Great video! However you forgot the rarest hand possible in a starting deck, straight flush. I'd love to see a follow up with info on discards and straight flush odds!
Thanks for watching! Not noting straight flushes or royal flushes was a strange exclusion in hind sight. The method behind my madness confuses me at times.
Something I thought about for increasing your odds of getting straights is that the closer to the middle a card is the more possible straights you can make with it. For example, it's impossible to make a straight without either a 5 or 10 but an ace or 2 can only be used for 2 different straights. It'd be interesting to nail down exactly what distribution of cards are ideal for making straights
This comment inspired me to do a bunch of bad math and I've come to the conclusion that, given no other variables whatsoever, the best straight that you could possibly go for in Balatro is 4 5 6 7 8. Like you said, the extremities are harder to make a straight out of, so at first glance you would think it must involve only cards from 5 through 10, since each of those cards are 'involved' in the most amount of straights. However this is slightly offset by the fact that 4 5 6 7 8 has some VERY good jokers available for it, specifically Hack and Fibonacci. I've also found that 7 is a particularly bad card when it comes to score increasing jokers, being only affected by Odd Todd. This makes total sense from a balance perspective since 7 sits neatly in the middle of the ranking of all the playing cards. Within the context of our optimal straight this is also offset by 4, 5 and 8 being some of the best cards you can go for from a joker perspective. Edit: right after posting I immediately realize that when you're even considering Hack and Fibonacci you should of course go for A 2 3 4 5 anyway, so I guess it really was a bunch of bad math after all
@@Dgnarus that's if taking into the account of the jokers. While I agree, this calculation was done in a standard deck with no joker, so the closer it's to 10 the better, since 10 is worth as much as face cards.
I'd be interested in knowing what cards are best to remove from the deck to increase the odds of straights. In an Abandoned deck it's pretty STRAIGHTforward (ba-dum-tss), you start by removing aces and 10s, since they can only be used in one straight type (6-7-8-9-10 and A-2-3-4-5 respectively), but even that could have downsides. In a regular deck, aces are both the top AND bottom card at the same time, so the worst cards in the deck are aces, kings and 2s (all used in two straight types). However if you remove aces, you make both 2s and kings bad in the process, but if you start by removing 2s or kings - you make 3s or queens go from being used 3 straight types down to 1... Straights are weird.
Yeah there's a whole ton more math involved in straights than virtually every other hand type, so I'd also love to see some in depth analysis for the ideal deck for straights
I’d say to make it simple as can be just start thinning from the bottom up. You’re end goal with straights is likely just A-10 or A-9. Yes the literal center of the deck is 8 but if u go 8,9,10,J,Q. See you don’t reach the top so you’re too deep. 10 and 9 offer the most points and the most iterations so those are your most consistent cards overall, but face cards will yield more compatibility with jokers as your broadway straight has 3 face cards which is good. The only good jokers are 3x must straight and the runner and these are both mid. Shortcuts and four fingers are almost mandatory enablers to play straights early on
3:54, also to mention if you have the joker that makes flushes happen by color, or are using the checkered deck, with +1 hand size flushes are guaranteed. Since with 9 cards you would have to draw at least 5 of one color or the other.
Your video style, voiceover, memorable channel name, and design hasve all the makings of a channel that will reach a million viewers. Keep doing what you're doing! Subscribed. 👍
I checked to see if these probabilities are the same you would get with a real cards and was glad to see they were the same. at least for the hands I checked. Not all poker games use accurate probabilities so it was refreshing to see that this games probabilities match up for what you'd expect from a real deck of cards.
I love how straight flush wasn't included, because literally nobody on earth has ever drawn a natty straight flush in Balatro. That hand is pure fiction. It's false. We made it up. It never happened. (Anyway, great video, love the presentation style and hope your channel goes to the moon!)
Definitely, I anticipate it will probably significantly boost lower odds hands. Im already fearing having to code efficient discarding into my simulator.
