What Is An Overlay?

We’ve been reading about a lot of overlays lately at the different top poker sites, especially during their major weekly guaranteed tournaments. In case some of you don’t know what an overlay is, here is a brief explanation, including why it matters to you.

When a poker site offers a guaranteed prize pool, they’re expected that the buy-ins (minus the small fee tacked onto each buy-in) will add up to comprise the entire guaranteed amount. That’s why some sites advertise their guaranteed tournaments by saying: “At least” X-amount in winnings; because they (and you) are hoping that enough people sign up for the tournament that the sum of all the buy-ins totals some number much larger, even, than the guarantee.

When the opposite occurs, when not enough people sign up for a tournament for the buy-ins to cover the guarantee, that is called an “overlay”. When an overlay occurs, the poker site hosting the tournament has to cover the difference out of pocket.

What this means to you as a player is that you are competing against a smaller player pool (than the site had planned) for the same sized prize pool. Look at it this way: would you rather compete for a share of $50,000 against 500 opponents or against 300 opponents?

Another way many players look at the advantage of an overlay tournament is as getting more value for their buy-in that it’s supposed to be worth.

One way to look for overlays is to see how many players a tournament expects to draw and compare it against how many players have actually signed up. The wider the gap and the closer to the tournament the gap is, the better for you.

This is one way that the down economy has an upside for online poker players.