Balatro Basics 2: Tips for Early-Mid Antes (Signals, Pivoting, Build Orders)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.พ. 2025
- Balatro Basics Playlist: • Balatro Basics
Balatro Everyday Playlist: • Balatro Daily ep1: Beg...
Made accessible for beginners but deep enough for more experienced players as well. In the second episode of the Balatro Basics series, we focus on the Early to Mid Antes. Once we have our economy online, we have more purchases decisions per shop. Learn how to prioritize your purchases and read the signals from the game about what it wants you to be building.
(Version 1.0.0n)
Y'all think you're being funny (and for sure it is, yeah), but the jokes on you.
All this "engagement" is going to be great from the TH-cam algorithm.
We got you
😊
Is it? It could be detected as spam.
@@Erlewynin that case every large TH-camr would be banned for spam (or whatever the punishment is)
The only spam prevention is that TH-cam prevents more than 3 likes/comments from the same browser in an hour, and if they detect more than that the browser gets banned from interaction for some time
@@ThatNerdGuy0 Not every large youtuber has the exact same comment over and over again from different people.
Wow this is helpful this is educational, I'm going to go watch all your other videos now
i saw the comment before he said it and it made it so much funnier
I saw the comment as he was saying it
Same here 😂 @@oxar050
In fact, I am going to go do that instead of playing balatro
@@oxar050 same the video said that as soon as i read it and it made me chuckle
I'm a somewhat competent player already, but your commentary is impressively articulate and thoughtful, you explain just about everything instead of leaving aside things you'd take for granted with your knowledge base. Good stuff!
It's a tough balance, for sure. Not wanting to leave anyone behind but also not wanting more experienced players to disengage. There's always room for improvement, even minor improvements.
Totally agree, well said
totally agree
@@drspectredI have a ton of respect for your ability to literally just focus at the level you do to play balatro for hours on end. It’s obvious you’re a motivated and focused person
Hey, reminder that your fun to watch too! Yes, your tips are great, but your easy going vibe and sense of humor are why I keep coming back, not just the hopes to get better. Thanks for making your stuff
It’s so funny I watched hours of runs and thought I understood the game, then finally played and never got past ante 3, then started watching this series and won 3 runs in 2 days….bravo
Same exact thing happened to me right now. Kept getting stuck at ante 5, watched this video and won 3 games in a row
I am an actual human being who is thoroughly enamoured of your Balatro playstyle and enjoy hearing your thinking process. That being said, educational video this is, helpful wow, now I'm watch going to videos your now other all.
a personal rule of thumb i have for straights, and this is something i internalized from playing yahtzee as a kid, but its "never try to fill in a straight". say you have 4 6 7 8, trying to fill that 5 is not a good idea, but if you have 6 7 8 9, you can finish it with EITHER a 5 or a 10, which is a lot more reliable
I play Balatro on my laptop while watching your videos on my desktop. we have the technology!
Not only are your videos exceptionally educative and helpful, they are also so relaxing. I absolutely love listening to your thorough analysis of game mechanics and approach to strategy and tactics. You are the best "game teacher" I have ever seen! Thank you very much for your dedication. Plz continue your work! Thank you Bro.
Bro.
So im gonna be honest. I wanted to go into this game as blind as possible as to not spoil myself from different playstyles etc. but when i stumbled upon your channel you really opened my eyes on how to play optimally! Its fun learning on your own for sure but having that little extra know how helps out A LOT
I played blind for about a dozen hours, then watched this series.
I love how the answer to the first blind is +42 chips for flush to one-shot
Wow this is helpful this is educational, I'm going to go watch all your other videos now
I’m back over here just trying to learn how to evaluate my early game better, buuut the full version of that advice is to know what hands get you that full 300+. I actually had to learn this lesson organically, where I started wondering what Full Houses actually oneshot and did the math:
Full Houses: If you have a Two Pair with cards 7 or higher, discard until it stops making sense to do so (like if an automatic win happens, or you draw into 80% of a winning Flush). Otherwise, don’t do this one.
Flushes: You’re looking for at least 2 cards worth 10+ and nothing below a 7, or three 10+ with nothing below a 5. Pivot if you suddenly have an immediate win or if you somehow have better odds with a new suit.
Straights: You need at least 1 face card to win with a straight in one hand. This is like the only downside of Abandoned deck, which is otherwise pretty good at consistency.
