On November 1st, 2024, amidst a bout of boredom, one very exhausted player finished their 1.0 tierlist to evaluate the relative strength of each Joker in Balatro. While it can still be considered a remarkably accurate list considering the thirty-minute haze it was written in, tier lists, in isolation, are difficult to derive meaningful conclusions from without knowledge of the parameterization and context that influenced them. Greater understanding of the framework that supports a Balatro tier list invites discussion to discover which Jokers support the foundation of a successful run.
General Framework
To create a list that identifies the most impactful Jokers, it is important to define what constitutes impact and success. The most important distinction to make with the 1.0 list is that it was created to evaluate the performance of all Jokers at Gold Stake difficulty, which offers the highest challenge in the game. Certain aspects of the game change drastically with less discards, the existence of Joker stickers, and steeper blind score requirements. With the difficulty of Gold Stake to contend with, a couple of key parameters stick out that create a general framework that defines successful Jokers, and successful runs by extension.
Stable Economy
While it can be somewhat inconsequential at the lowest difficulty level due to the small blinds paying out, the concept that money makes money in the form of interest quickly proves to be the most consistent way to generate the economy necessary to make critical plays that jumpstart and sustain runs into higher Antes. Maintaining anywhere between fifteen to twenty dollars at the end of each shop phase can be thought of as a critical threshold. The extra four or five dollars this provides guarantees a start of shop phase with at least twenty dollars. This amount allows one to purchase multiple booster packs/Jokers with money to spare, or to instead reroll once without significant penalty. On that account, all economy-based vouchers are extremely valuable finds. Perhaps unintuitively, this includes Grabber & Nacho Tong, which can provide up to two extra dollars per round in the form of a higher remaining hand bonus. The economy-based skip tags are often the only skips one should take in an entire run, with the Investment Tag providing an especially strong benefit if found in Ante 1. In lieu of any external economic sources if none are found at the start, one-shotting early rounds to maximize the remaining hand bonus is the most consistent way to scale early game economy.
Chips Scaling
XMult effects are often the most powerful and fairly accessible ways to scale any built up base mult value. Most successful runs can see mult values exceed 600 with a combination of XMult Jokers, Chariot cards, and polychrome effects. In comparison, chip values lack exponential scaling options and are not as accessible through Jokers. Mathematically, if the XMult engine is running smoothly, a tiny increase in chip value can increase hand scores by a large amount. A healthy amount of planet cards and Hierophants on key hands and cards respectively can be extremely valuable on their own, and in plenty of cases, can provide all the necessary chips to elevate scores to meet the 400,000 requirement at the end of Ante 8. Relying on the right tarots and the right planet cards still does require some amount of chance, so Jokers that can contribute meaningful quantities of chips can be lucrative in the right situation.
Consistency & Pivoting
When first learning to play Balatro, the easiest way to conceptualize scaleable strength is to envision oneself just playing the same powerful hand over and over, scaling its associated planet card, and utilizing its respective rare XMult card to play the same exact hand ad nauseum. Checkered Deck is seen as a more beginner friendly deck because it rewards this type of preplanning and commitment. The viability of this style of play diminishes at the higher difficulties. As is synonymous with the “rogue” genre of game, the greatest successes in this game are often found when embracing emergent gameplay; to be able to use mastery of fundamental game mechanics to handle the current situation is what grants a player greater consistency. While the concept is somewhat diluted in this specific deck-builder, it is imperative to consistently question if the current collection of Jokers and playing cards in one’s deck solve the immediate problems that the game presents.
Nebulous descriptions aside, Jokers that provide either the consistency to find use cases in all game stacks provide immense value and alleviate decision paralysis. On the opposite side of the coin, sometimes a pivot to a different dominant hand type or prevailing strategy is necessary. Jokers that are detrimental to pivot away from or are difficult to switch into are not nearly as impactful on a game-by-game basis, and require extra caution when selecting.
The 1.0 tier list placed an implicit emphasis on these three concepts, as well as the knowledge of the conditions of Gold Stake, to rank every single Joker. The simple one-axis ranking system alone is not sufficient to tell the full story for many if not all cards in the game. Jokers do not exist independently of one another or the game state, so it is equally as important to understand the context and interactions that affect any individual card as it is to understand the context of the tier list as a whole. A specific selection of Jokers are especially notable for what they provide relative to how they rank, and may benefit from supplementary discussion.
