Until this weekend, I don’t think I’ve ever seen almost every Sunday tournament sport an overlay. If you’ve read these online tournament recaps before, you’ll know how important an overlay is to extracting the maximum amount of value from a tournament. An overlay means that the guaranteed prize pool of a tournament exceeds the actual prize pool. For example, if 1,000 poker players bought in for $200, the actual prize pool would be $200,000. If the tournament guaranteed $250,000, it would sport a $50,000 overlay. Now that you’re caught up on these definitions, let’s take a look at the action from this past weekend across the major online poker sites.
In the Absolute Poker $150,000 Guaranteed tournament, 267 entrants shoveled out $530 to enter. The Saturday tournament had a $17,000 overlay, the first of several major tournaments this weekend to fail to reach its prize pool. You may be wondering why so many tournaments would fall short of their guarantees. The answer: The 2008 World Series of Poker. The Main Event kicks off on Thursday and plays down to nine players on July 14th. Prior to this grueling 11-day tournament, many of the top poker players spent the weekend either at the Rio in Las Vegas playing in other WSOP events or relaxing prior to their charge through the Main Event.
The Bodog $100K Guaranteed brought in a field of 703 entrants, each at a $100+9 buy-in. Get your graphing calculator out and do the math. 703 entrants multiplied by a $100 buy-in means the actual prize pool was $70,300. This means that the overlay was $30,000, which has been fairly standard for this tournament over the past few months. Winning $23,600 for first place was floppedout. Winning $13,600 for second place was pokerarg. The top five players took home at least $5,000.
The Party Poker $300K Guaranteed is a $200+15 buy-in tournament is one of the most popular weekly tournaments for non-U.S. players (Party Poker does not accept U.S. customers). A two-way chop meant that jackrich000 took home $51,664 and thorburn87 cashed for $47,336. The top finishes cashed for at least $10,000.
The Full Tilt Poker $750K Guaranteed, the second largest weekly tournament offered next to the PokerStars Sunday Million, saw a field of 3,566 players. It boasted an overlay of around $40,000. Taking home $132,788 for first place was phatchoy888. Finishing in second place was GBecks, who won $80,250. The top four players parlayed their $200+16 buy-in into more than $30,000.
The PokerStars Sunday Million had a large field of 6,521 entrants. Though slightly smaller than typical fields, the 6,521 entrants generated a $1.3 million prize pool. GoMukYaSelf finished first, taking home $162,112. Taking home just over $110,000 for second place was supadphat. The top four players had over a $50,000 payday.
The WSOP Main Event will take place over this weekend, meaning smaller tournament fields will exist for at least one more weekend. Make sure to take advantage of the overlays on your favorite online poker room.