I was thinking about it and it probably is waay easier to run programs to figure out these hand numbers. To do it naturally, you would use the basic formula of P(event) = # of event outcomes/# of total outcomes. For any hand, that's # of possible hands/ # of total hands. So for 8 card draw, the total possible number of hands is 52C8, 52 choose 8 which the formula is 52!/(8!*44!). So for any hand, that will be the denominator (short hand, it's 52c8). Where it gets hard isn't really the math, but just deciding the numerator, where you have to figure out exactly how many hands there are that can be drawn. This is the tricky part because you aren't just seeing exactly the amount of cards you need for the hand, but also need to consider that the other cards can be anything else, including a weaker version of the hand that you would even play. This means that if you try to count all possible pairs, and start by counting all possible ace pairs, you will have a lot of different flush combinations if your rank pull was AA KK QQ JJ. It could be HS HS HS HS, HC HS HC HS, CS CH CS HC etc... (where C = club H= heart S = spade D= diamond). As you can see this gets crazy messy very fast, and now you have to count this for each and every possible pair combo... fortunately if you keep track of what you've counted you can figure out the number of pairs, two pairs, 3oak, 4oak, and full houses you can pull. It's a bit easier to figure out the straight/full house/flush/straight flush odds since you don't have as much overlap with 3 extra cards in hand. But this question becomes much much easier when you use 5 card draw, and you only want to count the number of straight flushes (denominator is 52c5, numerator is just 4*10, i.e. number of suits * number of straights, so the probability of pulling a straight flush in 5 card pull is 40/52c5). Anyway I say this because I want to see someone actually figure out the hand probabilities by hand. Would be a wild video.
Anything from 5 to 10 helps cuz those number can be used in more straight alterations. For example an Ace can only be used in A2345 or AKQJ10 While a 10 can be in AKQJ10 KQJ109 QJ1098 J10987 109876
My favourite hand is two pairs with pants and square joker. I understand it wont get me very far in endless. I just enjoy myself the most with that combo
A really intresting concept but I feel without factoring in weighted discards its not particularly reflective to actual play. I dont think you need to make a program that decides which is most likely draw, you could make one for each hand type and run them since most players past the first blind would be locking in one hand type anyways. Flush would be easy, discard everything that not highest suit type, incase of tie choose whatever has most in deck. Straight would require looking for longest chain of consecutive cards then discarding anything that is not 5-x(current consecutive cards) away from that hand or duplicates
I thought you were going to calculate the base odds of getting a hand with the starting deck including the use of your discards. That's a lot more complicated, but also a lot more relevant to the game.
I had a run of 3 hand size, using only high card and the 300chips -2hand size joker and upgrade first discard hand joker, every other hand type is basically impossible😂
Hey do u know what are the odds for any given card in the shop to be a uncommon or more importantly a rare? And the biggest question of all: What are the chances of pulling “Soul” from an arcana pack?
I'll probably mention combo hands in the potential followup since I rounded the odds to one decimal in this video a lot of combo hands would have just been 0%.
Flush Five and Flush House are also 0% with the starting deck, as you do not have five of a kind to begin with in the case of Flush Five, and you only have one rank of each suit so can't have a Flush House either since both the pair and the three-of-a-kind are necessarily cards of differing suits in the default deck. Straight Flush, of course, is possible, including the Royal Flush which is given a special name but counts as a Straight Flush for scoring. @@apocalypsehero
Their odds were incredibly low similar to four of a kind resulting in needless clutter. For all intents and purposes their odds are approximately the same and will be mentioned more in the followup. Thanks for watching!
ngl i do find funny imagining you trying to figure out how a 4 card deck could give a 0% to have five of a kind
Great video! However you forgot the rarest hand possible in a starting deck, straight flush. I'd love to see a follow up with info on discards and straight flush odds!
Thanks for watching! Not noting straight flushes or royal flushes was a strange exclusion in hind sight. The method behind my madness confuses me at times.
I think discard odds just end up looking like drawing 5 new cards minus a bit for misplays. Not sure though, might still be worth running
also forgot flush house and flush five
royal flush is rarer no?
@@incription royal flush is really just straight flush that’s more specific
Something I thought about for increasing your odds of getting straights is that the closer to the middle a card is the more possible straights you can make with it. For example, it's impossible to make a straight without either a 5 or 10 but an ace or 2 can only be used for 2 different straights.
It'd be interesting to nail down exactly what distribution of cards are ideal for making straights
This comment inspired me to do a bunch of bad math and I've come to the conclusion that, given no other variables whatsoever, the best straight that you could possibly go for in Balatro is 4 5 6 7 8.
