No online gaming room or casino likes the word overlay. But now we have the biggest overlay in an online poker tournament in history, courtesy of an Indian online poker room.

The latter has prepared for its poker fans the GOAT - Greatest Of All Tournaments tournament with a guarantee of 250 million Indian rupees (₹) at a buy-in of ₹10,000. Of the buy-in, ₹8,700 went into the prizepool and the remaining ₹1,300 was rake. Let's convert that to dollars - so the guarantee was worth almost $3,000,000 and the buy-in was $119.

To fill this guarantee, the organizers needed a minimum of 28,736 entries, but the tournament brought in only 15,172 entries, which translates to a total of 131,996,400₹, or $1,569,953. The online poker room thus had to add 118,003,600₹ to the guarantee, which translates to $1,403,524.

This amount is a record

The amount of more than $1.4 million that the online poker room had to pay into the guarantee is a record in the world of online poker. The same tournament at the same Indian online poker room took care of a sizable overlay last year. Back then, the guarantee was ₹100 million ($1,119,000) and the overlay amounted to ₹23,120,000 ($275,000).

The top spot for the biggest overlay in an online tournament so far was held by PS with its The Big Blowout tournament, which was played in 2020 and had a $5 million guarantee with a buy-in of $109. Back then, organizers had to top up the guarantee to $1.23 million.

Even before that, the 2018 Sunday Million Anniversary Edition held the top spot, which guaranteed $10 million at a buy-in of $215 and the gaming establishment here had to top up $1.2 million.

The biggest overlay is held by the live tournament

If you're wondering about the biggest overlay in poker history overall, that is, from both live and online tournaments, the top spot is held by the 2014 Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open live tournament, which guaranteed $10 million at a buy-in of $5,300 and the casino had to pay up to $2.5 million out of its own pocket.

The second place is also held by a live tournament and it is last year's WPT World Championship with a $40 million guarantee and a $10,400 buy-in, where the organizers had to top up to $2.4 million. Third place is the aforementioned GOAT tournament, which took place a few days ago and organizers can now rename it the Greatest Overlay of All Tournaments.

Source - pokerbaazi, vip-grinders, ps, wpt