Poker hands questions

[genesiset]

I'm not gonna ask the 'why 4 of a kind doesn't contain two pair' question, but I have similar questions nonetheless, so bear with me.

1) If I'm focusing on '2 pair' the whole run, keep upgrading its level, but when openning a planet card there's no '2 pair', what is the best choice then? A 'pair' or 'full house'?

2) If my 'pair' is lvl 10, while '2 pair' is lvl 1, I play '2 pair', do I get scored only for level 1 '2 pair', or is it somehow adds up, like scores for '2 pair' + scores for 'pair' x2 times? Lol sorry If I'm not making myself clear, eng is not my native language.

3) Do any poker combos add up together? Or not a single one? For instance, a 'full house' contains '2 pair', right? Do I get a score just for 'full house' or ALSO for a '2 pair' added on top of that? It's a similar question to the previous one.

[Melodia]

You only score for the hand that's shown. So a Full House will only score a Full House, not a Pair or Three of a Kind.

However, if you have a joker that for instance has "100 extra chips if your hand contains a Three of a Kind" you WILL get that 100 chip bonus when you play a Full House as it CONTAINS a Three of a Kind.

[Kituss]

1. Depends on the rest of your deck and your jokers! But yes, Three of a kind and Full House are great if you manage to get enough cards to make them semi-regular because of high base chips/mult and joker compatibility.

2. You only get scored for the hand type that you play. Even if you play a Full House, your hand will count as a Full House and will not benefit from your Pair or Three of a kind level.

3. Once again, not when purely counting the base score of the hand. However, it does work for some jokers! A Full House will proc jokers that have an effect "if hands contains a Pair/Three of a Kind". It's usually well indicated in descriptions, but you might have to do some trial and error in order to really get how everything works!

[Goblin]

Originally posted by genesiset:

1) If I'm focusing on '2 pair' the whole run, keep upgrading its level, but when openning a planet card there's no '2 pair', what is the best choice then? A 'pair' or 'full house'?

To play a full house, you must have Two Pair in hand (plus an extra of one of those pairs' ranks). So if you have high level Two Pair, you would never want to play a Full House instead. Therefore taking that planet card would be useless.
Meanwhile if you can't manage to draw Two Pair on your final hand, you're still likely to have a single Pair. So leveling Pair is the better choice here, to get maximum points out of scenarios where you have to play a suboptimal hand.

[Zsrai]

Card hands aren't inclusionary, you just use the highest winning hand you have. Four of a Kind doesn't score you Four of a Kind, Three of a Kind, Two Pair, Pair, and High Card; that's "included" in the base chip/mult score being higher. Otherwise the best option would be to only increase High Card since it would be added to every single scoring hand.

[Teie]

3) No, upgrading a hand upgrades that hand ONLY.
Pair Lv.1 -> Pair Lv.2
Full House Lv.1 -> Full House Lv.2
You get the idea.

2) No, hand value (chips x mult) at [Level.X] doesn't add up to anything. It is your basic value that you can upgrade either though planet cards or by skipping certain blinds.
Example:
Pair [Lv.1] (10 x 2)
Pair [Lv.2] (25 x 3)
Pair [Lv.3] (40 x 4)
That's what you get [plus individual played card value] when you play a hand without any Jokers. That's what I refer to as 'hand value'.
You are confusing hand value and Jokers. Jokers allow you to get various bonuses that go towards increasing your hand value (chip x mult) at [Level.X]. And that's where you can combine different cards indeed. If you play Full House, Joker cards that use [Pair]/[Three of a Kind] as a condition will indeed apply to your played hand value. Jokers that use [Pair] as a condition will also apply to these hands if you play them: Pair, Two Pairs, Full House, Three of a Kind, Four of a Kind, Flush (if you have a [Pair] in a Flush), Five of a Kind. That said, Jokers that have Pair as a condition don't usually give you that many bonuses, but they are sure versitile.

1) It depends on way too many things to even recommend something. I'd say that ideally you should try and avoid Jokers that cater to specific hands. Often times these runs are ruined by specific boss blinds / bad bonus scaling. Anyway, here's my priority list:

Ante 1-3: Flushes, easily the best hand to get you started. Getting just one Flush planet card in early Ante 1 is enough to forget about spending money up until mid Ante 2 which more than enough to save some money for decent cards/rerolls.
Ante 3-5: I'd go for the most common hands: High Cards, Pairs. If you have the right Jokers, even those can carry you through the entire run.
Ante 5-8: Easily Straights/Four of a Kind/Five of a Kind as a 'desperation move'. They are harder to get, but they can easily save you with their insane base value (+30/+3 for each level). When your main hand starts to fail you (or bosses prevent you from playing your main hand), attempting for a higher value hand can save you and at least carry you to the shop so that you can buy other Jokers/ upgrade other hands/ change your strategy if possible. Besides, after the recent update, it seems like getting Straights has become A LOT easier. Maybe it's just me though.

[genesiset]

Thanks everyone

[Kituss]

You're very welcome, hope you have fun!