Not all tournaments have prize pool guarantees, but when they do, it is the responsibility of the tournament operator or poker site to ensure that the prize money paid out is equal to the guarantee. 

When the number amount of money accumulated through tournament entries falls short of the guarantee, the difference is called the overlay and is covered by operator of the tournament, to ensure that the prize money paid out equals the size of the guarantee.

There’s no central hub for alerting players to overlays, but our team are here to keep you updated on tournaments that are overlaying. In general we ae looking to point out tournaments that are behaving in one or more of the following ways:

We will be scouring the sites on a regular basis to look for overlays worth pointing out. This page will be updated weekly with new information from some of the world’s major online poker sites. 

1. Newer online poker sites are most likely to be the ones that you will find value in the form of overlays in their mtt schedule. Its an almost unavoidable growing pain for new sites as they can have relatively shallow tournament player pools until they increase their regular daily traffic. Early adopters get the most benefit, so don’t leave it too long, as when a site grows, the number of tournaments that overlay will become fewer and further between.

2. The more ambitious sites will embrace overlay and continually push the boundaries, increasing guarantees as they grow to maintain overlay in many tournaments on the schedule. It’s a nice strategy and one that any serious mtt player will enjoy taking advantage of. 

3. Usually its the rake (or tournament fees) that is the hardest part to beat, given that its between 8-12% of the buy-in, in most mtts. If the overlay is more than the amount the site is making in rake, this is when real value comes into play.

As a rule of thumb, look for overlays that represent more than 10% of the prize pool, a these are the ones that have not covered the prize pool and are having money added by the site to cover the shortfall. These are the creme de la creme of overlay tournaments and are the most sought after by value hunters.

4. You won’t always hear about overlays unless you go and look for them yourself. Why? Because if a value hunter tells someone else about an overlay, they will likely come and join the tournament as well, therefore reducing the amount that the original value hunter benefits from the value on offer. Its the nature of overlays, nobody tells others about it!

5. If a tournament has late registration, be aware that what looks like a potential overlay very probably isn’t going to be an overlay. Poker sites are pretty clued up about how many players will enter a tournament and set late registration accordingly to help meet the guarantee. There will often be satellites running after the start of a tournament and the number of seats awarded in these should be added to the current number playing in order to get a clearer picture of how much money is in the prize pool.

6. Re-entry is also a factor, as tournaments have different rules on how many are allowed. Some are freezeouts and offer a single bullet to each player with no possibility to re-buy or re-enter. Others allow a limited number of re-entries, maybe 1, 2, 3 or more. Finally there are some tournaments for which the number or re-entries is unlimited.

7. Start time also comes into play, as when there are fewer players on the site, the more likely tournaments are to overlay. Morning and early afternoon tournaments can often be more prone to overlay than those during peak hours.

8. Mullti-starting-day (phase tournaments) can also sometimes look like they might overlay, but often it can be that the site has not listed all the starting days in the client, or could add more to the number already scheduled. Phase tournaments can be gold mines for overlay, but sites have tools at their disposal to minimise the damage from poorly performing tournaments, such as giving away tickets to mega satellites that dump huge number of players into the tournament and promoting the tournament via last minute marketing campaigns. Look out for added value from sites in the shape of free tickets to satellites into big guarantee events, as sites like to juice up big events via player rewards.

9. Satellites also present overlay opportunities, as some sites also intentionally add seats to satellites, or put very big guarantees on them, especially if they are for tagret events that have ambitiuous guarantees themselves. Look out for these also.

10. Above all, remember that you can't eat value. You only benefit from an overlay theoretically and in order to make that a reality you need to cash, so don't forget to study and improve continuously, or you will become the value that other players seek out.

Another site that is growing and is ambitious enough to push the boundaries when it comes to overlays. They love overlays almost as much as we do. They even have a promotion called “Lets Bump It Up” in which  certain tournaments will have their guarantees raised by a minimum of 10% every time they meet their guarantee. This started off as a limited time promotion last summer but has been received so well that it has been continued and the guarantees continue to grow and when they do, they are very likely to experience overlay for a few days afterwards.

These are the six tournaments that form a part of this promotion. Three of them take place daily and three of them are Sunday specials. Most of them have experienced significant guarantee growth since the promotion was launched.

If you're yet to join this global poker room, use the WPT Global promo code NEWBONUS when registering to claim your welcome bonus.

As the biggest online site in the world, GG Poker usually meets its guarantees, but not always. Occasionally there will be underperforming tournaments that offer a bit of value, but GG Poker also sometimes deliberately runs tournaments that will overlay or are likely to do so.

New players can use the GGPoker bonus code newbonus when registering to get started with a $600 deposit match.