How many jokers are in a standard poker deck?

Obviously that’s a trick question. You don’t play poker with jokers. Unless you’re playing Balatro. Or me once a month with my friends.

Balatro is an indie, deck builder, roguelite where you win chips by playing poker hands. Strickly speaking you don’t play the jokers in Balatro but they are a fundamental part of the gameplay experience.

If you’ve ever played poker before you’ll be familiar with the standard scoring system in Balatro. You start with a normal 52 card deck, 4 hands to play and 3 chances to discard up to 5 cards of your 8 card hand (the starting red deck comes with one extra discard per match, but other decks with different modifiers are unlocked as you play). Each hand (pair, two pair, etc) has a standard score that is modified by what cards you play (Aces – 11, Face cards – 10 and so on). You either play or discard cards until you run out of hands or gain enough chips to move onto the next opponent. Seems simple enough.

It isn’t though. You’re never going to progress up the antes by just playing standard hands of normal cards. You need an Ace up your sleeve. Or in this case, a selection of jokers. You can hold up to 5 jokers at any given time and they modify your scoring in a multitude of weird and wonderful ways. Similar to other deck builders, you unlock more cards as you progress through your runs, but also by meeting certain requirements. On my 2nd run I unlocked a new joker by winning 5 consecutive matches by only playing one hand.

There are also Planet cards that upgrade the value of your hands, Tarot and Spectral cards that modify cards in your deck, and vouchers that change up the parameters of the run. As with all deck builders there are a huge variety of synergies to be discovered – I had great fun on a run using a joker that increased it’s modifier for each hand played without playing a face card, and two others that added score multipliers for lower value cards; completely against most poker logic. There are a few concepts that could be better explained – but this is a common complaint I have of deck builders, you may want to watch a stream or two of some pros to understand some of the more niche mechanics.

All of these fun and varied mechanics support an addictive gameplay loop, that is easy to play but difficult to master. I won my first run after 5 attempts and I am by no means a strategist, so I’m sure others will have no issues in racking up wins and unlocks quickly. The artstyle is simple and charming, with each of the card modifiers having their own unique design and the jokers being fun and eclectic. This all sits behind a filter that makes me nostalgic for playing Freecell on my old Windows 98 machine with its fuzzy CRT monitor.

If, like me, you enjoy deck builders, poker and incredibly addictive gameplay loops, you’re sure to have fun with Balatro.

It’s certainly the only time in my life I’ll ever win 10,000 chips by playing a pair of 3s.

Score: 9/10

Reviewed on PC. Available on PS4/PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X and Nintendo Switch. It is Steam Deck compatible.