Four of a Kind: Don’t try forcing this one, but the base amount for a four of a kind is over 300 chips by itself. If you have no good options and have 3 copies of the same crap card, discard everything but that and pray
idk what you do outside of youtube but you have a real talent for teaching. wish my university lecturers were more like you.
I just learned more than in 60 hours of play. Your ability to chunk and explain the crazy interwoven systems of this game is amazing. Thank you.
1:05:00 Thanks for demonstrating the order the jokers trigger here, I didn't know photograph could be used like that.
same
This one really helped me out! Managed to get to ante 10 with the early game tips, especially when you said to kind of keep your level of jokers with the ante level. I was also spreading my celestials too thin, trying to level up all hand types equally instead of focusing on what I’m building towards. This definitely broke that habit and develop critical thinking skills on what I wanted to do last the early game. So thanks again for the great advice!
Really been enjoying these. I've got about 60 hours played now and have almost beaten all the green stakes.
While I feel reasonably confident and already knew quite a few of the concepts presented here, just watching these first two videos has really helped condense my knowledge and exopand my understanding.
You've really helped me get a better lid on the chips/mult equation, and perhaps more so how you think about the joker value and just picking up what you need and saving for economy rather than just gtabbing anything to hand.
Basically completed a bunch of runs with the basic decks, and now I'm just playing along with this playlist. So, jokes on you, I'm playing AND watching.
As a lower-mid range player (still going for a purple stake win), I found the Balatro daily series great to get an idea for decks and difficulties but the little bits of info dropped in those were good concepts that I wish you were able to dive deeper into but weren't for the sake of the run at hand, and I really hope this series will help drive those strategies home!
That what I hope for, too.
My dude, this is gonna get buried but I just watched part 1 and 2 and I immediately made it to Ante 7 after never making it past 3 friggin ty
This was so helpful, i think i'm gonna go watch all your other videos now in case i missed a niche tech
these videos really help me learn HOW TO think. much better than watching someone play the game regularly
and they make me want to play myself and use this information. instead of only showing great runs that had a bunch of luck but look cool on youtube
Not only a great balatro player but a great guy too cheers 🥂
Wow this is helpful; this is educational. I’m going to go watch all your videos now.
video idea: Maybe you could react to games by viewers and explain what mistakes they are making?
I pick up a lot of good little things from your decision making process. Thanks for making these videos ❤
I've discovered very early on that my favorite playstyle is centered around low rank cards (and aces). There are so many awesome cards that give massive bonuses to the lower rank ones, and it gives you so much flexibility compared to focusing on face cards and such. Early bus stop and the joker that permanently upgrades a card whenever it's played, focusing on two pair, full house and straights and just rolling through with whatever you get each hand. I didn't even realize I was on the final boss with this build until I beat it and got my first victory. I only lost on ante 12 because I accidentally misclicked and skipped the 4 in my straight I had dug for, losing out on like 60k chips
Thank you so much for making these videos! I've never played a game like Balatro before and your videos are super helpful for learning and getting better at the game
NGL - I gasped when you took the pants over the egg with the Swashbuckler
So good! Be right back, making Balatro Academy as a TH-cam channel 😂
New to the game. I just watched your basics pt 1 series and beat my first run 🚀🃏ty!
EDIT: Wow this is helpful this is educational, I'm going to go watch all your other videos now
original: -Nah dude, you misunderstand. Back in the day I had a friend who would come over and play on my pc all day, as he didnt have a machine himself. It was always fun watching him play, even though it was slightly more interactive. But this is the fun. I am happy to explore the game without having to do the tideous clicking ;)-
I grew up watching my dad play JRPGs with a spreadsheet on the side. I could play platformers like Crash Bandicoot and Spyro myself, but when Halo 2 dropped, it was more fun to just watch my little brother and xbox live his friends do crazy high skilled plays I could never pull off myself.
This is a great idea, having multiple run starts packed together is.. well it's just great! 🎉
We makin outta white stake with this one 🗣️
Got my first dub thanks to this video and the previous one about early game, great stuff
I've still got a lot to learn but now I know what to shoot for in the early-to-mid game
cant believe im on an 8 hours binge on watching a roguelike poker videogame tutorial
Wow! This is helpful and educational. I'm going to watch all your other videos now
The Boss Blinds are merciless. I get so proud of what I’ve got going only for The Ox to crush my money or selling a critical joker.
I appreciate the effort you put into this video, but I really wish you would have put the cursor on each joker in the shop so we could read the description. Newer player don’t know what they all do just by looking at them so we don’t know why you’re skipping them in the shop.
