I often hear people say that flushes "don't scale well" but I'm not sure what that means. Is it just that the Jupiter cards give less chips per upgrade than other 5 card hands? On the checkered deck where making flushes is easy, what advantage do pairs have over flushes? What would make you decide to play one over the other? Thanks for the awesome content, super informative for someone new to the game like me.
Straights become easier to draw over time (partially from deck building but more from Vouchers and Jokers like +Discard, +Hand Size, and +Hands). That's one form of scaling. When you earn the ability to play two Straights per round, you've doubled your score, same as if you found an xMult Joker suddenly. Straights also scale in a second, perhaps more obvious way. Each Saturn card gives you twice as many Chips and 50% more Mult than a Jupiter card. Without any Jokers involved, you can expect a Straight will score 3 times as much as a Flush of the same level. Moreover, having a high "Base Mult" on your Hand unlocks the ability to use Glass and Steel cards (which trigger before Jokers), outclassing any +Mult Jokers, even the scaling ones like Bus, Green Joker, Trousers, etc. When people say Flushes "don't scale well," this is almost always what they're referring to. But the ease of drawing the hand is relevant, too. In the beginning, with a standard 52 card deck, you can reliably draw one Flush every round (more than 98% of the time), but drawing a second Flush is not always possible. Over time, Standard Packs and Tarot cards warp your deck toward being able to play twice as many Flushes per round, up to 4 Flushes per round. That's actually pretty good /scaling/. However, +2 Mult from each Jupiter card is not generally enough for you to rely on Base Mult alone. On top of that, the Jokers which reward you for going all in on one suit don't scale. Moreover, you might be able to guarantee a Flush every round, but can you guarantee a Spade Flush? You might be able to guarantee multiple Flushes every round, but can you guarantee all of them are Spade Flushes? Anyway, a Flush build will typically rely on the same scaling +Mult Jokers that the Pairs build uses. In that context, the difference in Mult between Jupiter and Mercury is "overridden" by the +60 to +80 Mult of your +Mult Joker. Then, the two Hands score roughly the same number of points since both Planet cards give the same number of Chips. This is where I usually say, if they score the same number of points, why struggle to play three Flushes when you can always play four, or sometimes more, Pairs? Even in the best case scenario, playing on the Checkered. Let's say you are guaranteed your four Flushes every round. This typically requires a non-trivial amount of work. Suppose you have 4 Spades and one Gold card. To dig for your last Spade, you can only Discard 3 cards at a time. Or if you have two Gold cards (or other valuable cards such as Blue Seals), you can only Discard 2 cards at a time. You have a "good enough" chance to hit that Spade, but even if you hit it, you're only drawing 2 cards, and you're not digging deep enough in your deck to draw your third Gold card (or other valuable card like a Purple or Gold Seal). When you're playing Pairs, you can always discard 5 at a time. You can always play 5 at a time. You always get to see the top 35 cards of your deck. And if your deck is less than 40 cards, you get to touch all of them every round. This makes Gold cards, Lucky cards, Purple Seals, Gold Seals, and Blue Seals wildly more effective. When you open Standard Packs and see this value generators, you can pick them up without consequence. Pairs are "resistant" to deck bloat (in contrast to the Flush build needing to play more conservatively here). As a final note, Flushes also "scale" into higher-scoring Flush-variants (via Tarot cards and other deck building reources). More than 90% of my Flush builds end with Flush Houses because they score way more points, even at low Planet levels.
I know its just expected that you win on this channel so its to the audience its usually no surprise when you do, but the first run was phenomenally played and a visually difficult one with little margin for error. Also missed the classic “this is how u can tell this is the square joker” 😭😭😭
37:25 why didnt you take brainstorm but opted for a card shark? trading the swashbonkler for brainstorm would have allowed to grow the hologram by .5 each round by copying certificate, and you had 19 base mult of pairs at the moment, which multiplied by 3.25 (value of hologram at the time) 2 times (and again, the scaling of hologram was going to grow bigger faster than the swashbonkler's from that point on) is actually bigger than the swashbonkler + hologram combo. Genuinely curious.
It was close enough (and the run was near enough to the end) that I didn't want to fuss with the mental math. If the plan was to survive for much longer (or the choice was presented much earlier in the run), then it would've been worth it to think harder about it.
Can confirm that "blue seal OP" is not predicated on any luck or inconsistency in obtaining them. Nor is Doc-level money management required to make it consistent. I regularly throw runs because of poor money management, but usually see a blue seal
Am I the only one who has runs where celestial packs show up nonstop while the others are elusive? The only sketchy tendency I can identify is spending early money on a standard pack that doesn't pay off, otherwise I'm never lucky.
