Why uh Flush wworth than uh Straight?

[Disco Battle]

Uh Straight more likely than uh Flush so why it is worth more (?)

[RazzberryMocha]

Flushes are significantly easier to build your deck towards and play multiple in a single round with use of tarot cards, whereas tarot cards, card packs, etc. don't do much to make straights easier to play. To compensate flushes have weaker planet scaling than straights and mediocre joker support. It's just a clash between the traditional rules of poker with the balance of Balatro.

[revlayle]

Also while Flush is worth more to start with, Straights scale up faster with planet cards.

[ulzgoroth]

Huh, interesting. Didn't know straight is more likely... I wonder, is that actually true in Balatro's form of draw poker? You have multiple rounds of working your hand, and you cannot settle for the 'win some, lose some' approach that is mandatory in normal Poker. Might make a difference but I'm not having a go at the hard analysis here.

[AnonTwo]

Jokers/tarots can get you towards 100% flush. There isn't really a combination to guarantee straight without discards.

As you start to use hand effects and jokers you really don't want to have to discard just to make your hand as you get near the end of a run.

[Twelvefield]

There are no other players, so you can have every card in the deck in your hand at some point (plus you can see the entire deck at any point). That's not like regular poker, in that game it's slightly easier to make up a straight - an outside straight, preferably - than to come up with a flush. Neither hand is particularly easy in real poker unless you have funky draw rules and/or wild cards.

in this way, Balatro is somewhat more like Solitaire.

[noisyturtle]

I agree a flush is WAY easier to get than a straight, I think the dude who invented poker got his notes mixed up and just rolled with it

[RazzberryMocha]

Originally posted by noisyturtle:

I agree a flush is WAY easier to get than a straight, I think the dude who invented poker got his notes mixed up and just rolled with it

In actual card games straights are more likely, but in Balatro they may not be due to not having other players drawing from the deck. Especially when you account for outside straights it is much more reliable to hope to draw one of two singular ranks from a deck that's been drawn from than hoping to draw specific suit for your four hand flush.

[Melodia]

Originally posted by noisyturtle:

I agree a flush is WAY easier to get than a straight, I think the dude who invented poker got his notes mixed up and just rolled with it

That's....not how probability works.
In every standard variant of Poker, a Straight is more likely than a Flush. It's simple math.
Once you start getting into wild cards and other variables, things change.

[Bad Medic Buddy]

A straight is twice as likely a flush if your hand only has 5 cards, but the more cards you add into your hand the easier a flush becomes relative to a straight. Since balatro starts with a hand size of 8 and allows discarding, flushes are comparable to straights. Also, flushes are still worth more at level 1, its only when you level them up that this changes. In part this is because it only takes a joker and a voucher to give yourself a 100% chance of drawing a flush, making flush focused builds easier to pull off.

[HeraldOfOpera]

Because this is a deckbuilder. Due to the way straights work, they will always be the least consistent thing to try to build for. Flushes, on the other hand, can end up literally 100% consistent with relatively little investment (Smeared Joker or Checkered Deck, +1 or more net hand size). Only High Card, the absolute lowest-scoring hand by default, can boast that consistency.

[Likely_Sniped]

Originally posted by revlayle:

Also while Flush is worth more to start with, Straights scale up faster with planet cards.

Only reason it even stood out to me was I had Lv2 Flush and Straight and happened to check. Now, we have a running household joke to go get lv2 Straight.