OpenPassagewaysBalatro should just be renamed to Flush, every single time I win it’s because I use the “discard until you have a flush” strategy, and augment that with Jupiter, wild cards, steel cards, and jokers that give bonuses for flushes or single suits.
Flushes are satisfying when they work but you can definitely finish runs with pair or two pair decks
The pair will get you there. I know it sound crazy, but hear me out.
I plateaued at purple ante with flushes and two pairs, and had a eureka moment with pairs after some rng gave me a ton of mercury cards. My strategy to get through gold was to run nothing but pairs and try to get as many hands in as possible. You focus on getting some scalable jokers; my best were green joker and supernova. Then you get selective and find a good joker or combination of jokers to get at least x3 mult. At the same time take card packs, spectral, death tarot or whatever else can get more blue seal. I was able to beat gold stake with nothing but green joker and stencil, and I’m pretty sure I suck at the game.
I’m a huge fan of flush because of the versatility in builds, but they really stop being viable at blue stake. After that it’s gotta be pairs or less. Flushes stop being viable
Here’s the secret to Balatro, there are basically two strategies that work. Focus on flushes, or focus on two pairs.
Also, if you get that joker that makes all red cards the same suit and all black cards the same suit, then a 9 card hand always has a flush.
Likewise, two pair is extremely reliable, it’s hard not to have it. Just get a bunch of blue seals and pump that two pair up to level 20+.
Finally, cards that give you flat bonuses are fine, at least early on. But you really want cards that have increasing bonuses, that get better every round.
There is a hidden third option: focus on jokers, play high cards or pairs. The idea is that you get all chips from jokers so it barely matters if you play a 2 or an ace or whatever, allowing you to ignore pretty much every boss debuff. You try to get to a point where you have scaling jokers scoring the chips, with a setup like this:
- a joker just giving extra chips (like the square joker)
- a joker adding mult (like supernova)
- a joker multiplying mult (like constellation or hologram)
The trick is that all of these should be scaling in the sense that their chips or mult go up as the game progresses, and that you need to play to that. Constellation, for example, gives you an extra x0.1 every time you use a planet card. See a planet card for a hand you never play (like any hand with more than 2 cards), you still buy and use it.