Missed it by that much
Last year, GGPoker’s GGMasters anniversary event did not go so well, as technical problems caused the tournament to be canceled. This year, it wasn’t great for GGPoker for different reasons, as it ended with an overlay of $1.8 million, the largest overlay in online poker history.
The sixth anniversary event had an aggressive $10 million guaranteed prize pool, meaning that GGPoker needed 72,464 entries at a $150 price point ($138 went to the prize pool) to avoid overlay. The turnout was excellent, as the tourney attracted 59,480 entries, but that was still about 13,000 fewer than the poker room needed.
As such, GGPoker had to pony up $1,791,760 to meet the $10 million guarantee.
It is entirely possible that GGPoker fully anticipated this and considers the $1.8 million overlay a sort of marketing expense. It draws attention and could bring in more players looking for extra equity.
Nice equity you’ve got there
In fact, GGPoker has a history of encouraging overlay. In both 2023 and 2024, it ran the GGPoker GGMasters “Overlay Edition,” and as coincidence (or not) would have it, both were structured exactly the same as GGMasters sixth anniversary event: $10 million guaranteed prize pool with a $150 buy-in.
In 2023, the Overlay Edition ended up with a $1.08 million overlay, while last year, the overlay was $768,628.
The previous online poker overlay record was set in 2024 in the $120 PokerBaazi GOAT, which had a $2.975 guarantee, but got hit with a $1.4 million overlay. Before that, it was PokerStars, which had to handle a $1.23 million overlay in its 2020 The Big Blowout, which had a $5 million guarantee.
The $1.8 million is a healthy chunk of change, but still only ranks third on the all-time overlay list for any poker tournament, live or online. Second place goes to the 2023 $10,400 WPT World Championship, which had a $40 million guarantee and a $2.4 million overlay.
That almost beat the record holder, the 2014 $5,300 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open. The poor organizers of that tournament offered a $10 million guarantee and had to dish out $2.5 million in overlay.
