Approx. how many hours will I need to play to win?

[GeneralRei]

I know that this is a question with an extremely varied answer, but I've been playing for nearly 12hrs now and haven't won a single time and I'm pretty frustrated. My friend who turned me onto this game said it is possible to win and I see other people talking about how they've won too (unless this is just a super elaborate joke by the whole community) so I think it's possible. When can I be expected to actually win one of these runs? 20hrs? 30? 60? I'm enjoying this game, it's just killing me not being able to progress at all.

[ْSmoke™]

i played like 13hrs or something until i got my first win. focus on high card or pair to hit an easy win. the less cards the better.

[GeneralRei]

Originally posted by ْSmoke™:

i played like 13hrs or something until i got my first win. focus on high card or pair to hit an easy win. the less cards the better.

Is there a reason or method for doing high card or pair? I don't really know where any good guides are for this game.

[Pr0wn]

Yes it is possible to win the gameplay loop and synergies just need to click and from there you should have an easier time.

Do you have the deck which is half spades half hearts? I'd recommend giving it a shot it narrows down the choices

[GeneralRei]

Originally posted by Pr0wn:

Yes it is possible to win the gameplay loop and synergies just need to click and from there you should have an easier time.

Do you have the deck which is half spades half hearts? I'd recommend giving it a shot it narrows down the choices

Looking it up, to get that one, I have to win a round with a specific deck so I don't have that one. I haven't been playing willy-nilly. I've played quite a few games like this, but this is the only one I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall and making no progress. :/ got any guide suggestions?

[ْSmoke™]

Originally posted by GeneralRei:

Originally posted by ْSmoke™:

i played like 13hrs or something until i got my first win. focus on high card or pair to hit an easy win. the less cards the better.

Is there a reason or method for doing high card or pair? I don't really know where any good guides are for this game.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3192664642

this is a simple way of saying less is better, but i'd recommend you watching a video or 2 on YT to have an idea about how to build you deck.

[Pr0wn]

Originally posted by GeneralRei:

Originally posted by Pr0wn:

Yes it is possible to win the gameplay loop and synergies just need to click and from there you should have an easier time.

Do you have the deck which is half spades half hearts? I'd recommend giving it a shot it narrows down the choices

Looking it up, to get that one, I have to win a round with a specific deck so I don't have that one. I haven't been playing willy-nilly. I've played quite a few games like this, but this is the only one I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall and making no progress. :/ got any guide suggestions?

Guides and YT videos will probably do a better job than my suggestions, what worked for me is focusing on getting money early on and changing all my diamonds and clubs to hearts and spades. I haven't passed Ante 11 but i suspect you need good RNG at this point.

Getting a joker that produces tarot cards also helps as it will incrementally improve your deck. If you get fortune teller down the line it will give you a massive mult boost.

I think to make it to Ante 8 you will need a x mult joker, the additive mult only scale so far.

And always review what the boss is when starting the ante

[GeneralRei]

Originally posted by ْSmoke™:

Originally posted by GeneralRei:

Is there a reason or method for doing high card or pair? I don't really know where any good guides are for this game.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3192664642

this is a simple way of saying less is better, but i'd recommend you watching a video or 2 on YT to have an idea about how to build you deck.

Sadly, 0+0 is still 0 so doubling my win rate won't work (jk I'll give it a read)

Do you recommend anyone to watch on yt in particular? No one i watch currently plays this game so I wouldn't know where to start. Just any rando?

[ْSmoke™]

balatro university and zainoTV, i did watch some of their videos.

[GeneralRei]

Originally posted by Pr0wn:

Originally posted by GeneralRei:

Looking it up, to get that one, I have to win a round with a specific deck so I don't have that one. I haven't been playing willy-nilly. I've played quite a few games like this, but this is the only one I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall and making no progress. :/ got any guide suggestions?

Guides and YT videos will probably do a better job than my suggestions, what worked for me is focusing on getting money early on and changing all my diamonds and clubs to hearts and spades. I haven't passed Ante 11 but i suspect you need good RNG at this point.

Getting a joker that produces tarot cards also helps as it will incrementally improve your deck. If you get fortune teller down the line it will give you a massive mult boost.

