Balatro having an 18+ age rating is insane. The only thing gambling about that game is it uses poker hands for scoring, and has an element of luck. How is that different to any other mobile game with a luck component (see 99% of them) with a scoring mechanism inspired by poker?

To me gambling requires betting of long term/valuable resources. In Balatro, the only thing that you'll affect is each individual run, you're back to square one after each as it's a rouguelike. Games like Clash Royale where you can spend actual money on chests for items that affect the game long term, not just for a single match, to me is actual gambling, whereas playing a poker hand using fake chips that only affects that single <1h run absolutely isn't.

It looks like whoever came up with the ratings just saw it uses poker hands for scoring and represents a score with chips, therefore it's gambling, and gave it an 18+ rating, when you're not actually gambling anything (either real world money, or long term items in the game)