Antewise

Hand Levels vs Another Joker: When Planet Cards Win

Updated 2026-10-14T00:00:00.000Z Source In-game rules text and mechanics documentation; per-level increments to be confirmed against game data By Antewise Guides Team
Data status: Some exact values on this page are being cross-checked against the game’s own data files. Everything structural here is stable; figures will be confirmed in the next pass.

The asymmetry nobody notices

A joker costs a slot. A hand level does not.

Slots are the only truly scarce resource in Balatro — you get a fixed handful and everything you keep occupies one. Hand levels are permanent, stack without limit, and live outside the row entirely.

So the question “planet card or joker?” is not really about which number is bigger today. It is: is this effect worth a permanent slot?

Why hand levels get stronger as your run gets stronger

Levelling a hand raises its base chips and mult by a fixed increment each level. Two consequences follow, and they pull in opposite directions:

  • Percentage-wise, it gets worse. Adding a fixed amount to a growing base is a smaller and smaller relative gain.
  • Absolutely, it gets better. That fixed amount sits at the start of the scoring pipeline, so every multiplier downstream multiplies it. A +15 base mult with a ×8 multiplier behind it is a +120 mult contribution.

The second effect dominates once you have real multipliers. Which produces the counter-intuitive but correct rule:

The stronger your build, the more you should be levelling hands instead of buying jokers.

Early in a run, when your multipliers are thin, a joker that adds or multiplies usually beats a level. Late in a run, when you have four ×Mult effects stacked, a hand level is often the single biggest upgrade available — and it costs no slot.

The commitment requirement

The catch is that a hand level only applies to one hand type. Levelling four different hands means you’ve bought four quarter-sized upgrades.

So the decision has a prerequisite: you have to have picked a hand.

Pick based on reliability, not ceiling. The best hand to commit to is the one your deck and jokers let you play every single ante, not the one that scores most when everything lines up. A run that can always find its hand beats a run that sometimes finds a better one.

Good commitments tend to be hands that are easy to assemble from a thinned deck — which is why deck thinning and hand levelling are the same decision viewed from two ends.

A decision rule you can actually apply

Standing in the shop with money and one slot free:

  1. Count your multipliers. Zero or one ×Mult effect? Take the joker.
  2. Two or more ×Mult effects? Check the planet card for your committed hand. If it’s there, it is usually the better buy.
  3. No committed hand yet? Take whichever joker pushes you toward one, and commit this ante. Delaying the commitment costs more than a suboptimal choice.
  4. Slot full and nothing worth selling? Then the comparison is moot — level the hand. This is the case people miss most often: with no free slot, hand levels are the only scaling you can still buy.

The two mistakes

Mistake one: levelling the wrong hand. You levelled flushes because you hit a flush once in ante 2, then your deck went a different direction. Those levels are gone. Commit late enough to know, early enough to benefit — usually around the point where a joker starts pushing you toward a specific hand.

Mistake two: never levelling at all. Beginners treat planet cards as consumables to be used up and forget them. A run with five hand levels on its committed hand and a mediocre joker row will routinely outscore a run with a great joker row and base-level hands.

Next: Build archetypes.

Frequently asked questions

Is levelling a hand better than buying a joker?

It depends on how strong your multipliers already are. Base values get multiplied by everything downstream, so the more ×Mult you have, the more a hand level is worth.

Which hand should I level?

The one you actually play. Pick a hand type you can hit reliably every ante and commit — spreading levels across four hand types wastes most of the value.

Do hand levels have diminishing returns?

Each level adds a fixed increment, so the percentage gain shrinks as the base grows. But that increment is then multiplied by your whole joker row, so the absolute gain grows with your build.

Should I level early or late?

Level the hand you are committing to as soon as you have committed. Levelling late is fine when your multipliers are large; the important part is not levelling hands you will abandon.