first of all, this challenge is stupid hard and depends on many, many things all going in your favor to the extreme to even be REMOTELY winnable. so, if you don't get a good start, you are far better off just restarting until you do. that means-

if you can't win the first small bind in one hand, start over. a high straight, flush, or full house will work. getting all the money you can this first round means being able to afford that first voucher, and vouchers are vital for making the run winnable. (it also means getting your economy started effectively with interest- buy the first voucher after the SECOND blind so you can earn two dollars of interest first, otherwise you'll be broke next ante and that is very bad)

speaking of vouchers, if you beat the small blind in one hand, but your first voucher isn't a good one, i would also recommend restarting.

ideal vouchers (that i used to win) include;
telescope - ensures every planet pack has the one you need, and unlocks the following voucher
observatory - gain x1.5 mult if you have the planet card of your played hand in your consumable slots
grabber - gain 1 hand per round (just plain great both for getting the hand you need and for additional money per round, but also negates the negative effect of hieroglyph)
nacho tong - an additional 1 hand per round
hieroglyph - sets you back an ante at the cost of 1 hand per round (gives you more time to tailor your deck and acquire money/planets)

good vouchers (i didn't use them but they'd definitely help you);
petroglyph - sets you back an ante again, at the cost of 1 discard per round
wasteful - gain 1 discard per round (negates the negative effect of petroglyph, and is just useful for making sure you get the hand you need)
recyclomancy - an additional discard
tarot merchant - increases tarot card chance (since you are going to focus on one single hand type, planet cards in the shop usually won't be beneficial, but tarots almost always will)
tarot tycoon - same as above

bad vouchers (not worth buying even if you're rich and may actually hinder you);
seed money - increases the cap on interest per round (you will have to spend a lot to tailor your deck, so you probably won't be able to accrue or maintain the amounts needed to benefit from this)
money tree - same as above
planet merchant - increases the frequency of planet cards in the shop (packs are better since they are more likely to have what you need, and the individual cards will block possible tarots)
planet tycoon - same as above
magic trick - adds individual playing cards to the shop (just like with planets, you aren't as likely to get what you need as with tarots, so you don't want these blocking them in the shop)
illusion - same as above (except they now come with enhancements, which are good, but not worth it imo)
blank - would allow antimatter to show up, except antimatter is banned so this card is literally completely useless.

for visual folks, green circle means DEFINITELY buy, red x means definitely DON'T buy (and restart run if it's your first voucher), and neither of those means it might help but i didn't personally need it.






the following are the ones i actually won with.

money is the only means of leveling up your hand/deck, so spend wisely. make sure to win each round in as few hands as possible to get the money for unused hands, and try to maintain at least 20-25$ in your wallet at all times so that you can get as much interest as possible. with this method you'll earn 8-14$ per round, which is plenty to buy some packs/cards. if you dip under 20$, it should ONLY be for a VERY good voucher, or possibly planet packs if you have the telescope voucher already and are cutting it close each round.

cards that are visible in the shop or in your consumable area WILL NOT show up in packs (aside from the planet for your most played hand if you have the telescope voucher). it is a good idea to use this to your advantage, as in this challenge there are several possible tarot cards that are literally completely useless to you, and getting them means missing a valuable chance at an actually useful card. temperance (gives money based on jokers) and the wheel (enhances a joker) are both useless cards that you can hold onto to avoid getting them in packs.

however, it can also be quite a good strategy to keep actually good cards in your consumable area, such as justice (turns a card into glass) or strength (increases the rank of 1-2 cards by 1), to be used in an emergency if you don't draw the right cards. just don't hold onto them for so long that you prevent yourself from being able to get them in packs.

if you manage to get the observatory, having the card for your main hand will give you 1.5 xmult as if you had a steel card, without you needing to have any specific cards, just play the matching hand. this is HIGHLY useful in the endgame, but don't save a planet card for that if you aren't going to survive without using it normally.