Like you said, the extremities are harder to make a straight out of, so at first glance you would think it must involve only cards from 5 through 10, since each of those cards are 'involved' in the most amount of straights. However this is slightly offset by the fact that 4 5 6 7 8 has some VERY good jokers available for it, specifically Hack and Fibonacci. I've also found that 7 is a particularly bad card when it comes to score increasing jokers, being only affected by Odd Todd. This makes total sense from a balance perspective since 7 sits neatly in the middle of the ranking of all the playing cards. Within the context of our optimal straight this is also offset by 4, 5 and 8 being some of the best cards you can go for from a joker perspective.
Edit: right after posting I immediately realize that when you're even considering Hack and Fibonacci you should of course go for A 2 3 4 5 anyway, so I guess it really was a bunch of bad math after all
@@Dgnarus that's if taking into the account of the jokers. While I agree, this calculation was done in a standard deck with no joker, so the closer it's to 10 the better, since 10 is worth as much as face cards.
I'd be interested in knowing what cards are best to remove from the deck to increase the odds of straights. In an Abandoned deck it's pretty STRAIGHTforward (ba-dum-tss), you start by removing aces and 10s, since they can only be used in one straight type (6-7-8-9-10 and A-2-3-4-5 respectively), but even that could have downsides.
In a regular deck, aces are both the top AND bottom card at the same time, so the worst cards in the deck are aces, kings and 2s (all used in two straight types). However if you remove aces, you make both 2s and kings bad in the process, but if you start by removing 2s or kings - you make 3s or queens go from being used 3 straight types down to 1...
Straights are weird.
Yeah there's a whole ton more math involved in straights than virtually every other hand type, so I'd also love to see some in depth analysis for the ideal deck for straights
I’d say to make it simple as can be just start thinning from the bottom up. You’re end goal with straights is likely just A-10 or A-9. Yes the literal center of the deck is 8 but if u go 8,9,10,J,Q. See you don’t reach the top so you’re too deep. 10 and 9 offer the most points and the most iterations so those are your most consistent cards overall, but face cards will yield more compatibility with jokers as your broadway straight has 3 face cards which is good. The only good jokers are 3x must straight and the runner and these are both mid. Shortcuts and four fingers are almost mandatory enablers to play straights early on
I would love to see a follow up video, especially curious how jokers like Four Fingers, Shortcut, and Smeared Joker affect those odds.
3:54, also to mention if you have the joker that makes flushes happen by color, or are using the checkered deck, with +1 hand size flushes are guaranteed. Since with 9 cards you would have to draw at least 5 of one color or the other.
Your video style, voiceover, memorable channel name, and design hasve all the makings of a channel that will reach a million viewers. Keep doing what you're doing! Subscribed. 👍
Great video! Awesome editing and great narration, really interesting to keep in mind while playing the game. Very nice watch!
Thanks!
I checked to see if these probabilities are the same you would get with a real cards and was glad to see they were the same. at least for the hands I checked. Not all poker games use accurate probabilities so it was refreshing to see that this games probabilities match up for what you'd expect from a real deck of cards.
I love how straight flush wasn't included, because literally nobody on earth has ever drawn a natty straight flush in Balatro. That hand is pure fiction. It's false. We made it up. It never happened. (Anyway, great video, love the presentation style and hope your channel goes to the moon!)
I have but in an altered deck of course
Itd be interesting to see what happens when factoring in discards, id imagine some hands would be affected more than others by having more discards
Definitely, I anticipate it will probably significantly boost lower odds hands. Im already fearing having to code efficient discarding into my simulator.
Loved this, short, simple, to the point!
Nice, I was asking me this question a few days ago. I would love a part 2
I was thinking about it and it probably is waay easier to run programs to figure out these hand numbers. To do it naturally, you would use the basic formula of P(event) = # of event outcomes/# of total outcomes. For any hand, that's # of possible hands/ # of total hands. So for 8 card draw, the total possible number of hands is 52C8, 52 choose 8 which the formula is 52!/(8!*44!). So for any hand, that will be the denominator (short hand, it's 52c8).
Where it gets hard isn't really the math, but just deciding the numerator, where you have to figure out exactly how many hands there are that can be drawn. This is the tricky part because you aren't just seeing exactly the amount of cards you need for the hand, but also need to consider that the other cards can be anything else, including a weaker version of the hand that you would even play. This means that if you try to count all possible pairs, and start by counting all possible ace pairs, you will have a lot of different flush combinations if your rank pull was AA KK QQ JJ. It could be HS HS HS HS, HC HS HC HS, CS CH CS HC etc... (where C = club H= heart S = spade D= diamond). As you can see this gets crazy messy very fast, and now you have to count this for each and every possible pair combo... fortunately if you keep track of what you've counted you can figure out the number of pairs, two pairs, 3oak, 4oak, and full houses you can pull.