Joker Discussion
Presented below is an image of the 1.0 version of the tier list for reference. The Jokers mentioned will be in ascending order up the tier list. The in-game description for each Joker is presented next to its name.
Marble Joker: Adds one Stone card to the deck when Blind is selected
While Marble Joker benefits from explicit synergy with Stone Joker and strong implicit synergy with Hologram, adding more cards to the deck always comes at the cost of draw inefficiency. Stone cards' two biggest weaknesses are that they suffer from not being able to benefit from any Jokers that activate for a specific rank, and that they are completely dead draws in builds where five card hands are dominant, limiting their best use case to be a supplementary piece of a high card build. The guaranteed stone cards also provide a way to steady ramp up towards the sixteen enhanced cards necessary to make Driver’s License active, providing an essential source of mult in a high card build.
It takes four stone cards, or four rounds of an uncopied Marble Joker to get Stone Joker up to 100 chips, which can be valuable. It is also noteworthy that stone cards can potentially be built around if playing Plasma Deck.
Certificate: When round begins, add a random playing card with a random seal to your hand.
In a potential revision of this tier list, this is one of few Jokers that would be ranked much more favorably. This card shares its primary drawbacks with Marble Joker, potentially adding unwanted cards that dilute the deck, an issue that is even more prevalent when the generated card is of a random rank and suit. There are a few important advantages that this card provides that are rather unique and make it more appealing than the other Jokers in its tier.
Firstly, the card generated is guaranteed to be visible and playable in every starting hand. This not only grants an effective hand size of nine at the start of the round, but also guarantees that the card can be utilized that round if it would be beneficial. However, the true power of this card is that it is one of a select few ways to get card seals into the player’s deck of cards, and it is by far the most efficient, cheap, and reliable. Neither spectral packs or standard packs are guaranteed to house seal cards or a seal consumable, and neither are guaranteed to show up in shops or on skip tags. The Illusion voucher is detrimental to shop value, costs more to activate, and is still not guaranteed to provide cards with seals. Certificate provides seals on a per round basis at the cost of one Joker slot and six dollars, and can be easily sold when its use runs out.
This use will most likely come in the form of a generated blue seal card. Blue seal and Telescope are the best ways to gain many planet levels for a specific hand. Blue seals do not impede the flexibility of future planet card packs, and in the right circumstances, can be a more reliably accessible benefit, as drawing the blue seal may become easier than hoping the shop has a celestial pack. Getting a blue seal early can be run defining, and Certificate provides this in the most accessible way. Missing on blue seals can still provide cards with immediate value; a generated gold seal is a free three dollars, generated red sealed cards are great targets for duplication, and purple seals provide a free tarot card. Still, the unpredictability of this card's effect and limited late game use cases make it difficult to justify in many situations.
Pareidolia: All cards are considered face cards.
Pareidoila is the largest indicator of the precarious situation that “utility” Jokers find themselves in. The cards in Balatro that do not directly score chips, generate money, or increase and scale mult offer some of the most unique effects in the entire game to exploit. As a cruel consequence of the five Joker limit that largely enables creative constraints and decision making that make this game intriguing, it is increasingly difficult to justify the space that a non-scoring Joker takes the higher one goes in difficulty.
Pareidolia does not provide any significant advantage that can not be solved by prudent deck manipulation and a willingness to maximize discard usage. Even in the early game, playing four or five face scoring face cards in one hand to activate the Scary Face or Smiley Face is not a difficult feat, and one Cryptid, Death tarot card, or Erratic Deck roll is enough to generate enough face cards to dive deeper into face card scoring solutions. This is also one of the utility Jokers most harmed by boss blinds and their effects, in some cases forcing itself to be to sold to proceed. The strength of other face card related Jokers themselves is what keeps Pareidolla has high as it is on this list.
Flash Card: This Joker gains +2 Mult per reroll in the shop. (Currently +0 Mult)
Flash Card is another Joker that would see significant rise in a revamped version of this list. As rankings would suggest, Flash Card and Bootstraps mirror each other as base mult Jokers that scale similarly relative to economy, as their respective rankings would suggest. Bootstraps provided this mult at a flat 5$ to 2 mult ratio. In comparison, the base price of rerolling starts at 5$, but increases in price per reroll instance in the shop. This leads Flash Card to seemingly be the more inefficient base mult-scaling option at a glance. In reality, Flash Card offers significant flexibility, and in the right circumstances, can be significantly cheaper than Bootstraps to get online.