to win this challenge you absolutely MUST focus your energy into one specific hand type, both so that you can maximize its base chips/mult with planets, and so you can tailor your deck for it right from the start. while having some extra levels in other hands can help in some tight spots in the early antes, focusing your funds into one hand ensures you are getting as much value as you possibly can, and you WILL need that in the later antes.

older guides recommended flushes as they are fairly high scoring right away and are generally the easiest hand to draw consistently. HOWEVER. there was an update that made it so straights gain more mult and chips than any other base hand per planet card used, and as such, they keep much better pace with the increasing blind difficulty, and just give you more value per planet in general. furthermore, with straights, all your high-rank cards will work, while with flushes, you have to thin not only the lower rank cards, but a great deal of high-rank cards as well, that aren't the right suit. and when the game is this hard, every chip counts, so you really want to be using those high-rank cards and thinning the lower ones as much as possible.

tldr; i won with straights. i recommend you also focus all your funds on leveling up straights. don't even bother with straight flushes- that adds a whole extra phase of deckbuilding that you most likely will not have time/money for with this challenge.

as you can see from my final hand info, i did spread the love around a LITTLE, but it's important to note that i only ever used non-straight hands in the early rounds, and rounds that i wound up re-doing because the paltry few upgrades simply weren't enough to matter. do NOT spend past your interest buffer on hands other than your main. (all the high card hands were me just running out of discards and using hands AS discards as a result)

while you may be able to win with a hand other than a straight, you will not win without tailoring your deck with a ton of enhancements, to make up for the lack of joker bonuses.

the most important of these enhancements are +mult and glass. steel and lucky can also be good, and of course you want red seals wherever you can get them, but mainly on the glass, as xmult will give you way more mult than flat +mult will. (say you have 10 base mult. a red seal on a +mult card will give you 8 additional mult, but a red seal on glass will turn that 10 mult into 40 mult. and the xmult becomes stronger as you level up your base mult, while the +mult card will only ever give 4-8 mult.) so buy tarot packs and reroll the shop every chance you get.

thinning your deck is also vital for ensuring that you can consistently draw the hand you've been leveling up. i recommend hanging/converting all cards of rank 5 and below (not counting aces), as that leaves you room to get straights without face cards if you happen to get unlucky with the boss blinds, and you want as many chips as you can get, so lower ranks are annoying. if you are going for flushes instead of straights, i still recommend the same, but also, only thin your suits down to two, not one, in case you run into a boss blind that debuffs one of them.

if playing straights, when taking new cards from packs, and when converting cards with death, check your full deck to make sure you are distributing your cards evenly. you want 5-7 of each rank, not 10 of one and 3 of each of the others (that would benefit pairs, but pairs don't scale well and take longer to tailor your deck to, so i don't recommend them for this challenge).

my final deck below, except there were two glass cards that saved my entire run, but perished in the process. i believe a 10 and a 9.

and lastly, if you don't mind cheesing the game a little (and let's be real, it's cheesing you by being so damned rng-reliant and voiding a load-bearing mechanic, so it's only fair), you can backup your save so that you can reload and retry if you screw up or the rng screws you.

the files you are looking for are;

meta - this is your collection data
profile - this is your win count and other profile info
save - this is your current run

and are located in appdata - roaming - balatro - (some number based on which profile it is, default is 1)



i recommend creating a backup folder for the start of every ante/at the end of each boss(in the shop) at minimum, so that if you wind up getting awful draws at the next boss, you can start that ante over and skip one of the first blinds so that you get the draws from it for the boss instead. (yes, what cards you draw and what shows up in the shop are based on round/visit number, not which blind it is)

make sure to CLOSE the game before you overwrite the game's files with your backup, to prevent unintended nonsense like increasing your win count artificially and stuff like that.

also note if you are struggling with antes 1-4, you should probably just let yourself lose and start a new run. savescumming with this challenge only really helps once you've got a good run going and just need a little help with saving some money here or there (open a pack, see if it has something you want or not, reload if not so you didn't waste that money), or enabling you to try different hands so you can win without sacrificing glass cards needlessly (or doing tons of math). it won't magically turn a bad run into a good one.