Winner, Winner....you know the rest

It finally happened...I managed to win a full ante in Balatro!  The excitement in that moment is one that I've subsequently had to capture every time that I've won.  If you're feeling sad and unsuccessful, keep your chin up!  The random card gods will eventually grant you a path toward victory.  Here's how I've won the now three times that I've felt the thrill of victory (and how I see the path to potential victory for others):

1.) Good joker combinations

Egg + Swashbuckler for my first win.

I've tried my hardest to try to be smart and strategize as much as I can.  I look at my jokers and try to plan my deck around how I can rack up the biggest multipliers--for example, maybe I have one of the jokers that grants a bonus multiplier for any hearts that you play so I use tarot cards to turn as many of my cards as I can into hearts.  My first victory came from two jokers that worked particularly well together--Egg and Swashbuckler.  On their own, both jokers are generally cards that I would pass on.  Egg seemingly does very little--it accumulates sell value for every hand played, so ideally you could save it until it becomes worth a lot.  Swashbuckler gives you +multiplier for the sell value of all your jokers.  Basically, these two cards are perfect together.

2.) Jokers that suit your playstyle

Spare Trousers is a solid joker for me.

My second victory wasn't necessarily about two jokers that worked well together, but more about two jokers that worked with my playstyle.  The Spare Trousers joker adds +1 multiplier to its value every time you play two pair.  It just so happens that two pair is usually my #1 hand, so it generally works out very well.  The Hologram joker is also a good bet--it grows by X.25 multiplier every time you add a card to your deck.  It's easy to really rack up the multiplier with this card since you can add cards through both tarot cards and standard card packs.  I actually think that any of the jokers that add multiplier for playing tarot cards or adding cards are good to have in your hand.

You can't see my jokers in this hand, but 3 of 5 are foil or polychrome.

3.) Plain dumb luck

My most recent victory was mostly due to the fact that I managed to add a lot of secondary bonuses to my hand of jokers.  I skipped a blind in order to get a free polychrome, foil, or holographic joker and then got lucky a couple of different times--I drew a foil joker and then I used a "the wheel" tarot card and managed to land the 1 in 4 chance to upgrade another joker.  I had at least 3 jokers that were foil or polychrome.  I also managed to open a pack of spectral cards and net a soul card which granted a legendary joker (only my 2nd!).  Unfortunately, I was kind of a dumb dumb about fully utilizing it and ended up selling it (it was the Canio joker that grants a X1 multiplier for every face card you destroy.  I also had the Smile joker that grants bonus multiplier for face cards...so these two jokers worked in opposition to each other).  I had several hands where I managed to barely squeak by, but I managed to finish the full thing.

If you're feeling unsuccessful in Balatro, just keep playing.  Eventually you'll either figure out some good combinations or just have a streak of good luck.  There's definitely some strategy involved when it comes to knowing if it's more beneficial to skip a blind or in figuring out how to most effectively use tarot cards, but dumb luck is also a definite factor.