Name: A tournament overlay, more prize money guaranteed than was collected, ‘Value City’.
Age: Around 25.
Appearance: A poker tournament with plenty of nervous operators, and lots of excited players (though not quite enough of them).
Is this something to do with those horrible casino carpets? You’re thinking of underlay.
Is it that screen that streamers use, showing annoying animations anytime they get a new sub? That’s a different type of overlay. A tournament overlay is when a tourney guarantees a certain amount of prize money, but doesn’t get enough entries to cover it.
So what happens then? The organizer has to foot the bill for the shortfall.
Sounds good for the players! It is, but obviously not great for the operators. Just ask GGPoker, whose $150 GGMasters Anniversary tournament fell short of its $10 million guarantee yesterday. They needed 72,464 runners; they got 59,480. The result was the biggest overlay in online poker history.
Where does the extra money come from, and where does it go? The tourney ended up $1,791,760 short of the $10M promised, and so GGPoker had to raid the kitty to find the extra money. Remember, though, that thanks to tournament fees they won’t be on the hook for the whole amount — including fees there was over $8.9M collected for yesterday’s event, so GG is ‘only’ around $1.1M down. As far as where the extra money went — it was shared out among those who cashed.
That seems like a great reason to play? And yet, not enough did. A tournament guarantee is a fine balancing act to pull off: operators promote the big money on offer which, usually, creates the interest needed to deliver on the promise. A big overlay is indeed a major draw, which paradoxically works to reduce the shortfall as more players register to take advantage of it.
So what went wrong? Hard to say. GGPoker explicitly lists any overlay in the tournament lobby, which highlights the added value for players and makes it easy to spot when guarantees aren’t met.
Tournament guarantees are pretty risky, then? They can be, but they’re a great way to drum up business. They hark back to the early 2000s when online poker was first on the rise and sites were competing ferociously for players.
Is it just an online thing? Heck no. The biggest overlays have actually been in live events, most notably the 2014 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open, a $5,300 tourney with a $10M guarantee. It ended up short by over $2.5M.
Sounds painful. Not for Daniel Colman, who won it for $1.4M. But no one who advertises tourney guarantees is immune: even major operators like the WPT and WSOP have fallen afoul of the dreaded overlay when they’ve set their sights slightly too high.
Would GGPoker have seen this coming? For sure. GG has used overlays as a marketing tool. The 2023 and 2024 editions of the GGMasters Anniversary tournaments were even billed as ‘Overlay Editions.’ They didn't leave GGPoker on the hook for this much, though.
Couldn't they have just pulled the plug? Yes, although the ethics of pulling or cancelling a tournament that is likely to overlay, or adjusting the guarantee after it's been confirmed, are sketchy to say the very least. You’re much more likely to find it happening at a smaller live venue, operating on finer profit margins, than with a major brand. It reflects very poorly on the organizers, while paying out an overlay is good — if expensive — publicity.
What can sites do if they see an overlay looming? You might find a few more starting flights added to the schedule to give more players a chance to play, or a flurry of last-minute satellites aimed at filling the seats.
And what should players do? Register to play, of course! But maybe keep it to yourself — the more that join you, the less of an overlay there’ll be.
Do say: “All publicity is good publicity.”
Don’t say: “Yesterday’s publicity budget was $1.1 million.”
Featured image created using AI.