Regarding my statements about blue seals, it's getting the first one that poses the biggest challenge. Unless I've missed something, standard/spectral packs and certificate are the only means of getting seals, and I get skunked on packs pretty often. I'll take your advice about using purple seals to get more tarot cards to copy blue seal once I have one.
finally won gold stakes on all decks! you need a tutoril on how to win Black deck gold stakes WITHOUT Riffraff Sidenote: is it possible to tell if it's the square joker if you have an eternal one??
one thing that wonks me out is, "just x2"??? what? x2 is really good and putting in a lot of work for it seems fine to me considering if you don't score enough chips, you die, and square joker is a *common.* besides, playing 4 cards isn't quite as good as playing 5 cards for digging purposes, but you *already* want to eventually dig a lot for seals and gold cards and stuff if you have stuff to find. something is lost by working with the square, but you're not paying $1 for every 4 chips on the square joker
24:00 is there some mechanic with the standard packs that the cards are associated with each other? The 1st one had 3 9s and the 2nd one had 3 3s. I don’t really think it’s exploitable if there is something there but seems… suspicious.
Probably not. The probability of getting 3 cards with a matching face value in a 3 card pack assuming they are truly random is 1 in 169, so getting 2 packs with matching face values is 1 in 28561. This is rare but not so rare that it would need additional mechanics to explain. If it happened a third time then it's probably worth looking into, since at that point the odds are 1 in 4.8 million, which then becomes a little suspicious.
I know this isn't the best place to put this, but I couldn't think of a significantly better one: I am currently watching the vod of your second Pokermon 2.0 stream and you are complaining about parasect being so bad. What if it scaled with energy cards such that it gains it's +0.6 per two pair played but it doesn't lose 0.6 more per hand w/o 2 pair, instead it loses 0.6 less (so 2.4) per hand w/o 2 pair. Also if parasect is too weak it could also just start at +3/-2 so it's a bit more forgiving.
Common misconception about the "cost." In normal gameplay you should already open as many booster packs as you can afford. Definitely buy all boosters before doing any rerolling, which itself is less efficient. Most Standard Packs and Buffoon Packs will be "skippable." Celestials generally give you the Planet you want only 1/3 of the time. Arcana Packs are the hardest to pass on, but you likely still skip a good amount of the time. When you add in the Red Card, it creates something from nothing. It gives you +Mult for the Booster Packs you were already going to skip anyway. Because it grows so fast (up to +6 per round), you don't need to skip any more than you would already. The general rule is, don't spend money you don't have. Don't buy Booster Packs you can't afford. Don't skip when you wouldn't already skip. Just pretend like Red Card isn't there, and the natural growth rate is more than enough. Related: my rule for Standard and Arcana Packs is, always take money. And if you want to see all this in action, I've got a video for that: ua-cam.com/video/AN6zMHHZ1JM/v-deo.html
@@drspectred interesting! I got the "don't skip for red card" out of watching this video, you repeat it a few times. the cost I'm referring to is a lot more like the opportunity cost I was perceiving; I usually end up selling the red card for "better" scaling mult with how I play (making any investment feel wasted) and taking packs for red card when I'd rather be rerolling, but maybe shouldn't think of that as a cost. I didn't realize it until you pointed it out explicitly but money permitting you really don't skip packs! I hesitate to buy them pretty often; but over the past couple days watching you I've realized that I undervalue the ability of standard packs to give seals and gold cards in particular, undervalue planet cards when I'm playing hands lower than flushes, and undervalue tarot cards... probably because I'm not getting enough good stuff from standard packs to copy with death and make easier to find with hanged man lol. when I was starting off I gravitated toward rerolls, in retrospect I feel like I just didn't know how to use tarot cards effectively or how to really try to maximize digging for seals, and jokers are more likely to give you something you can ride to a lucky win. kinda put that all together in my head with your response - thank you so much for all the detail! you have such deep expertise in this game, it's why watching you is so much fun. I'll be sure to check out that video too, thanks!
I often hear people say that flushes "don't scale well" but I'm not sure what that means. Is it just that the Jupiter cards give less chips per upgrade than other 5 card hands? On the checkered deck where making flushes is easy, what advantage do pairs have over flushes? What would make you decide to play one over the other?
Thanks for the awesome content, super informative for someone new to the game like me.
Straights become easier to draw over time (partially from deck building but more from Vouchers and Jokers like +Discard, +Hand Size, and +Hands). That's one form of scaling. When you earn the ability to play two Straights per round, you've doubled your score, same as if you found an xMult Joker suddenly.
Straights also scale in a second, perhaps more obvious way. Each Saturn card gives you twice as many Chips and 50% more Mult than a Jupiter card. Without any Jokers involved, you can expect a Straight will score 3 times as much as a Flush of the same level. Moreover, having a high "Base Mult" on your Hand unlocks the ability to use Glass and Steel cards (which trigger before Jokers), outclassing any +Mult Jokers, even the scaling ones like Bus, Green Joker, Trousers, etc.
