mult).

They're riskier, but they pay off more in Balatro in every way except a 5 chip starting difference at the start of the run.

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by Whink:

Well in this game flush are more consistent than straight, the fact is straight deck is not viable.

Flush is only good in early game if you get the Joker that +4 mult for one suit, that's why many people fell into this trap. My most played hand (all time) is now High Card, in which A LOT of run I scale the cr*p out of Ride the Bus, Vagabond, Space Joker, Spare Trousers, etc...

The trick is you work around what the first few shops give you, and ALWAYS be ready to transit to an alternate build as soon as you have the chance to. In my latest run, I was building around Odd Todd and Mystic Summit, but by Ante 4, I switched to Ride the Bus and slowly get rid of Face Cards, while Strength / Death my cards to pairs to consistently play Full House.

[Whink]

maybe you play at low stake difficulty i can understand but i'm playing in purple stake and not the checkered deck ...

[sab0t]

i have found straight builds to be pretty consistent, tbh. on the lower stakes it is generally my goto strat unless i get better jokers and cards for a different build. it feels like there are more jokers that buff flushes and suits than jokers that buff straights, but i'm not sure if that's actually true or not.

[Draco18s]

Originally posted by sab0t:

i have found straight builds to be pretty consistent, tbh. on the lower stakes it is generally my goto strat unless i get better jokers and cards for a different build. it feels like there are more jokers that buff flushes and suits than jokers that buff straights, but i'm not sure if that's actually true or not.

According to someone else in another thread, of 15 "viable builds" four of them are flush based.

I think that's based on the fact that you can build the same build, but in four different suits.

[sab0t]

Originally posted by Draco18s:

Originally posted by sab0t:

i have found straight builds to be pretty consistent, tbh. on the lower stakes it is generally my goto strat unless i get better jokers and cards for a different build. it feels like there are more jokers that buff flushes and suits than jokers that buff straights, but i'm not sure if that's actually true or not.

According to someone else in another thread, of 15 "viable builds" four of them are flush based.

I think that's based on the fact that you can build the same build, but in four different suits.

right, i think that's exactly why it feels like there are more jokers for flush builds. as there are a bunch of jokers specific to each suit.

that being said, those 'suit specific' jokers are still incredibly useful in runs where i'm not using flushes. they are still pretty easy to make use of.

[Pingoso]

Full Houses and Straights scale faster when you level them up compared to flushes

[Ronald Brain]

Originally posted by Whink:

maybe you play at low stake difficulty i can understand but i'm playing in purple stake and not the checkered deck ...

My first Gold Stake win relies exactly on Pair, with Burnt Joker, one that +8 mult for Pair and two more Eternal, plus Madness that just sit there scaling as it can't eat any Eternal Joker. This is Yellow Deck, not Checkered, btw.

[it's shoe]

Originally posted by Goblin:

Straights are statistically easier to make than flushes, that's why they're the lower scoring hand in actual poker as well.

Actual poker doesn't have Smeared Jokers, Checkerboard decks, Tarot and Spectral cards that change suits, etc.

[Draco18s]

Originally posted by it's shoe:

Originally posted by Goblin:

Straights are statistically easier to make than flushes, that's why they're the lower scoring hand in actual poker as well.

Actual poker doesn't have Smeared Jokers, Checkerboard decks, Tarot and Spectral cards that change suits, etc.

Whiiiich is why Flush scales poorly compared to Straight.

[Goblin]

Originally posted by it's shoe:

Originally posted by Goblin:

Straights are statistically easier to make than flushes, that's why they're the lower scoring hand in actual poker as well.

Actual poker doesn't have Smeared Jokers, Checkerboard decks, Tarot and Spectral cards that change suits, etc.

Neither does your deck when you start a run. Which is the only time the claim "flushes give more score than straights" is true.

In case you hadn't noticed, Abandoned Deck sort of is for straights what Checkered is for flushes. It's not 1:1 equivalent, sure, and you lose out on the higher scoring straights. But again, the higher scaling and stronger related jokers make up for that. It's a balancing act, and, short of giving straight 6 more jokers because flushes happen to have two of each suit, Balatro already does what can to balance them without outright making one or the other useless or OP.