An overlay is money the site adds when the guarantee is bigger than the buy-ins collected. Enter three numbers and see the exact overlay, the percentage, and the extra value sitting on every seat.
Every new entry shrinks the overlay, and it is gone once the field fills. Profitmaxxer scans 12 networks every 30 seconds and messages you the moment a live overlay appears, with the late-reg window still open.
Try it free on TelegramA tournament overlay exists when the guaranteed prize pool is larger than the money collected from buy-ins. The site pays the difference out of its own pocket, so that gap is added to the prize pool on top of what the players put in. It is the closest thing to dead money in online poker.
Only the prize-pool portion of a buy-in counts. On a $100 + $9 tournament, $100 funds the prize pool and $9 is the fee, so 700 entries build a $70,000 prize pool. Against a $100,000 guarantee that is a $30,000 overlay.
An overlay is added to the prize pool regardless of how anyone plays, so it lifts every entrant's expectation before a card is dealt. The catch is timing. The overlay is largest early and shrinks with each new entry, and by the time late registration closes it is often gone. That is why an overlay you spot with 30 seconds left is not the same as one you spot an hour before the field fills.
Running this by hand for every event is not realistic when 200-plus tournaments run across a dozen sites at once, and the numbers change every minute. That is the job Profitmaxxer does automatically. It reads publicly available lobby data across 12 networks every 30 seconds, flags the tournaments where the prize pool is running behind the guarantee, and sends the alert to Telegram while the registration window is still open.
You can see the running totals on the live stats page, and there is a 7-day free trial if you want to test the alerts against your own sessions.
Take the guarantee and subtract the prize-pool money collected from entries. If the guarantee is larger, the difference is the overlay. If entries have already covered the guarantee, the overlay is zero.
No. Only the prize-pool portion of each buy-in funds the guarantee. The fee stays with the site, so this calculator lets you subtract it before working out the overlay.
Yes. Every entry, including re-entries and rebuys, adds to the prize pool, so more entries mean a smaller overlay. Enter the total entry count, not just unique players.
No. An overlay raises the expected value of a seat, but tournaments are high variance and your result still depends on how you play and how deep you run.