Best Overlay in Online Poker Guaranteed Tournaments

Best Overlay in Online Poker Guaranteed Tournaments

When you look at the “Guaranteed” poker tournaments that all online poker rooms offer, the first thing that most people look at is the buy-in versus the prize money guarantee to see how cheaply they can get in. But that is not the most important factor, because most of the time, the tournaments with small buy-ins and high prize money will end up seeing huge fields of players. At the end, the number of players multiplied with the buy-in in most cases will at least be equal to the prize money. That means that the prize money guarantee serves only one function, namely to attract lots of players to that tournament (and to the poker room of course).

The real advantage lies in the so-called overlay, that some tournaments regularly have.
So what does overlay mean? Very simple, it is the prize money added by the poker room itself. To give you an example: if a tournament has a buy-in of $50, and the prize money guarantee is $10,000, for the poker room to break even, they need 200 registrations for the tournament (not counting the “juice”, or tournament fee). Now if for this tournament the number of registrations would just be 150 players, that would normally make for a prize money of $7,500. The difference of $2,500 is what the poker room adds to the prize money, and from the point of view of the player, this is the overlay. This is the equivalent of having good pot odds in a drawing hand, applied to a poker tournament with a prize money guarantee.

Having an overlay in a tournament gives the player an advantage because of the good relation between buy-in, prize money and number of players competing, thus increasing his statistical chances to make a profit. It is similar to having good pot odds for calling with a drawing hand.
This kind of overlay also occurs often in Rebuy tournaments, when weak players make late rebuys, thus increasing the prize money pot, without having a serious chance of ending in the money.
The real big tournaments rarely have such overlays, but in small to medium size tournaments one can very often find such overlays. Also, when a room is relatively new, it often offers guraranteed tournaments to attract players. Those tournaments tend to have less players and big overlays.

At the moment, the tournaments with the best chances to get a decent overlays are:

888 Poker Sunday $ 50.000 Challenge, on Sunday 13:36 ET or 18:35 GMT, buyin is $ 75, player numbers usually around 500 – very nice overlay and weak competition, lots of casino customers without poker skills!
Click here to download 888 Poker now, and use coupon code 341707 for their $400 up to 100% bonus. By the way, you get 25% of that bonus immediately after deposit!

Party Poker’s $50.000 Guaranteed on Saturday, 15:00 ET or 20:00 GMT, with a buy-in of 320$. Because of the rather high buy-in, not too many players show up – but you can play one of the many satellites for a seat in this tournament, get in cheap and then use the overlaya to cash in!
Download PartyPoker here, and make sure you get the full $500 100% max. bonus using bonus code PKR100.