[SirFozzie]

I love Balatro. It's CRACK. I've beat white stakes with several, and red stakes with a couple, and thoughts

Ante 1: Even with Green Deck, where you get paid for discards remaining, don't play any hand that A) Doesn't have at least 4 cards (and almost definitely flush/straight/Full House is the way to go). With 300, 450 and 600 in the first ante, you really want to blitz those in as few cards as possible to start the money train running

Early Antes: When you use a "convert 3 cards into a suit" tarot card, pay more attention to the suit than the number. Flush decks get a LOT better when it's 16/10/13/13 instead of 14/12/13/13, it also gives you targets to get rid of.

If you get one or two +multiplier jokers early, save money instead of filling things out more with things that don't fully synergize with your jokers/deck idea

If you run Green Deck especially, Delayed Gratification will be the equivalent of attaching a supercharger to your money engine.

early on, it's an auto skip if they offer a polychrome or a Holographic Joker, and it's just about always a good idea to skip if you get a negative joker.. Same with "All cards in the next shop are free to start". Don't forget you can sell cards you have no use for from that free shop, you just have to take them in your hand first (so, for example,. if you have Hanged Man, but no card targets, grab it, don't use it, and immediately sell it)

Fibonacci is a run winner.

And something you probably already know, but just in case... you can reorder your hand and your jokers to maximize your score (always do +Multipliers before x Multipliers, for example, same with things like Fibonacci before a card that multiplies the multiplier.

edit: I'm going to use this section for further thoughts:

On playing card hands, it's better to skip them instead of taking something that doesn't have a modifier, unless you're going for something like "I need 10 aces for this hand to work). They just take up room in your deck.

If you want to try everything without having to unlock it, create a second profile, switch to it, and click "Unlock everything" in the profile. You won't be able to get steam achievements while using that profile, but it will let you try out all the jokers, and all the deck types without having to unlock them.