Humans are bad at probability. A true 25% chance doesn’t feel like what you think a 25% chance is.

If you have a different perception of a 25% chance based on whether the outcome is positive or negative, that’s pretty normal. Humans are subjective.

But games often lie about percentages to make them feel more right. A 95% chance to hit in fallout or xcom has a much higher than 95% chance in reality. Could be some probability fudging in this case in balatro too, would have to do statistics to be sure.