When I first started this article, it was going to be about how Balatro is a really good “quick game”. Something I could play for about ten minutes, and then put away. That’s still quite true, since I can do just one or two blinds and then turn off my computer to do whatever I need to do that day. But at the same time, Balatro has an incredible hook that keeps me playing not for those ten minutes, but for hours.

Balatro’s been out for over a year, and I’ve known about it for most of that time. And it never really felt like something I wanted to try. And that’s because, well, I know next to nothing about poker. The thing is, it’s not a poker game, it’s a poker-based game. In reality, it’s a deck-building game where you simply use traditional playing cards. I picked it up a while back, I honestly don’t know why I decided to finally try it out, and I was instantly…not hooked. I enjoyed it, for sure, but it wasn’t getting me playing again. I’d get a few blinds in, lose, and then put it down and play something else. But that’s when I wasn’t playing Balatro. I was playing poker.

Like I said, I have very little knowledge about poker. In my first couple hours of Balatro, that’s mostly what I was figuring out how to play. After that, I started more playing Balatro, while at the same time, mostly playing poker. I was trying to get in the best hands for traditional poker, and it was getting me to lose. It was only fairly recently that I really started to figure out how I needed to actually play the game. Really started to figure out that, great as straight flushes are, they might not to win you a game as say, single pairs. Or even high card. No, really.

Balatro, if you didn’t know, is a poker-themed deck-builder. “Themed” is the key word here, because while you are technically playing poker, you’re also not. If you’ve heard any news about it, it’s quite possibly something about the poker-ness giving it too high an age rating or a YouTuber getting defunded. In reality, you’re trying to make a deck that will fit both the way you play, and the whims of RNGsus. In addition to your standard deck, you’re going to be getting a lot of extra cards to help you get the chips, or points, you need. I said earlier that building around high cards can be profitable, if you do it right. Using the planet card of Pluto is going to give you extra base chips. The Raised Fist joker will multiply your score by double your lowest card, and DNA will duplicate a single played card and add it to your deck. Baron, meanwhile, will give you a 1.5x multiplier per king you have in your hand. If you manage do remove some low cards from your deck, you could use this setup to get you some nice points. Play some kings early to double and then hold on to them. Drop what 2s, 3s, and 4s you can so you can multiply the bigger numbers. Never have to worry about getting exactly what cards you need, because you only need one card.

I don’t know how well this setup would work, I’ve yet to win a game and high card isn’t the way I’m going to do it anytime soon. But I think this really shows how Balatro isn’t really about poker, and how you need to throw some of your knowledge of poker out the window to figure out what you need to do. Go to a casino and try to win a game of poker using high card and you’ll be laughed out, but it’s a legitimate and fairly popular strategy in the Balatro community. You also have to–pun intended–play the cards you’re dealt. This could of course, be the real-life playing cards, But it also could be the boss card debuffing your entire strategy. Or it could be the joker card that will get you to change your tactics. Or it could be the tarot card that is leaning you really hard to diamonds. Or so many other things!

And this is why Balatro has so much replayability, so much “one more turn” in it. You can simply play a single blind, and it might take you two minutes, if you’re slow. Win that blind? Hey, good for you, go do what you needed to do. Or go to the next blind, and the next, and the next, and eventually win. Lose that blind? Again, you can just stop. But the desire to do something differently in order to win is there, and it’s there hard. Maybe you don’t even need to do something different, maybe you just need to get a different joker from a different booster pack. The ways the game can branch out are nearly endless, and it keeps me wanting to come back for more. And the ease of saving mid-game can make that more sixty minutes, or just sixty seconds.

When I started writing this, I had never won a game of Balatro. I hadn’t even made it past ante 7, which would have gotten me to the final boss. But through its simple replayability, and especially the desire it creates to make me want to replay, I finally got it. Only after about seventeen hours, but if a game keeps making you want to play for that long, even if you are losing, you know it’s pretty good. Now all I need to do is win at four more other decks so I can manually put in seeds. Let’s go!

Have you played Balatro? Do you want to play again? What’s another game that keeps drawing you back? Tell us in the comments below, or on Facebook!