Which Poker Sites Have the Most Overlays? (Live Data)

Which Poker Sites Have the Most Overlays

If you've ever wondered which poker site is worth camping in the lobby for, the honest answer is that it changes by the hour. But averaged out over months of scanning, some networks throw off far more overlays than others, and the gap is not small. Below is live data pulled from Profitmaxxer's scanner, which checks 12 poker networks every 30 seconds and logs every tournament where the guaranteed prize pool exceeds the buy-ins collected.

An overlay means the site (or the recreational players who registered) is subsidizing the prize pool. Every overlay tournament is mathematically +EV to enter relative to a break-even structure, before you even factor in skill edge. For a full walkthrough of how to spot these yourself, see How to Find Poker Tournament Overlays.

Live Overlay Instance Count by Network

This table reflects overlay instances detected per network since the scanner went live. Instance count answers "which site has the most overlays" more directly than total dollar value, since one huge guarantee can skew a dollar total without meaning the site overlays often.

888poker currently leads by a wide margin, with GGPoker and WPT Global close behind each other for second place. Together these three networks account for roughly 75% of every overlay instance logged. iPoker Network is also scanned but doesn't break out separately in this snapshot; it makes up the remainder of the 78,265 total instances across all 12 networks.

Across 191 days of scanning, the totals are:

• Total overlay found: $47,452,739
• Overlay instances: 78,265
• Unique tournaments affected: 14,120
• Average overlay per instance: roughly $606
• Average per day: $248,443

These numbers update daily and you can check the current live count yourself at profitmaxxer.com/stats.

Why 888poker and GGPoker Overlay So Often

Instance count tracks reg volume as much as it tracks how "leaky" a site is. 888poker and GGPoker run enormous tournament schedules with recurring low and mid stakes events, so there are simply more chances per day for a field to fall short of its guarantee. Americas Cardroom overlays less often but tends to produce the biggest single overlays, because its OSS and OSSXL series carry very large guarantees relative to typical field size.

The Biggest Single Overlays Caught So Far

This is the core reason instance count and dollar total tell different stories. A site can overlay rarely but hit huge when it does, which is exactly what happens during Americas Cardroom's series weeks.

Overlay Frequency Isn't the Only Edge: Late Reg Timing

Overlay hunting is one lever. The other is when you register. GTO Wizard's ICM research on late registration found that in a standard MTT, a seat taken via late registration carries roughly 10.9% more ICM seat equity than the buy-in paid for it, because the equity of players who already busted gets redistributed into the field. In a flat-payout satellite, that number rises to about 29.76%, since satellites have a hard cutoff instead of a payout curve. Both figures are ICM seat-equity gains, not ROI. Source: GTO Wizard, The ICM Benefits of Late Registration.

That means the two biggest structural edges in tournament poker, overlay and late reg timing, stack. A late-reg entry into an overlaid field captures both the dead money from underfilled guarantees and the seat equity bump from players who've already busted. For the deeper math on this, see Late Registration Poker EV and Is Late Registration Worth It in Poker?.

PKOs Break This Rule

Progressive knockout tournaments don't follow the same logic. GTO Wizard's separate study on PKOs found that a starting stack built via late registration loses about 14% of its value compared to entering at the start, because you miss the bounty-collection window during the softest part of the field. Source: GTO Wizard, The Hidden Cost of Late Reg in PKOs. For PKOs, registering before the tournament starts is the better play, not after.

Satellites Are the Underrated Overlay Vehicle

Satellites deserve a specific mention because they combine two edges at once: a flat payout structure (that 29.76% ICM bump) and, frequently, overlay of their own when a site guarantees a fixed number of seats but doesn't fill the field. A $16.50 satellite seat into a $1,050 buy-in event is a real multiplier when both conditions line up. If you want a structured approach to spotting and playing these, How to Win Poker Satellites Consistently covers the selection criteria in detail.

How to Actually Track This in Real Time

None of this data is useful if you can't act on it before late reg closes. With 12 networks and hundreds of tournaments running at once, manually refreshing lobbies means missing most of what's available, especially the short-lived overlays that appear when a starting field looks thin and then either fills or doesn't.

Profitmaxxer scans all 12 networks every 30 seconds and sends two kinds of alerts: overlay alerts, which fire the moment a guarantee exceeds collected buy-ins by your chosen threshold, and Max Late Reg alerts, which tell you exactly how many minutes remain before registration closes on a tournament that meets your filters. You can set per-site buy-in ranges, minimum overlay percentage, and separate rules for PKOs (pre-registration timing, since late reg hurts PKO equity) versus regular MTTs and satellites (late reg timing, since it helps).

Since launch, the scanner has logged $47,452,739 in overlay across 78,265 instances and 14,120 unique tournaments over 191 days, an average of $248,443 per day. Current totals are always visible at profitmaxxer.com/stats.

Bottom Line

By raw frequency, 888poker currently produces the most overlays, with GGPoker and WPT Global close behind. By size of any single overlay, Americas Cardroom's OSS series stands out. Neither number matters much if you're not watching the lobby when it happens, which is the actual gap between knowing overlay exists and catching it before late reg closes.