When people say Flushes "don't scale well," this is almost always what they're referring to. But the ease of drawing the hand is relevant, too. In the beginning, with a standard 52 card deck, you can reliably draw one Flush every round (more than 98% of the time), but drawing a second Flush is not always possible. Over time, Standard Packs and Tarot cards warp your deck toward being able to play twice as many Flushes per round, up to 4 Flushes per round. That's actually pretty good /scaling/.
However, +2 Mult from each Jupiter card is not generally enough for you to rely on Base Mult alone. On top of that, the Jokers which reward you for going all in on one suit don't scale. Moreover, you might be able to guarantee a Flush every round, but can you guarantee a Spade Flush? You might be able to guarantee multiple Flushes every round, but can you guarantee all of them are Spade Flushes?
Anyway, a Flush build will typically rely on the same scaling +Mult Jokers that the Pairs build uses. In that context, the difference in Mult between Jupiter and Mercury is "overridden" by the +60 to +80 Mult of your +Mult Joker. Then, the two Hands score roughly the same number of points since both Planet cards give the same number of Chips. This is where I usually say, if they score the same number of points, why struggle to play three Flushes when you can always play four, or sometimes more, Pairs?
Even in the best case scenario, playing on the Checkered. Let's say you are guaranteed your four Flushes every round. This typically requires a non-trivial amount of work. Suppose you have 4 Spades and one Gold card. To dig for your last Spade, you can only Discard 3 cards at a time. Or if you have two Gold cards (or other valuable cards such as Blue Seals), you can only Discard 2 cards at a time. You have a "good enough" chance to hit that Spade, but even if you hit it, you're only drawing 2 cards, and you're not digging deep enough in your deck to draw your third Gold card (or other valuable card like a Purple or Gold Seal).
When you're playing Pairs, you can always discard 5 at a time. You can always play 5 at a time. You always get to see the top 35 cards of your deck. And if your deck is less than 40 cards, you get to touch all of them every round. This makes Gold cards, Lucky cards, Purple Seals, Gold Seals, and Blue Seals wildly more effective. When you open Standard Packs and see this value generators, you can pick them up without consequence. Pairs are "resistant" to deck bloat (in contrast to the Flush build needing to play more conservatively here).
As a final note, Flushes also "scale" into higher-scoring Flush-variants (via Tarot cards and other deck building reources). More than 90% of my Flush builds end with Flush Houses because they score way more points, even at low Planet levels.
I am not skipped, Skyler. I am the skips! A mult joker comes out of the buffoon pack and is supposed to outscale me? No. I am the one who scales!
*Shows the smallest flipped joker
"I can tell this is square joker because this is not ethernal"😂
It could’ve been a hologram as well. 50/50
delayed squarification
Squelayed gratification
I know its just expected that you win on this channel so its to the audience its usually no surprise when you do, but the first run was phenomenally played and a visually difficult one with little margin for error. Also missed the classic “this is how u can tell this is the square joker” 😭😭😭
They aren't all bangers. But every once in a while, there's a little spice.
40:35 Noooooooo, dont skip negative inwisible 😭😭😭
Omg
4:44 I would have never in a million years spent $6 of my $7 on an eternal gift card in this spot. Another card I’ve been underrating, apparently
Good point on the Square Joker I didn't even think about that.
Nice, always looking for tips on abandoned deck. Can’t wait to dig in this evening!
Mmmmm, this might not be the vid for that. Don't try this at home, kids.
@ hahaha. 18+ advanced moves, got it!
😂@@drspectred
Ha, I just finished my last gold stake deck with Square boy & the Burnt Joker. Proper blokes, those two
22:25 bless u
37:25 why didnt you take brainstorm but opted for a card shark? trading the swashbonkler for brainstorm would have allowed to grow the hologram by .5 each round by copying certificate, and you had 19 base mult of pairs at the moment, which multiplied by 3.25 (value of hologram at the time) 2 times (and again, the scaling of hologram was going to grow bigger faster than the swashbonkler's from that point on) is actually bigger than the swashbonkler + hologram combo. Genuinely curious.
It was close enough (and the run was near enough to the end) that I didn't want to fuss with the mental math. If the plan was to survive for much longer (or the choice was presented much earlier in the run), then it would've been worth it to think harder about it.
Thanks for the clarification I appreciate. Figured it was the case but wanted to hear your thought process. Cheers doc.
Can confirm that "blue seal OP" is not predicated on any luck or inconsistency in obtaining them. Nor is Doc-level money management required to make it consistent. I regularly throw runs because of poor money management, but usually see a blue seal
Am I the only one who has runs where celestial packs show up nonstop while the others are elusive? The only sketchy tendency I can identify is spending early money on a standard pack that doesn't pay off, otherwise I'm never lucky.
are squimbo and grimbo enemies or lovers? odd todd and even steven are canon soo
enemies to lovers
24:00-24:10 what are the odds?
