Poker tournament specialists love them some overlay. Who doesn’t, really? It’s can be tough to find online tourneys with overlay nowadays, as online poker rooms know what they are doing. But GGPoker’s GGMasters Overlay Edition, which wrapped up this week, was made for overlay. It is in the name, after all. And overlay it had, falling short of the $10 million guaranteed prize pool by more than three-quarters of a million dollars.
The event was a freezeout, so GGPoker was unable to benefit from players firing multiple bullets. Once registration closed, an impressive 66,894 people had entered the $150 tournament. Take away the $12 from each entry that GGPoker took as a fee, and you get a prize pool of $9,231,372, which is $768,628 of the $10 million guarantee.
But because GGPoker understands the dictionary definition of the word “guarantee,” it set the prize pool at an even $10 million, thus providing an extra benefit of $11.49 per person. That’s not bad! Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone was getting eleven and a half bucks without having to do anything, but those who did cash won more than they would have had there been no guarantee.
A natural question one might ask is: “GGPoker had to have known that there was going to be overlay. Why would they willingly lose money like that?”
First, yes, GGPoker definitely knew it was going to have to pony up some of the buy-in. Again, I’ll direct you to the name of the tournament, which is the GGMasters Overlay Edition. Last year’s overlay was over $1 million.
The reason GGPoker is fine with it is because it’s really just a marketing expense. Companies spend money to acquire and retain customers and this is what the poker room is doing. Players are attracted to the opportunity to play in a huge tournament with a big overlay – some are new players and some are players that haven’t been around in a while. For some, it will be a one-off and they will head back to their regular poker room or no poker room at all. But some will stay, play in other tournaments and cash games, and generate rake for GGPoker.
It’s a form of goodwill, as well. Regulars may opt to stay loyal to GGPoker because they see the poker room willingly take a financial hit to benefit players. Now, I’m not saying that GGPoker is doing this out of the goodness of their corporate heart – it is marketing, after all – but $700,000+ in overlay is certainly better than none.