After watching this video, I now realize that I completely lucked out on my first win into an endless run!
Luck does have a little to do with it but if you don't say have all the jokers unlocked the games are bit more difficult and there is skill curves to learn aswell trust me the more you play the more endless wins you'll procure
Wow this is helpful this is educational! I’m going to go watch all your other videos now.
thank you very much for this series, it is incredibly helpful and also oddly relaxing!
Wow this is helpful, this is educational, I’m gonna watch all of your videos now
This is awesome! Thanks for the great videos man!
Hey thanks I finally won a round. Didn't have good synergy. Spent too much too.
Yo thanks for all the tips btw. Finally bought the game and already got my first 1.5 mil hand. Feel like I'm missing out on so many good jokers though. Everything I get is so mediocre
You're cursed now. Congrats on your new addiction. Definitely go for those unlocks as soon as you're able to. You don't need the locked Jokers to be successful, but some of them are just a ton of fun, and the unlock conditions aren't too bad.
Thanks for saying the bit about gold cards should be "on cards you don't want to throw away". I was putting them on low off suit cards, but I was running into the fewer good draws after discard, since I was locking up a card slot. I think all the modified cards feel tricky to get the correct placements. I tend to land on flush and straight, so the stone cards are horrible, which I assume they work well for 1-3 card hands ( high card, pair, 2oK ), where you want fillers that score.
This is helpful and educational, but I'm a bad student. I cannot pass through ante 7. I need to watch all of your other videos now.
8:14
I actually like earth. It's relatively easy to find from my experience and it's basically an upgraded two pair to reward you if you find another card on top of an existing two pair
I may be biased because I won with a polychrome pants before where full house and two pair were really powerful
I stopped watching this video and will now proceed to watch all your videos. On purpose.
selling the egg at 32:09 was so funny
I think my biggest weakness right now is identifying what cards are good temporarily, and what cards scale in the late game. The very good jokers are pretty obvious. Also, what builds go better with tarots vs planets.
*jots in notes* "Bet on Banana; even on Ante 6, bet on banana"
hey u got any other videos so I can watch em all?
Great video explanations, helped me with upping my stakes
1:11:56 is a moment i would have a really hard time accepting. To give up the polychrome and red seal for a four of hearts just feels so wrong, even though it makes slightly more sense for the build.
I’m feeling called out by the intro (I am binging the entire channel)
I don’t have the game either though
They're not all bangers unfortunately. The Challenges Playlist, I'm particularly proud of. Or at least, it was fun for me to do.
@@drspectred the dagger challenge was the best video by far so far. How did you do it with a straight face?
@@ThatNerdGuy0 Bond of you to assume I did it with a straight face. I think you'll like tonight's video, dropping in about 25 mins.
If I needed to be talked through landing a plane in an emergency with no experience, I'd want drspectred to be the one coaching me through it.
Personally I cannot wait to see the video clip of all the failed draws ending runs. We know they exist somewhere...it happens to all of us. :)
Idk. I think he might keep getting away with it.
@@drspectred Never punished you say...
Interesting concept "scoring joker" which is about 12mult. If we try to calculate "scoring joker" worth in chips, how much would that be? About 70? I understand that chips are worth less when the blinds are higher. But still, that would be nice to understand approximate value of a chip in comparison with a mult. Thank you very much for the video again. Watched it from start to finish.
Odd Todd / Even Steven, Scary / Smiley, Hierophant / Empress seem to suggest +12 Mult is about +90 Chips. However, there are fewer +Chips Jokers than there are +Mult Jokers, so the more rare one is going to be worth a little bit more. For example, When you already have two +12 Mult Jokers, a third is not as useful as your first +Chips Joker even if it's only +70, but then the relative value of your Jokers keeps updating every time you pick up a Planet card which generally give more Chips than Mult.
@@drspectred So +90 it is!! Thank you for awesome explanation. I will keep that in mind.
i think the only bad advice in this is that a polychromed joker is less beneficial than square joker, as square joker scales very very slowly even in an optimal deck, whereas a polychrome joker placed at the far right of your joker field multiplied all mult by 50%, not just the base. this means that with ANY source of joker mult (pair of pants for this video) the pair of pants is immediately giving 50% more mult.