The major boon that Flash Card offers is that the mult that it gains is permanent scaling. When comparing this to other base mult Joker options, this is a relatively unique perk. It is not impacted by economic fluctuations like Bootstraps or Swashbuckler, and does not diminish in value in any situation like Green Joker, Supernova, or Ride the Bus. This makes Flash Card a significantly less risky investment than its peers in the market. Not only is the risk minimal, choosing the spend money rerolling has many extremely useful inherent synergies. With the Overstock vouchers, the player is put in a position to see more Jokers per shop to further refine the build. Strong Jokers like Constellation & Campfire greatly appreciate the ability to buy and sell more cards respectively.
The other important distinction between this card and Bootstraps is that the latter directly offers additive mult per dollar invested; the former provides additive mult per reroll. The critical distinction here is that rerolling as an action and spending money are independent events, although it does cost money to reroll. The vouchers dedicated specifically to reducing reroll costs increase this cards scaling potential exponentially, and free rerolls are available through Chaos the Clown and the D6 skip tag.
Obelisk: This Joker gains X0.2 Mult per consecutive hand played without playing your most played poker hand. (Currently X1 Mult)
Obelisk’s nerf from X0.5 Mult to X0.2 from the demo version of the game to the final release is a simple change, but one that has turned Obelisk from a relatively low risk, high reward mid to late game mult scaling solution to a Joker that invites the most creative and expressive play in the game. A good metric to keep in mind when attempting build around or potentially pivot to Obelisk: The most played hand must have at least ten more plays this game than any other given hand if attempting to scale by only growing that given hand. While this rule of thumb provides a minimum amount of hands to play, Obelisk’s ability to grow is prolonged by playing many different hands as the game progresses, so that no one hand ever gets too close to the maximum. Mastering this minigame requires forethought, consistency, and careful use of skipping.
The most commonly recommended way to position oneself for an Obelisk run is to begin playing a lot of high card hands. These hands are low scoring and easily playable, which means it can quickly reach ten to twenty plays by the time that Ante 2 is finished. This is a healthy cushion that can enable any other hands to be played with greater effect into the middle and late game. In practice this strategy does come with a few hindrances.
Scaling Obelisk by using up all available hands early can often be a significant detriment to early game economy since the remaining hand bonus is nullified. This is similar to the trap that one can fall into if overly aggressive in scaling Green Joker or Ride the Bus, and can cause runs to falter before they can take off. Using high card scaling also leaves the player susceptible to situations where they may be forced or are heavily susceptible to playing high card. This danger tends to reveal itself when facing the boss blinds, but in normal gameplay, attempting to fish for straights can leave the player open to having to play high card if unsuccessful. A unique strategy to utilize Obelisk while mitigating these downsides involves fishing for a strong Erratic Deck, preferably with at least 8 cards of a single rank. This is the sole deck that can begin a run by fishing for Five of a Kind to one shot the first few Antes, while reliably avoiding forced high card plays if extra deck manipulation tools are found early. Once Five of a Kind is played a desired amount, it is fairly seamless to pivot to playing Four of a Kind as a primary hand. The high base mult and planet card value means that it often will not take multiple Four of a Kind hands to one-shot an Ante, allowing the player to maximize the amount of time Obelisk’s bonus is active.
Oops! All 6’s: Doubles all listed probabilities. (ex: 1 in 3 -> 2 in 3)
While it is by definition a utility Joker since it offers no mult, chips, or money, its ability to enable other Jokers to create more of all three makes Oops! All 6’s the best in its class of cards. The most noticeable impact of this Joker is that it transforms lucky cards from an already strong card enhancement option, to a fairly reliable source of high additive mult and provides an economic engine. One lucky card activation provides an instant twenty four dollars at minimum, as the twenty dollars given at face value are included in the interest calculation, paying out four more dollars, at minimum. The doubled odds of one-in-ten makes it a viable strategy to fish for the lucky cards in the deck to get the chance to energize the economy. Acquiring a Lucky Cat to pair with it leaves the player in a position where only two Jokers, the majority of the XMult scaling and economic needs for an entire run are handled, leaving three Joker slots to fill in the gaps as necessary. Oops! All 6’s is also notable for turning Space Joker into a significantly more reliable temporary scaling option, and for breaking Gros Michel faster, paving the way for Cavendish down the line.
