Overlay Poker Tournaments

There are common tournaments, especially online, where the poker room has the ability to get the overlay amount back from the players during raked hands and other taxes employed by them. Some of you might actually be wondering what I’m talking about, because you never heard about overlay poker tournaments. Well, let me describe the process of an overlay tournament.

In an overlay tournament there is a guaranteed prize pool. If the number of entrants times the buy-in does not reach the guaranteed prize pool, the overlay is the difference between the two. For example, if there is a 1000 dollar guaranteed prize pool with a 20 dollar buy in and only 45 players, the overlay amount is 100 dollars, the difference between the total income from buy-ins and the guaranteed prize pool.

This type of tournaments is quite common, but not as common as the normal ones any way. Overlay tournaments are well known by players and very much appreciated because they know what they are paying for (the buy-in), as opposed to the other tournaments that might not be worth the investment when only 40 players turn up and you had to pay 100 dollars in buy-in that you can’t get back. It is known world wide that professional poker players don’t like to risk their money for a small possible win.

In overlay poker tournaments, even though they have a guaranteed prize pool, the site rarely has to cover the overlay because there are so many players signing up for the tournament that they actually have to go over the guaranteed prize pool. That is the kind of tournament that players are looking for. They know what the minimum prize pool is, but they also know that there is a very large chance that the prize-pool can double or even triple until registration period ends.

So, if you are a rookie poker player and you are looking for a good tournament to start with, you should look for overlay poker tournaments because you at least know what kind of money you are aiming for. When you calculate the amount of money you can possibly win, considering the buy-in, it is always nice to know how much money there is in the prize pool. In the end I can only suggest these tournaments, especially for rookies, and I also recommend to not look too much to these kind of tournaments long before they start. A lot of times you might think that the tournament will have a lot of overlay because so few players are registered. Most of the time these tournaments DO fill up at the last moment.

You might think now: where can I find these tournaments with big overlay? Well, I suggest you take a look at the ‘smaller’ poker sites. Often they try to attract new players with big guaranteed tournaments, but their player base is just not big enough. A good example is Winner Poker. This poker room is relatively new and does have a lot of players already, but they have so many guaranteed tournaments that at certain times they just don’t fill up. A smart poker player will always go for that angle!

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