Playing MTTs with money added ( ____ guaranteed)

[Asgrow13]

So I'm extremely new to mtts, but I noticed that a lot of them say ______ guaranteed meaning if a certain amount of people don't enter, the site will add money to the prize pool. Do a lot of these tournaments end up actually running with a substantial amount of extra prize money thrown in by the site? If so, that seems like it would make them extremely profitable for a mildly decent player. Am I missing something here, or is it a common strategy for MTTers to seek out these tournaments? I'm mainly looking at the $24+2 and $69+6 type events on full tilt.

[driverseati]

It is fairly common, but regular MTTers don't really look hard. Sites would be dumb to offer guarantees that don't make it with the player funded prize pool and therefore have to shell out money out of their pocket for the tourney therefore hurting their bottom line.

Summary: Sites make sure that guarantees make, so money added (called overlay) does not happen except in very rare circumstances.

[Mojo56]

Lately WPEX always seems to have overlays in their MTT's. It is something I look for before I decide to play. I just played one, $5 $250 guaranteed with 43 people. Not a huge overlay but not bad.