Genuine question, in 1:03:50 I'd definitely bought the hand-size voucher, do I overvalue vouches too much? because u can't ever get more vouchers, but for jokers u can always re-roll later
1:12:00
"so I'm gunna take the 4 here"
oh my heart, ow
right
Amazing video. im learning a lot, keep going, and just win a subscriber ❤
i always see you talking up bloodstone, meanwhile my bloodstone runs are like "nice sock & buskin, oops all 6s, blueprint and brainstorm on a 5 flush of kings. you will get two triggers" i have stopped going for bloodstone after the 5th run killed by low rolls
something of note here is i was a bit worse at balancing my resources towards sculpting my deck, so while i would be able to regularly hit those five flushes by ante 8 i would be lacking things like the red and purple seals. perhaps i should go for it next time?
Yeah bloodstone sounds really good but it never works out for me. Staking your whole build on hitting a bunch of 1/3 chances is doomed to screw you over sooner or later.
Advice I would give based on your gameplay:
I would have bought the hermit shop one, and hold for doubling 10~17 gold on the next round, or next next round. Hallucination is fine but I don't think its very good, not compared to pay 3 get 10 gold. Though it seems like you're trying to teach general principles that you can get past the first couple of fights quite easily.
Hand 2, you're trying to teach, again like previous example hard to say, but the optimal play is 3 10s 2 6s, and then search for the spade flush. You only discard one spade, leaving 2 in hand, with that fullhouse and any spade flush finishes. If you find equal or more hearts to spades on the following hand, then its better to go for heart flush.
On Round 2 shop, you should have taken pluto and bought splash, I believe that combo is better than investing into fullhouse. With 1 extra discard fullhouse is maybe slightly better, but splash+pluto = 100 chips for a played hand that's intention is basically a discard. This will enable 2 flushes+ any hand to win the 3rd fight, and on low stakes also the fight after that, giving you some breathing room after the next fight. Splash is also a barely okay joker early.
Not taking this combo you find another pluto on the subsequent shop, and no scoring jokers, cementing this play as better ( I am writing this as I'm watching, it was not hindsight advantage), however you end up finding trousers on the next shop, making the 'best play' been having invested into full house, but of the best scalers in the game, more of them are better with pluto than earth, particularly green joker, and they are common vs. uncommon, making the best play splash+pluto but in this instance, earth paying out
You advise against buying packs before you have an economy setup. Your reasoning is true for higher stakers, but on lower stakes arcana is revenue neutral very early. I think probably around 12 gold in wallet after pack purchase, 6 gold in jokers, it's probably about revenue neutral to buy, meaning its free value. You'd need to math it, I'm not sure what the exact number is, and it changes based on amount of gold in jokers.
Spectral packs early is the best time to buy spectral packs. Immolate creates an economy, and can't hit an important card since you have no decided a build path yet. Copy 1 joker, for instance if you had hit it with pants gives you 2ce the multi scaling, and at the very beginning, and the downside is normally forcing you to sell all your jokers, but you could have boughten it with only 3 jokers in hand. Polychrome, same thing, it normally forces you to sell all your jokers, but early you could have boughen the spectral pack and only had to sell 2 jokers first. I would say spectral packs, even with no economy, given you have a decent joker in your hand, are always worth taking. Even setting economy to 0 from buying it.
At 27 minutes the optimal shop purchases was buying the observatory, which seeing it in shop at the beginning of the ante you should have immediately started looking at types of hands played and tried to set yourself up for getting that online asap, and the tarot pack. Observatory sets up chips for you, no matter what you're playing, but particularly with 2 pair decks does pretty well, compared to plutos.
The fist is more value than Aces joker, in almost all circumstances, so replacing should have happened. This also gives you value for proper play in a 2 pair deck, which is using strength and deletes on the lower cards, and then discarding from the bottom ranks.
Why didn't you take the plus one hand size voucher at 1:04. You've got good scoring online and that seems super helpful. Maybe I overvalue it. I get that you wanna hit the interest cap but id think thats a reason to bend that rule
What is happening at 1:37:55? How should I use this strategy?
Skipping that red seal polychrome really hurt lol
Question for 29:03 - isn't converting Jacks to Queens inefficient here, because you already have 2 extra Jacks and after the conversion you have 6 queens but youre back to 4 jacks now. Wouldnt it be better to choose the two 5s so you end up with 6 Jacks and 6 sixes. and 2 fives
Can someone explain the logic of the scoring joker? Like when he says that the photograph is a half a scoring joker, like what does it means? Mist have missed that
A typical Common Joker is between +10 and +15 Mult, which is equivalent to about +70 to +105 Chips. In the early game, Photograph contributes about half as much Mult.
