Balatro (PlayStation 5)

Blinds and Antes - A Blind is a play round where you are playing hands to get to a certain score. An Ante is made up of 3 Blinds, first a Small Blind, then a Big Blind, then a random 'Boss Blind'.

Shop - The Shop is accessed after defeating every Blind (not after skipping one).

Secret Hands - Five of a Kind, Flush House (Full House, same suit), Flush Five (Five of a Kind, same suit).

Continue after winning - You can continue the game after winning Ante 8 (round 24, if none are skipped). However, the first time you win, you might go to the main menu without fully knowing what 'continuing the game' means. But a very user-friendly design choice adds a 'Continue' option when you start a new game, allowing you to continue your game, even if you decided to exit to the main menu.

Strategic Skip - Every Small and Big Blinds can be skipped in exchange for a random Tag. Every possible skip should be evaluated in terms the benefits of the getting the Tag versus the likely outcomes of the Blind:

• Blind prize money
• $1 for each remaining hand,
• $1 interest for every $5 you have.
• Any other positive outcomes such as the creation of new Tarot Cards or leveling up cards in deck.

Boss Blind - As soon as you enter a new Ante with 3 new Blinds, you should go through all skip Tags and most importantly, the Boss Blind effect. The strategy for the Boss Blind should be kept in mind for all choices during this Ante, as it can easily work against your current Joker/deck build. Certain Jokers can counter Boss Blind effects, so keep them handy.

Hand Probabilities - Balatro starts out with 8-card poker hands. I worked with ChatGPT to calculate these probabilities (may be inaccurate):

Poker Hand       Probability
Royal Flush      0.00086
Straight Flush   0.00773
Four of a Kind   0.03346
Full House       
Flush            0.62331
Straight         ChatGPT3.5 gave up on this one,
                 but said that it was probably
                 around 1.0, which seems crazy
Three of a Kind  
Two Pair         
One Pair         
High Card

I learned at the Develop awards that apparently, this roguelike-inspired poker game is amazing. I need to play this when I get home.

Reached round 12.

I had a very awesome run, reaching round 23!

Console Clapperboard I came up with an efficient way of recording videos of console games with discrete runs. Before starting the video recording, I go to the dashboard where the current time is visible, note it down on my laptop, and start recording before I go back to the game. When the game is done, I note down if it was worth editing or not. Now I have a recording time and a note about the recording, and I can quickly discard bad recordings when I'm editing.

Reached round 24 using cool Joker combinations.

I won a round! I got 3 trophies for that one.

I won using a two pairs strategy.

Straights.