GPT-6 Astra Bot Defeats Balatro’s Toughest Gold Stake Black Deck

A Reddit user has shared details of a new bot that has beaten the devilishly difficult Gold Stake Black Deck in Balatro, a poker-like video game. The Redditor, who works in the AI industry, says that they have been testing the bot and "obtaining some crazy results" — and they've even shared a YouTube video highlighting how they went about creating the card shark of a bot.

In a post in the /balatro subreddit, user Atol8 (real name Jacopo Attolini) initially claimed the bot was the first of its kind to reliably beat Balatro. They subsequently admitted that "reliably might be a strong word," adding that the bot has "repeatedly beaten Balatro."

Beating Balatro in this instance meant beating the Gold Stake Black Deck, a combination that is widely considered to be the most difficult in the game. On its own, the Black Deck includes +1 Joker slot, but reduces the player's available hands by one per round. The Gold Stake effect introduces cumulative difficulty modifiers from all prior stakes, plus reduced hand sizes and stricter economic penalties.

Combining these two together makes for a brutal economy and more than a little luck, with players relying on strong early-game RNG.

In a post in the /balatro subreddit, user Atol8 (real name Jacopo Attolini) initially claimed the bot was the first of its kind to reliably beat Balatro. They subsequently admitted that "reliably might be a strong word," adding that the bot has "repeatedly beaten Balatro."

Beating Balatro in this instance meant beating the Gold Stake Black Deck, a combination that is widely considered to be the most difficult in the game. On its own, the Black Deck includes a +1 Joker slot, but reduces the player's available hands by one per round. The Gold Stake effect introduces cumulative difficulty modifiers from all prior stakes, plus reduced hand sizes and stricter economic penalties.

Combining these two together makes for a brutal economy and more than a little luck, with players relying on strong early-game RNG.

The bot itself is based on OpenAI's Astra models, which were released earlier this month. GPT-6 Astra has already grabbed headlines, having completed Valve's iconic Portal in 24 hours.

In a GitHub post detailing the ins and outs of the bot, Attolini says that GPT-6 Astra takes care of making strategic decisions based on the deck it has built. But the bot also relies on good old Python for its numerical tools. The legality of each move is assessed by BalatroBot, a separate tool that exposes Balatro game states and controls for external programs to interact with.

As impressive as this is, don't be fooled into thinking this bot played the perfect game. Reddit commenters have been quick to point out that it made some "interesting blunders" throughout its playthrough. Despite that, GPT-Astra is OpenAI's latest flagship model, with the company claiming it offers “a new generation of intelligence,” and “is state-of-the-art on computer use, browsing, software engineering, cybersecurity, science, and professional work.”

Not all bots are great at playing games, though. Just last year, OpenAI's ChatGPT "got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level” while playing Atari Chess. Elsewhere, Google's Gemini didn't even get as far as starting its own chess battle with the Atari 2600 — it ditched the game after deciding that it would "struggle immensely" against the iconic home console. It seems that, sometimes at least, even modern tech can't compete with a 1979 Atari 2600 game.

Oliver Haslam has written about technology of all shapes and sizes for over 15 years, both online and in print. He's fascinated by how personal computing continues to change as tower PCs give way to foldable phones and beyond.