It's a bit easier to figure out the straight/full house/flush/straight flush odds since you don't have as much overlap with 3 extra cards in hand. But this question becomes much much easier when you use 5 card draw, and you only want to count the number of straight flushes (denominator is 52c5, numerator is just 4*10, i.e. number of suits * number of straights, so the probability of pulling a straight flush in 5 card pull is 40/52c5).
Anyway I say this because I want to see someone actually figure out the hand probabilities by hand. Would be a wild video.
Can you please do a sequel about abandoned deck? it starting with 40 cards changes alot of the math
I've seen people say that adding 5s and 10s helps to make straights more easily I'd be interested to see if that's really the case
I might have to look into that…
Anything from 5 to 10 helps cuz those number can be used in more straight alterations. For example an Ace can only be used in A2345 or AKQJ10 While a 10 can be in
AKQJ10
KQJ109
QJ1098
J10987
109876
Any straight played without a joker like Four Fingers HAS to contain either a 5 or a 10.
My favourite hand is two pairs with pants and square joker. I understand it wont get me very far in endless. I just enjoy myself the most with that combo
Spare trousers for life.
Wow, this was a fun watch, thank you! 😊
adding a cart i want to play being better than removing a card i dont want to play surprised me
Information about discards would be great!
🫡
A really intresting concept but I feel without factoring in weighted discards its not particularly reflective to actual play.
I dont think you need to make a program that decides which is most likely draw, you could make one for each hand type and run them since most players past the first blind would be locking in one hand type anyways.
Flush would be easy, discard everything that not highest suit type, incase of tie choose whatever has most in deck.
Straight would require looking for longest chain of consecutive cards then discarding anything that is not 5-x(current consecutive cards) away from that hand or duplicates
Man are you gonna love the followup video. XD
@@apocalypsehero really should have checked the date of posting lol
I thought you were going to calculate the base odds of getting a hand with the starting deck including the use of your discards. That's a lot more complicated, but also a lot more relevant to the game.
Check my channel tomorrow. ;)
I had a run of 3 hand size, using only high card and the 300chips -2hand size joker and upgrade first discard hand joker, every other hand type is basically impossible😂
Thanks for the info!
You’re welcome!
What I want to know is what the hell happened in that 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% where you *did* get a FiaK?
Hey do u know what are the odds for any given card in the shop to be a uncommon or more importantly a rare? And the biggest question of all: What are the chances of pulling “Soul” from an arcana pack?
You can easily go thru Ante 17 without ever encountering a legendary it’s perplexing almost
I dont know the odds right now, but that is an interesting thing to look into.
Thanks looking forward to part 2! There’s a big update coming soon I think u can even play the demo right now
Part two is out btw. :P
Thank you for this I've been looking for ways to improve so I can finally beat black deck. (´▽｀)
Great late game, terrible early game. Best of luck and thanks!
NIKO
MOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMOREMORE
More please
Um… straight flush wasn’t included
According to your code, what are the chances of drawing a stright flush on each hand size?
What about flush five and flush house? And yes, straight flush
I'll probably mention combo hands in the potential followup since I rounded the odds to one decimal in this video a lot of combo hands would have just been 0%.
Flush Five and Flush House are also 0% with the starting deck, as you do not have five of a kind to begin with in the case of Flush Five, and you only have one rank of each suit so can't have a Flush House either since both the pair and the three-of-a-kind are necessarily cards of differing suits in the default deck. Straight Flush, of course, is possible, including the Royal Flush which is given a special name but counts as a Straight Flush for scoring.
@@apocalypsehero
so powerful to target +x discard on strong hands I Guess.....
Did you forget Straight Flush/Royal Flush?
Their odds were incredibly low similar to four of a kind resulting in needless clutter. For all intents and purposes their odds are approximately the same and will be mentioned more in the followup. Thanks for watching!
I love your voice. What mic do you use?
Thank you! I use a blue yeti I got a long time ago.
i love being wrong in the comments
Great video, but PLEASE do NOT call pair "two of a kind" ever again. Nobody in poker calls it that, and neither does the game.
Boker
The way you pronounced Balatro was so off-putting