I am a mediocre player at best for Balatro, I do find getting the right Jokers more difficult early than what I see the "YT Balatro Infuencers" seem to get lucky every single time.
Any way playing yesterday, and about ante-3 I get a foil non sellable Credit Card, was needing some coin value to go along with the Madness Joker which I picked up early. Again, not the best player but wanted to see where this would take me, and was able to beat blue chip with this due and some decent mult jokers, but the CC allowed me to open packs and upgrade the deck while the Zany at the end was over 7X.
Any way that is what always surprises me about this game, there are some really funky ways to get through Ante-8, but you maybe dot really see it early until like Ante-4 when your Jokers start taking off.
Just want to ask, would taking hieroglyph be ok in the first ante? I know it cripples the economy, but going to ante 0 would help finding scoring
29:54 How exactly is turning jacks into queens going to help with full house consistency? Didn’t you already have 6 jacks?
Yes but one of the jacks has a purple seal meaning we would preferably like to discard it. Therefore this gives our deck effectively 5 jacks. If we strengthen our jacks we then have 6 queens, and we can rest easy discarding our purple seal
@@TolkinSL thanks!
I feel like I'm still a beginner; I still have the Golden Needle and Jokerless challenges to do, and I've only gold stake on red, blue, yellow, ghost, and anaglyph.
Wow this is helpful; this is educational. I’m going to go watch all your videos now.
bro you gave me an ulcer when you sold the egg.
What do you do when all the cards are face down?
Need you to teach Go
Almost got 1200 on small blind ante 2, but not quite.
I was goin for a king spade 3 of a kind and i got the debuffed face card and i used my boss reroll and got the spades debuffed
Making a card I don't want to play a gold card is a mistake I definitely made
I’m confused why you don’t put an X mult joker like Photograph to the far right. Is it due to the method of how/when it’s triggered?
Yes
I have no idea how I had any gold stake wins before starting watching this series, I literally used to buy vouchers on Ante 1 😭
Not always the wrong move, depending on the Voucher. In general, Gold Stake uses some very different strategies.
@drspectred I would definitely derail a run chasing the 25% off voucher, but I'm working through the basics playlist and starting the other decks I haven't really touched and building up new habits, hoping to come back to gold stake all of them later 😅
Does the joker position matter?
yes, they activate left to right so the order can make a difference (rightmost should be multiplier etc.)
Wow this is watch this is videos, I’m going to go helpful all your other educational now
I think I'm being funny (but for sure I'm not), the joke is on me.
I've been tricked into "engaging" with the video.
I still can’t get a win on the easiest deck and difficulty I just don’t understand it
To your comments at the start of the video, I'd like to add my scenario so you can understand your viewership a little more.
I'm watching these videos while I'm at work, paying half-attention to them, and then playing when I actually do have free time to play.
🃏
I'll never ever ever play the game since your videos are so comprehensive. There's nothing for me to gain by playing
My comment means that in the eyes of the algorithm we are legally engaged 💍💍
Two Queens and Two Jacks is Two pair, not a full house.
Just a simple squirrel in the world trying to get my economy online.
I’ve won once using the tutorial seed
i never thought about that with photo card to keep the face cards towards the end of my hand, kinda like i do with glass cards, and keep lucky cards up front.... thanks man
ngl the early game is the worst part of the game a run can end purely by luck on discards , when your in the stage of not having any mult or chip joker everything becomes impossible by ante 2
It can definitely /feel/ that way. But don't worry; you'll get better with practice. On stream this week, we played over 20 Jokerless runs back-to-back and made it to Ante 3 /every/ time and won about 40% of the time. If you're dying in Ante 2 more than 5% of the time, you might be undervaluing early Planet Card. I suggest practicing some Jokerless runs to get a better intuition for what works and what doesn't.
@@drspectred i won 1 run so far and it was with the two pair mult joker and buying packs past 20 income
help educate video watch
I'm specifically looking for tips and strategies, but a 2-hr video is so inaccessible. Please consider doing more of this content but in more reasonable chunks.
nobody is watching a two hour video of u playing the game bruh. condense this shi
-2
Considering the amount of views, this video has and that I just got done watching all of it, I’d have to say your assumption is just that, wrong.
Cry more.
Nah bruh we need to expand this shit it’s too short. He should set the game speed to 0.5X.
PLEASE stop putting ads every few minutes on a 2hr video
Wow, this is helpful this is educational. I'm going to go watch all your other videos now
Wow this is helpful; this is educational. I’m going to go watch all your videos now.