Regarding my statements about blue seals, it's getting the first one that poses the biggest challenge. Unless I've missed something, standard/spectral packs and certificate are the only means of getting seals, and I get skunked on packs pretty often. I'll take your advice about using purple seals to get more tarot cards to copy blue seal once I have one.
finally won gold stakes on all decks! you need a tutoril on how to win Black deck gold stakes WITHOUT Riffraff
Sidenote: is it possible to tell if it's the square joker if you have an eternal one??
one thing that wonks me out is, "just x2"??? what? x2 is really good and putting in a lot of work for it seems fine to me considering if you don't score enough chips, you die, and square joker is a *common.* besides, playing 4 cards isn't quite as good as playing 5 cards for digging purposes, but you *already* want to eventually dig a lot for seals and gold cards and stuff if you have stuff to find. something is lost by working with the square, but you're not paying $1 for every 4 chips on the square joker
he burgled all the x mult
i AM the one who scales.
24:00 is there some mechanic with the standard packs that the cards are associated with each other? The 1st one had 3 9s and the 2nd one had 3 3s. I don’t really think it’s exploitable if there is something there but seems… suspicious.
Probably not. The probability of getting 3 cards with a matching face value in a 3 card pack assuming they are truly random is 1 in 169, so getting 2 packs with matching face values is 1 in 28561. This is rare but not so rare that it would need additional mechanics to explain.
If it happened a third time then it's probably worth looking into, since at that point the odds are 1 in 4.8 million, which then becomes a little suspicious.
I know this isn't the best place to put this, but I couldn't think of a significantly better one:
I am currently watching the vod of your second Pokermon 2.0 stream and you are complaining about parasect being so bad. What if it scaled with energy cards such that it gains it's +0.6 per two pair played but it doesn't lose 0.6 more per hand w/o 2 pair, instead it loses 0.6 less (so 2.4) per hand w/o 2 pair. Also if parasect is too weak it could also just start at +3/-2 so it's a bit more forgiving.
wait why is red card *all the way at the top?* sure it scales fast but the cost is way high. my worldview is being shattered
Common misconception about the "cost."
In normal gameplay you should already open as many booster packs as you can afford. Definitely buy all boosters before doing any rerolling, which itself is less efficient. Most Standard Packs and Buffoon Packs will be "skippable." Celestials generally give you the Planet you want only 1/3 of the time. Arcana Packs are the hardest to pass on, but you likely still skip a good amount of the time.
When you add in the Red Card, it creates something from nothing. It gives you +Mult for the Booster Packs you were already going to skip anyway. Because it grows so fast (up to +6 per round), you don't need to skip any more than you would already.
The general rule is, don't spend money you don't have. Don't buy Booster Packs you can't afford. Don't skip when you wouldn't already skip. Just pretend like Red Card isn't there, and the natural growth rate is more than enough.
Related: my rule for Standard and Arcana Packs is, always take money.
And if you want to see all this in action, I've got a video for that: ua-cam.com/video/AN6zMHHZ1JM/v-deo.html
@@drspectred interesting! I got the "don't skip for red card" out of watching this video, you repeat it a few times. the cost I'm referring to is a lot more like the opportunity cost I was perceiving; I usually end up selling the red card for "better" scaling mult with how I play (making any investment feel wasted) and taking packs for red card when I'd rather be rerolling, but maybe shouldn't think of that as a cost. I didn't realize it until you pointed it out explicitly but money permitting you really don't skip packs! I hesitate to buy them pretty often; but over the past couple days watching you I've realized that I undervalue the ability of standard packs to give seals and gold cards in particular, undervalue planet cards when I'm playing hands lower than flushes, and undervalue tarot cards... probably because I'm not getting enough good stuff from standard packs to copy with death and make easier to find with hanged man lol. when I was starting off I gravitated toward rerolls, in retrospect I feel like I just didn't know how to use tarot cards effectively or how to really try to maximize digging for seals, and jokers are more likely to give you something you can ride to a lucky win. kinda put that all together in my head with your response - thank you so much for all the detail! you have such deep expertise in this game, it's why watching you is so much fun. I'll be sure to check out that video too, thanks!
I just shart mysefl
Why do you call steel blue seals 'zoolander'?
Cause both Zoolander 1 and 2 are great films.
Watch the movie Zoolander, then you will know the Blue Steel
@@Zugrwow no one can explain, you must watch. ;)
ua-cam.com/video/D519hT7-ytY/v-deo.htmlsi=SyDup9Nn8PKq0ecP