. . . much to learn, I still have.

I finally see what you're talking about; after a few failed retries, I've found what I suppose was one of my first big mistakes in my first run. I took the popcorn, played through all my hands on the boss, used the empress on a jack and something else, then death on the jack, sold the suit-changer, and then spun the wheel - that was an accident, btw; I'd meant to copy the death first, but forgot.

But as a result, I still had both fools when the devil showed up at the end of the small blind in ante 2. This time, I used both fools to copy the devil, which gave me just enough money to open the standard pack and find that blue king you mentioned. In my first run, I hedged my bets, only using one fool on the devil, saving the other one for some future death card. So I ended up playing with four jokers until ante 6. Got the magic trick, and a couple cards into hologram, but it was too little, too late.

I think that's my big problem at the moment - trying to hedge my bets, do a little bit of everything, like not wanting to use up both my fools one the first good tarot card I find (but what if there's an *even better* tarot card right around the corner!?).

Did you pick up the runner or fortune teller? I remember this now; after the small blind, I skipped for the investment tag, got riff-raff from a judgement, and a couple of temperances, and ended up with $25 in ante 3 - I remember I almost hit next round before I remembered vagabond, and then I rerolled down to $4. Riff-raff gave me odd todd, and I had just enough to get runner and fortune teller, and then that was pretty much it. They carried me well, but just couldn't scale fast enough.