Casino Talks

Posted by: Gonzo787 at December 1, 2004, 5:12 pm

Topic: Complete Tournament Database now LIVE! Forum: Bonus Whores

Some of you may know that I am now a member of the bonuswhores.com team. First, let me say that I had no idea the amount of work that JEK and co. put into the site on a daily basis. The information provided here is constantly being re-analyzed to give bonuswhores.com users the most up to date information possible. Personally, I think that alone set bonuswhores.com apart from many similar poker sites, which seem to specialize in out of date information. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know, from someone who has been inside bonuswhores, that you guys are in good hands.  Maybe that seems biased, but those who are familiar enough with me from these boards know that I can look at things from a reasonable point of view.

On to the main point of this post?.

One of the major things that I have been working on is getting our tournament database up and running (with technical help from Chris) and can announce that is now complete. All bonuswhores.com affiliated sites now have near complete tournament schedules posted (with the exception of a couple sites that don?t have very consistent day to day schedules); and I would like to invite all of you to have a look. We feel that this is an extremely valuable tool for those previously forgotten poker players?at least on this site?the tournament player. This database provides a convenient tool for tourney players to search tournaments across the Internet in one location. It lets you search by many different criteria including site, buy-in amount (including free-rolls); tourney type and a rather unique feature--overlays.

For those of you who don?t know what an overlay is, I will give a brief description. To have an overlay in a tournament means that there is more money added to the prize pool in addition to what players have put in, making it more valuable to you than an average tournament. I believe overlays can be grouped into three categories, free-rolls (either totally free or point entry); guaranteed tournaments which don?t meet their ?guarantee? and money added tournaments.

Free-rolls are tournaments in which you pay no money to get in. The first type of free-roll is where you pay absolutely nothing (no ?points needed?). A common free-roll is Empire?s $500 nightly free-roll. If 2000 people enter that tournament the overlay would be $0.25. The second type of free-roll is one in which you need to do something else to enter, usually points or hands played. It can be debated if it?s actually a free-roll or not, but the bottom line is no extra money is needed to enter. A common point based free-roll is Pokerroom?s $6000 weekly freeroll on Saturday. If 1000 people enter that tournament, the overlay is $6.00 per person. You need 600 points to enter it, so it is worth $0.01 a point. Our point value calculations are valuable in weighing them against other options--for example, if you?re debating on whether to play a FPP tournament at Stars or to purchase merchandise with the points. Free-rolls are great for people on a budget or for somebody to learn a new game with no risk. They are much better than play money tournaments because a) you are playing for a prize b) people play more seriously at a free-roll than a play money tournament because there is something at stake, making it valuable to actually improve your game.

The second type of tournament in which an overlay can occur is the ?guaranteed tournament?. A ?guaranteed tournament? is a tournament in which the site guarantees that there will be AT LEAST a specific amount in the prize pool, and the overlay only occurs when the guaranteed amount is not met. So if Empire guarantees $10,000 in a 10+1 NL tournament and only 690 people show up, Empire is $3100 (10,000-(690*10)) below the guarantee, creating an overlay. In this example, the overlay would be $4.49 ($3100/690); essentially costing you $5.51 to enter instead of $10. We monitor every guaranteed tournament on the web to see if there is usually an overlay for that specific tournament. If there is a zero in the overlay column in the database that means that we have determined that there is either never an overlay or rarely an overlay on that tournament. Guaranteed tournaments are scanned often to give the most up to date overlay numbers and to find new guaranteed tournaments with an overlay. These tournaments are valuable to players who want to get a little extra out of their tourney dollar.

Lastly, there is the money-added tournament, which is essentially an overlay guarantee. Basically the site is saying that whatever the size of the pool is, they will add a specific amount to it. A good example is Pokerroom?s $500 added tournaments. If 1000 people enter the $500 added tournament, it is worth an extra $0.50. It?s not enough to get rich by, but it is certainly enough to play this tournament over another. These tournaments are also valuable to players who want to get a little extra for their dollar.

Now you know more about overlays than you probably ever cared to. I hope that you find our tournament listings to be very useful, especially if you are a tournament player. We believe that you will not find a more accurate, up to date and thoroughly analyzed comprehensive tournament database on the net for your online tournament experience.

As with anything, please don?t hesitate to contact me at craig@bonuswhores.com or any member of management if you have questions, comments or ideas reguarding the tournament database or any tournament in general.

Craig
Aka gonzo787

One last thing?. Please note that we do not have complete 24/7 schedules for all sites. Some sites such as Pacific do not have a complete weekly tournament schedule to offer us, and also don?t post most tournament data until the tournament is within 24 hours of the start time. We will only have special tournaments listed for these sites until we can work something out with the site.

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