beginner questions

[:3]

hi, never played poker before. im giving balatro a try because a family member has this game. i looked up quick online guides on how to play poker (texas holdem? are they the same?) my questions:

1) do you have to play 5 cards per turn? or only selecting pairs/combos are ok?
2) is balatro mechanic (the base poker gameplay) similar to the classic poker game? or any variation? id like to learn that base game instead of looking up youtube tutorials on playing balatro itself
3) when is discarding cards useful? isnt discarding the lowest cards the most beneficial?

[revlayle]

1) You can play one to five cards. Not all cards have to be part of the hand though (example you could play a 2 Hearts, 2 Clubs, 3 Hearts, Jack Diamonds, King Spades would still be a pair, only the 2s score, the other 3 cards are essentially discarded - OR you can play JUST the two 2 cards and get the same score)

2) Except for the poker hands being the basis of a score, it has nothing else in common with poker. This game doesn't even really teach you poker, poker is just a theme here. This game is a Rouge-lite Deckbuilder where you modify your deck and use special cards to get as big of a score as possible.

3) Discard cards you don't want for that round. Maybe you want a full house but have two pair, you would discard the other cards hoping to fulfill the full-house. The game strategy changes as you acquire jokers in a run, discard strategy is just as varied as playing hands. One joker can give you more money for not using discards, one can give you extra score for unused discards for a round. One joker even gives you extra mult for a hand you play if you already used ALL your discards in a round. So... this question is really really hard to answer

[ulzgoroth]

Balatro has a very limited similarity to draw poker, but you probably won't improve your Balatro game much by studying draw poker. The one thing that might overlap fairly strongly is how to draw towards a hand - that is, what your chances are of getting from the hand you have to the hand you want by discarding other cards. But Balatro has big hands and multiple discards and you can wildly change your deck composition, it's not a great match up.

While there are exceptions, low cards aren't usually much less useful than high cards. They do score less chips, but chips from card face value are often dominated by base hand chips, card upgrade chips, or joker chips. Very early in the game, it makes a difference, but usually less as you go on.

[malogoss]

1) You can play 1-5 cards, every time you play a hand. Even if you are just playing a Pair, for example, you can still play 5 cards. Like K-K-8-7-3, that counts as a pair. But, it can be useful to play all 5 cards, you get to discard 3 cards without really using one of your precious discard!

2) The only thing you might learn in real poker that is easy to miss when playing Balatro is that Ace-2-3-4-5 and 10-J-Q-K-Ace are straights. The Ace can be at either end of a straight. Else there's nothing to gain by playing real poker to learn Balatro. Well, except maybe the hands' names, like flush and 4 of a kind. But for that, you have a chart in game that you can refer to, and you'll eventually learn the hand names, just as fast as in real poker.

3) Discarding is useful when you'd rather try to assemble a higher scoring hand than what you already have. Example? You have a Two Pair in hand, but you'd rather play a Full House. Keep the Two Pair, discard the other cards, hope you assemble a Full House. Or you have nothing really good, but you have 4 Clubs. Discard other cards to try to make a flush, 5 clubs.
Discarding the lowest cards is sometimes good, sometimes not. In the examples I just gave, your Two pair could be 2-2-5-5. Or your 4 clubs could be 2-5-6-8. Then you really want to hold to those cards. And that's true in many other situations. The goal is to play high scoring hands, most of the times. Aces can be good sure, but 2's and 3's too!

Good luck!

[Twelvefield]

You can use up hands as discards. For example, you might have your game built around Two Pair, which is a common and powerful strategy: Two Pair is fairly easy to achieve with any deal, there are a number of Jokers and power-ups that support Two Pair, and you don't need the entire hand to get the score.

So, you could just take the four cards you need to make the hand win. Or, you could add the final useless card as a discard. It doesn't score, but you don't use up a discard to get rid of it. Let's use KK-QQ-3 as an example. You get rid of the 3 in your hand, which makes room for another card in the next deal.

You could keep the 3, if you aren't managing your deck. But you could manage your deck by getting rid of low numbered cards, through destroying them, or transmuting them via Death or Strength. That's one way of doing it. You could also get rid of face cards and keep numbered cards: it depends on your Jokers and the Bosses.