Super Bowl Created Overlay at Major Sunday Tournaments in New Jersey
New Jersey was busy this past weekend with visitors from out of town coming to watch the Super Bowl in East Rutherford. There was plenty of snowfall along with a lot of money to be made at several online poker websites offering huge overlays throughout the weekend. Many online poker players were confused as to why they would still run tournaments on the biggest Sunday in the sports world. But we all have to remember, not everyone watches football. So these people will still log on and play some poker. Overlays were expected due to smaller tournament fields. And there was also a live sit n go at the Borgata that crowned New Jersey’s Next Poker Millionaire. Here is the breakdown of the big weekend’s regulated online poker action.
WSOP NJ Online Championship $250k Freeroll
This tournament was offered to players who bought into at least one of the 6 events offered by WSOP.com’s Online Championship series in New Jersey. Running on Super Bowl Sunday, WSOP made a strategic move and started the freeroll at noon. It originally was going to start at 2pm est, but many players expressed an earlier start time would be better. So WSOP listened. It ended just a little after the big game started at 7:12pm. The big winner was “T1mB3y_B33F” who took home a massive $51,250 for outlasting an 814-player field.
Party Poker’s next New Jersey Poker millionaire crowned
The New Jersey Next Poker Millionaire final table played out at Borgata on February 1st at 3pm EST. At first, the action was minimal as nerves may have set in for players who qualified online. But as time passed, the action picked up. In the end, the winner was Myroslaw Woroch who plays under “onetime99″ on the virtual felt. Woroch’s qualified back in January 5th where he survived a field of 2,179 runners, winning $1,325 in cash plus a ticket to play in the finale at Borgata against 7 other qualifiers. Each started with $1,000,000 in starting chips with blinds being $5,000/$10,000. Blind levels were 30 minutes.
Woroch found himself heads up with Steven Edwards. The last hand saw a flop of 5, 6, 7. Woroch checked to Edwards who would fire $350k into the pot. Woroch raised to 1.5 mil which prompted Edwards to shove the reset of his chips into the pot. Woroch snap called with the straight. The turn and river did not help Edwards made Woroch New Jersey’s next poker millionaire. The $1 million prize includes entries into several WPT events including the $100k buy in Alpha 8 tournament.
Overlays in the Sunday Majors this weekend
Super Bowl Sunday contributed to a decrease in Sunday Major volume. PartyPoker’s 50k Guarantee had 205 runners, resulting in an $12,075 overlay. 2011 WPT Borgata Open Champion and Team Party Poker Pro Bobby Oboodi ended up finishing second in the $50k.
WSOP’s $25k and $10k Guarantee Sunday majors also saw overlays. The $25k would see an overlay of $5,600 only seeing 97 runners. The $10k guarantee overlay was $1,000 and saw 90 players register.
The 888 Big Sunday 10k guarantee saw an overlay of $1,860 with only a 44 player turnout.
With only 83 entries, Ultimate Poker‘s $20,000 guarantee Sunday Major saw a big overlay of $12,447. Ultimate Poker’s marketing has recently been more aggressive with their “Best Value in New Jersey” promotion; hyping up their $5k nightlys and $20k Sunday major. Perhaps it was bad timing with the biggest game ever hosted in NJ taking place.