Rocket: Earn $1 at end of round. Payout increases by $2 when Boss Blind is defeated.
Most economic Jokers present too high of an opportunity cost to carry significantly deep into the late game, unless the build requires money in excess of fifty dollars, and the interest vouchers have not been offered. To be able to pivot away from them easily and make room for scoring Jokers as soon as possible, many economic Jokers are purposed to provide lump sums of money, with Mail-In Rebate being the cream of the crop. Rocket is one a few major exceptions to this concept that money-based Jokers must be dumped to win at higher Ante’s.
It is true that this Joker does need to be found relatively early to really warrant its position late game, especially in comparison to Gold Joker which is undeniably stronger for the first three Antes. But after four Antes, this Joker provides nine dollars per round played, an amount that can pay for multiple rerolls by itself. The hidden beauty behind this type of economic scaling is that it takes no external force to guarantee the money. Not having to manipulate the cards in hand, in the deck, or the cards in the shop means that this Joker is completely non-invasive to whatever gameplan the player currently is employing. While it is of course necessary to have some money early, having enough money to find more that specific Joker, tarot, and planet card in the later game is critical to solidify a build. Having this Joker provides even more reward for taking high risk Hieroglyph & Petroglyph Jokers, as it puts Rocket further ahead of the curve in its scaling. This can absolutely be a trap, but the freedom this Joker can open up later on in a run is precious.
Ancient Joker: Each played card with [suit] gives X1.5 Mult when scored, suit changes at end of round.
This Joker presents itself as a flush build staple that requires playing a minigame to activate consistently. This is viable way to treat Ancient Joker; level up the Flush planet card as high as possible, and instead of spending money converting cards to one suit, look for Empress or glass cards to further improve the mult scaling. The Jupiter planet card associated with this hand type only gives +2 Mult and +15 chips, so unfortunately Ancient Joker and many Flush planet levels are rarely enough to be a win condition on their own at Gold Stake. This Joker’s high rating is based more on its surprising utility. While often underutilized in many builds, using the Lovers tarot card can essentially turn any card into an pseudo glass card. Thus Ancient Joker can be a sneaky way to take builds with Poker hands over the top. The 1.5X per trigger has a significantly greater impact on a leveled up Five of a Kind for example. Unlike the flat XMult Rare Jokers that are common in builds around higher point value hands like The Family, The Trio, and The Order, this Joker has the benefit of being more reliability retriggered with Seltzer, Sock & Buskin, or Hack.
Baseball Card: Uncommon Jokers each give X1.5 Mult.
The five Joker limit is at the crux of some of the more enticing aspects of Balatro’s gameplay, as it serves as a creative constraint that is rarely circumvented. At Gold Stake, it is often not hyperbole to say that each Joker that is selected must be providing tangible benefit or be a part of some exceptional synergy to be able to win. As seen in the tier list, the greatest shame in this limit is that it does not quite incentivize players to be creative with all types of Jokers. There exists a sizable amount of Jokers that only provide money or some other indirect benefits that simply can be too burdensome to explore later in games.
Baseball Card’s greatest achievement is that it proves able to fully open up this game to some of the more eccentric and creative Jokers this game has to offer. Providing free XMult based on every Uncommon card significantly raises the floor for all uncommon utility and economic Jokers in Balatro. One can afford to strategize around Loyalty Card’s six hand timer, the spectral cards offered by Sixth Sense, or the consistent tarot generation of Cartomancer, because at the very least, these cards are now also a part of the ever important XMult engine. The benefits of Baseball Card also grow exponentially with the number of uncommon Jokers obtained, which not only incentivizes picking up multiple helpful utility uncommons, but finding ways to add more Joker slots. On top of this all, Baseball Card is naturally synergistic with the traditionally powerful Uncommon scoring cards, providing especially nice value for the Uncommon additive mult Jokers like Flash Card and Bootstrap. Unfortunately, not every run is blessed with this Rare card and a healthy amount of useful Uncommons, so results may vary. But when given an opportunity, this card can enable the most distinct gameplay in the game, as all good Rare Jokers should.