GGPoker’s headlining Sunday major tournament, GG Masters, is turning out to be a great value for players as once again last weekend, the tournament fell short of its guarantee.
GG Masters is GGPoker’s new flagship tournament competing with the likes of PokerStars’ Sunday Million and partypoker’s MILLION tournament.
It features an impressive $300,000 guaranteed prize pool for a buy-in of just $150.
However, what makes GG Masters enthralling is that the tournament is played as a freezeout, meaning no rebuy or re-entry is allowed, giving every player a single shot to reach the money.
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Furthermore, the tournament comes with its own Player of the Year leaderboard. The player who finishes the leaderboard with the most POY points at the end of the year ends up becoming an ambassador for the site, which is worth up to $500,000.
The leaderboard also rewards those that finish in second through tenth place with a package to the 2021 GG Masters tournaments, each worth $7800.
However, since its launch, the tournament has yet to meet its guarantee. The tournament has run on four occasions and each time the tournament overlayed.
GGPoker GG Masters Tournament History
| Guarantee | Total Players | Buy-ins | Overlay | Overlay % | Buy-ins and Entries | Profit or Loss | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 5 | $250,000 | 1610 | $222,180 | $27,820 | 11.13% | $241,500 | -$8,500 |
| Jan 12 | $300,000 | 1901 | $262,338 | $37,662 | 12.55% | $285,150 | -$14,850 |
| Jan 19 | $300,000 | 1800 | $248,400 | $51,600 | 17.20% | $270,000 | -$30,000 |
| Jan 26 | $300,000 | 1911 | $263,718 | $36,282 | 12.09% | $286,650 | -$13,350 |
GGPoker is Happy with Overlays
It appears that GGPoker is happy with the overlays. The very first edition of GG Masters which had a $250,000 guarantee attracted 1610 players to create an overlay of $27,820.
While that should have persuaded the site to lower its guarantee for the next week, instead, GGPoker upped the guarantee to $300,000.
The second week with its new guarantee did gather hundreds of more players, but still, it wasn’t enough to cover its $300,000 guarantee. It ended up registering 1901 players, creating an overlay of over $37,000.
The trend continued with week 3 registering the biggest overlay, over $50,000.
In total, the overlays have amounted to $153,364—an average of over $38,000 per week.
Overlays in a way are good for poker ecosystem. No doubt they provide extra value to players, but for operators, overlays act an indirect marketing expense. Not surprisingly, GGPoker has been leveraging the overlays, promoting the tournament extensively on social media in hopes that more players will show up in the coming weeks.
A number of GGPoker’s ambassadors have been seen promoting the new tournament on social media, with some even running giveaways.
Considering that the network is not too shy about its failure to meet the guarantee, it would not be surprising to see the site bump the guarantee again to $350,000 should the tournament breach its $300,000 guaranteed prize pool.
Satellites to GG Masters Available for Just $15 buy-in
GGPoker is giving players enough opportunity to qualify for the $150 buy-in event. Satellites are being run around the clock for a $15 buy-in, including step qualifiers starting as low as $1.50.
Each of the $15 buy-in satellites guarantees between two to fifteen seats depending on the time slot.
GGPoker claims that many of the top finishers in GG Masters have qualified through these satellites.
Players Get their Buy-in Back if they Bubble in GG Masters
Like the majority of GGPoker’s tournaments, GG Masters also supports the network’s unique Bubble Protection—a feature that refunds players their buy-in if they bust out just before the money.
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This feature is available for free as players don’t have to pay any additional fee to take advantage of this protection. The only caveat is that players must register for the tournament before it starts.
If pre-registered and if a player bubbles, GGPoker will return their initial buy-in which will also include the tournament fee.
The size of the bubble depends on the number of entrants. As per GGPoker’s bubble definition, if the tournament gets entries between 1000 to 1999, the bubble is 4 and if the entrants are between 2000 and 2999 the bubble is 5.
Considering that GG Masters is likely to get around 1900-2100 entries, the bubble is expected to be 4 or 5 places away from the money.
The next GG Masters tournament takes place on February 2 at 16:00 GMT. The guarantee will remain $300,000 and it is safe to say that the upcoming GG Masters will fall short of its guarantee again.
