Deputy Editor
Lodge Card Club Austin, the popular card room in Texas owned in part by Doug Polk, averted a possible overlay after sounding an alarm on social media. Needing 497 entries for the $600 buy-in “Quarter Million,” the Lodge surpassed that number early in the seventh and final starting flight.
The Quarter Million is part of a larger festival that includes a highly anticipated $1,100 World Poker Tour Prime event. That event carries a $1 million guarantee and begins Oct. 9.
“After a very slow first flight, we projected $50K+ overlay based on past event data,” the card room wrote on social media. “The community showed up in force today and yesterday. Thanks for helping us get there and good luck to those still in!”
This is often the way it goes with overlays: Players can’t resist the call of added value, but that increased participation leads to the guarantee being met, so there’s no overlay after all.
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The Quarter Million opened with three starting flights on Sunday, Oct. 5. When those garnered just 121 entries combined, the Lodge social media team put out a social media distress call in hopes of drumming up some interest.
They wrote that an overlay looked “extremely likely.” Polk himself posted that he was heading to the event to play in it, drawing the attention of his huge personal following.
Lodge also added two additional turbo flights to the schedule. They also began adding a few seats to WPT Prime satellites that were already running.
The Monday flights performed much better than the Sunday ones, adding 310 entries to the prize pool. That meant the event had already reached the guarantee when accounting for fees, so players were looking at a reduced-rake tournament at best.
In reality, reaching the guarantee had become all but certain, and the final “semi-turbo” morning flight got there by the first break. At the time of writing, with registration still open for another 20 minutes, 508 entries have been logged.
Lodge’s History of Aggressive Guarantees, Including Notable Miss
Despite what turned out to be a false alarm, the venue’s fears about a possible overlay weren’t totally without merit. Lodge does have a history of some aggressive guarantees, including a notable miss in 2024.
That year, the Lodge attached a $2 million guarantee to their Lodge Championship $3,000 Series Main Event. At just 581 entries, it came up considerably short of the number. Even accounting for fees, it overlaid $267,000, and without fees, the shortfall was $417,000.
Polk blamed “scheduling errors and logistical nightmares.”
The Lodge responded to the miss by cutting the guarantee in half for the 2025 LCS Main Event.
A few months prior to that, the Lodge Holiday Classic $500 Winter Main Event in December 2023 attracted 1,164 entries. That pushed it past the $500,000 guarantee, but players wound up paying about $70 in rake instead of the $75 posted on the structure sheet.
At the same event the year prior, which had a $600 buy-in, the Lodge sounded a similar alarm to the recent Quarter Millions. After two poorly attended initial flights, the Lodge announced a projected overlay of more than $217,000. However, subsequent flights performed better, and the event inched past its $500,000 guarantee with 1,058 entries for a prize pool of $534,800.
Players should remain skeptical of these projected overlays, as they seem to be more of a marketing hook than anything. Slow burns are a normal start to these huge multi-flight tournaments. That said, if the Lodge remains aggressive with their guarantees, they can’t be totally ruled out.