I think to make it to Ante 8 you will need a x mult joker, the additive mult only scale so far.

And always review what the boss is when starting the ante

Is there any particular reason for turning all of them to two specific suits instead of trying to do one? Or one color?

And do you have any recs for guides or just any rando will do?

[GeneralRei]

Originally posted by ْSmoke™:

balatro university and zainoTV, i did watch some of their videos.

Ty, I'll give them a watch.

If I hit 20hrs with no win tho I'm probably gonna have to make another post like this lmao

This game is insanely hard compared to anything else I've played like it

[temper]

I got my first win in under 10 hours playing with a full house. I got some good jokers and managed to get a pretty decent multiplier going, and also upgraded the full house level a ton alongside adding/destroying cards.

I did this without looking up any strategies/tricks. I got my second win a few runs after this playing straights.

[GeneralRei]

Originally posted by temper:

I got my first win in under 10 hours playing with a full house. I got some good jokers and managed to get a pretty decent multiplier going, and also upgraded the full house level a ton alongside adding/destroying cards.

I did this without looking up any strategies/tricks. I got my second win a few runs after this playing straights.

I usually try to focus flushes or full houses, but people are saying 5 card hands aren't good too use. I try to gun for the smudged joker and find others that compliment flushes, like +1 have size, additional chips/ mult, or the 4 fingered card.

My friend does 2 pair and said he's won quite a few.

I just don't get what I'm doing wrong 😓

[temper]

Originally posted by GeneralRei:

Originally posted by temper:

I got my first win in under 10 hours playing with a full house. I got some good jokers and managed to get a pretty decent multiplier going, and also upgraded the full house level a ton alongside adding/destroying cards.

I did this without looking up any strategies/tricks. I got my second win a few runs after this playing straights.

I usually try to focus flushes or full houses, but people are saying 5 card hands aren't good too use. I try to gun for the smudged joker and find others that compliment flushes, like +1 have size, additional chips/ mult, or the 4 fingered card.

My friend does 2 pair and said he's won quite a few.

I just don't get what I'm doing wrong 😓

I'm a fan of using more cards, but it's less consistent for sure. I just tried 3 of a kind and won within 3 games. I almost scored a million chips after having a nice multiplier on a king, and then cloning copies of that with a spectral card. I got a joker that replayed face cards and the multiplier went up a ton. I believe the cards replayed themselves too because of the ability they had so it was a nice mini-loop for a ton of chips.

It was an extremely easy run, try out the lesser card hands.

[Dan]

It seems I must be in a minority, but I found it surprisingly easy to win straight away... it got harder the more jokers I unlocked, as it increases the joker pool with a lot more situational, oddball jokers that are harder to use effectively. The starter pool before you unlock anything is mostly simple, powerful, and easy to find straightforward synergies in.
I think I won something like 5 of my first 6 runs... then hit a wall, and took like another 20 runs before I managed to win again :-)

The higher stake games are hard, but once you get a feel for how the game ticks, you can get to a state where you can almost guarantee a win every time on the lowest difficulty.

I'd echo the messages above. Variance is the killer - if you put yourself in a position where you can't guarantee that a high-scoring hand will come up within one or two discards tops, you've lost, every time, almost without exception. The easiest way to do that is to stack planets into High Card or Pair - High Card has zero variance to start, but Pair is pretty low variance to start, and levels up its multiplier quicker than High Card, so it's probably a better sweet-spot.
Beyond that, just make sure you've got a good balance of jokers that boost chips, and jokers that boost multipliers. If you have too little of either one, you'll struggle.

You can reduce the variance of any hand type with the right jokers or stacking your deck the right way... but it's that variance reduction that is key, and it's a lot simpler to do with a hand that already has low variance to begin with.

[That Fish Guy]

I'm with Dan, I won very easily, and consistently, about 75% of my first ten runs, I've started doing more difficult decks and lost quite a few, then I went back to the basic decks and found it significantly harder to win (though my wins were much more over powered), my current win% is probably around 50 at the early difficulties.

Go for flushes and face cards, use lots of planet cards, try to always have over 25 gold for maximum interest, and abuse the shop mechanics whenever possible