Big Overlays Expected on first Weekend of March

The weekends, especially Sunday, is the busiest time of the week for online poker sites. Recreational players have finished their working week and have more time to devote to mtts. Every site knows this and plans their tournament schedule accordingly, pushing up the guarantees at the weekend to attract more of those recs to play. 

It’s expected that sites will do this and players would be aghast if they didn’t. But some sites don’t always have the liquidity to match their ambitions and a regular Sunday can be hit or miss on some sites when it comes to covering these extended guarantees. 

When these same sites run special online series, they push the envelope even further, posting even bigger guarantees than usual. When this happens, the propensity for overlay increases and this is a perfect weekend for fining these opportunities, with several sites in the midst of online poker tournament series.

Last weekend the GG Masters Overlay Edition on GG Poker missed its guarantee by just over $750,000 and while there is nothing this weekend that can come close to matching that amount, there are several potential overlay opportunities around. 

In fact, GG Poker's overlay represented just under 8% of the total prize pool, but the online poker mtts which could overlay this Sunday have the potential to miss by a much bigger percentage, making them even better value than the GG Masters. 

There are three sites with tournaments that are highly likely to overlay this weekend. Here are the details.

Unibet Poker is in the midst of its 10th Anniversary Series which began on February 25th and concludes next weekend on March 11th. Although all three tournaments on the opening day of the series posted overlays, the two lower buy-in mtts only missed by a few players and the overlays were more than covered by the tournament fees. 

The higher buy-in €100 Kick-Off event missed its €25,000 guarantee by just over €2,000. Despite this slow start, almost every guarantee in the weekday events that followed have comfortably hit their guarantees. The only price point that has had any difficulty is €100, which has seen three out of four events post overlays.

The Series continues until March 11th and this middle weekend sees another €100 tournament take place, the Supernova, again with a €25,000 guarantee. But that isn’t even this weekend’s biggest series event, as the monthly €250 Supermoon has found its way into the schedule, which is to be expected, as its regular slot is the the first Sunday of the month. 

It usually carries a €40,000 guarantee, however for this special Anniversary Series edition, its been upped to €50,000. 

Last month the Supermoon missed its lower guarantee, but only just, by less than two buy-ins. Nevertheless it looks like a strong candidate for having the biggest overlay of the week on Unibet Poker.

As the only tournaments to have consistently had difficulties have been the €100 ones, it also seems likely that the Supernova will be a repeat of last week’s Kick Off mtt and may again post a small overlay.

Head of Unibet Poker Kris Bergvall seems quite happy with the way the festival is proceeding so far, commenting

The €100,000 Phase tournament that Bergvall refers to is the second part of Unibet Poker’s 10th Anniversary Celebration. €10 Phase 1 tournaments have been running daily since the beginning of February and will continue until March 17th, when Phase 2 begins. 

So far over 100 of these Phase 1s have taken place, with 132 players have made it through to Phase 2 already, contributing a total of €52,830 to the kitty. However with just over two weeks remaining and with two thirds of the Phase 1s already completed there is still a shortfall of €47,170 to overcome.

Unless there is a significant surge in participartion for the remaining Phase 1s, an overlay of between €5,000-€10,000 looks possible.

There’s still two weeks left to win your way into Phase 2. Most people leave it too late, but savvy value hunters think ahead and get themselves qualified well in advance. Don't be like most people, be like a savvy value hunter!

To take part in the Anniversary Series an account with Unibet Poker is required.

New players registering for Unibet Poker benefit from a no-deposit required bonus valued at €20, which includes €10 in tournament tickets and €10 in cash game tickets. 

Players who make a real money deposit receive €200 in bonus, which is released gradually when playing requirements are met. New accounts have 60 days from sign up to clear the bonus. To read more about this offer, check out our review of Unibet Poker.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a country that WPT Global accepts players from (sorry UK, hello Ireland) you can avail yourself of numerous overlays on a daily basis. Frequently there is great value in satellites, with 10-seat guarantee satellites into WPT Prime package satellites looking particularly juicy for overlay hunters. 

At present the site is running its first KO Series, which has $2m in guaranteed prize pools, including $250,000 for its $220 Main Event. There have been day 1s running all week for the main event and the Mini Main Event, which has a $75,000 assured prize money for a $22 buy-in. Both of these are ambitious targets for the site and look like very strong candidates for overlay value of the week.

The $220 main event has five starting days remaining and so far it has mustered just 475 entrants across all the starting days that have taken place so far. It needs 1,250 entries from all the starting days combined to reach that figure and it looks pretty unfeasible that it will get anywhere close to that target, barring a last minute giveaway of epic proportions. 

With most of the starting days this week generating under 100 entries, participation needs to increase by at least 75% in remaining day 1s in order to avoid an overlay. 

The $22 mini main needs even more players, 3,750 to be precise, to hit the $75,000 that WPT Global have assigned to it. This one is in an even more precarious position than the main event. Its day 2 takes place on Saturday afternoon and with just three starting days remaining for it there have been less than half the number of entries required to create a €75,000 prize pool. 

Over 2,000 entries are still needed and if it does get there, Family Fortunes’ Les Dennis circa the 1990s will give you the money himself!