Pay once and just play poker
In one of the more upfront and anticipatory names for an online poker tournament we have ever seen, GGPoker announced on Monday the GGMasters Overlay Edition tourney, set for Sunday, March 20. The $150 event comes with a stunning $5 million guaranteed prize pool.
And therein lies the reason for the tournament’s name. $5 million clams is a hefty guarantee, but we have seen numbers like that before in online poker. Not all that often, but we’ve seen them. What really makes the GGMasters event stand out is that it is a freezeout tournament. Over the last several years, the vast majority of big (and small, really) tournaments, both online and live, have become re-entry events. The reason for that is simple: tournament organizers can advertise larger guarantees because they know they will get enough re-entries to cover them, which attracts more players, which increases the number of entries, which builds the prize pool, which makes for great advertising for the next one, and so on and so forth.
But because this specific tournament is a freezeout, it is extremely unlikely that it will hit the guarantee. In fact, let’s be confident: there will be an overlay.
Enjoy your overlay
Assuming the breakdown of the tournament price is the same as another $150 tournament in the currently-running GGMasters series, $138 goes to the prize pool and $12 goes to the house as an entry fee. Thus, to avoid an overlay, GGPoker would have to attract 36,232 players. This is not a particularly expensive tournament as far as online poker tourneys go (though still above my bankroll), but it is hard to imagine GGPoker being able to bring in over 36,000 players willing to pay $150.
Poker Hall of Famer and GGPoker ambassador Daniel Negreanu feels the same way, saying on the GGPoker blog, “$150 buy-in. $5,000,000 guaranteed. No rebuys. There’s no way this tournament is not going to have an overlay!”
As such, GGPoker is calling the GGMasters Overlay Edition the biggest “value” tournament of all time.
The poker room is going to do its best to accommodate all players from around the world with three different starting flights on March 20, depending on one’s region. The Asia Flight will begin at 12:00 UTC, the Europe Flight will be at 17:00 UTC, and the Americas Flight will start at 22:00 UTC. Day 2 will be on March 21 at 17:00 UTC.
Satellites for the GGMasters Overlay Edition begin on Wednesday, February 16, with buy-ins starting as low as $2.