The tip for how to play winning online poker this week is to follow the lessons of Mike Kosowski, the retired New York cop who won the $1 million top prize in Poker Stars and FOX Television’s Million Dollar Challenge. In this nationally televised poker game show, contestants face off against a series of successively tougher opponents, each in a heads-up No Limit Holdem match. If the contestant beats all the pros up the ladder, he faces his final pro opponent, Kid Poker himself, Daniel Negreanu.

And that’s just what this 9/11 hero did. After nearly being killed by the falling South Tower as he helped survivors escape the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks of 9-11-2001, Kosowski spent his recovery time learning to play poker. Four years after that, when he retired, he took the game even more seriously, until taking himself to a freeroll win that landed him a spot on the Million Dollar Challenge TV show. Then all he had to do was keep winning. Bet that detective sergeant training taught him real well how to read tells, don’t you think?

The schedule for the 2010 World Series of Poker has been released. 21-year-old 2009 champ Joe Cada has barely gotten used to the idea of holding the title and already players are getting ready to try and claim it from him.

The 2010 WSOP schedule much resembles the 2009 one, again being comprised of 57 braceleted events, winding up with the $10,000 World Series of Poker Main Event. Some additions to the schedule this time around include a new $50,000 Players Championship, an 8-game mixed event (replacing last year’s $50,000 HORSE event), a $10,000 HORSE event, and a $25,000 6-handed NL Holdem event. In addition there will be a special non-braceleted event held every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in June for a $550 buy-in.

The 2010 WSOP festivities will commence May 27, 2010 at Harrah’s Rio in Las Vegas. As the WSOP keeps growing (remember that whole debacle with people getting turned away from the main event last year?) the Rio has now extended the series to two rooms, totally approximately 350 tables in all.

OK, so however you play winning online poker, here’s how NOT to play it. Don’t play it until you burn out. That’s what happened to soon-to-be flash-in-the-pan online poker star Shaun Deeb who, after delivering a series of depressing shows, announced that has decided to quit playing in poker tournaments indefinitely.

This is the same Shaun Deeb who turned an initial deposit in an online poker site of $30 into a $33,000 bankroll within just a couple of weeks. Under the uncomplicated username ‘shaundeeb’(PokerStars) and the less obvious ‘tedsfishfry’ (Full Tilt Poker), Deeb has won millions in online poker, with his biggest win being $81,812.50 in a January ’09 PokerStars Super Tuesday.

Possibly part of the reason Deeb burnt out is because he was known to play in as many as 30 tournaments at the same time, averaging 20 tournaments a day some days.

OK, now here’s the fine print at the bottom you’ve all been waiting for: he’s not quitting poker entirely; just poker tournaments. Ah, that makes much more sense.

Here’s how you play winning online poker, to the tune of $8 million, as per Joe Cada, the newest World Series of Poker Main Event champion.

First, as a teen, you watch Chris Moneymaker make poker history coming from an online poker satellite (PokerStars in his case) to win the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event and become inspired to follow in his shoes. Then you join a top poker site, like PokerStars (hey, why not? it worked for Moneymaker, right?) and start playing every day, honing your game for 5 long years until the day you hit 21 and can finally register for the greatest poker game of all time, the World Series of Poker Main Event. Then you win it, beating a logger, a former Wall Street rich guy, a nice grandfatherly man, and 5 poker professionals, including two former main event final tablers, one of whom is reputed to be the greatest poker player alive, and about 6,000-plus others for the $8.5 million grand prize and fame outlasting a lifetime.

And that’s how you play winning online poker. Thanks, Joe, for showing us how it’s done.

To play winning online poker, as we’ve so often stated in this blog, it depends in large part on how much free money you can collect to play with. And here’s a related tidbit of advice: that an online poker site’s 100% matching casino signup bonus is only as good as the maximum allowable bonus. And right now, over at 3D poker site, PKR, the 100% first deposit bonus has leapt to $800.

You will hardly find a site around offering a higher possible welcome bonus amount. Even the biggies PokerStars and FullTilt kept their maxes in the $600-$650 range.

But at PKR you get a 100% match up to $850 plus 1,500 PKR poker points, a ticket to the $1,000 Premium Freeroll, and tickets to 5 other Premium Freerolls.

All this is to say that if you aren’t a PKR player yet, now would be a really good time to sign up and start.

However, if PKR does not strike your interest, then maybe you might want to try to play keno online.

One great way to play winning online poker is to play in winner take all tournaments in which there is only one player left standing at the tournament’s end, who receives the entire cash prize pool – splitting it with no one.

Winner Takes All tournaments don’t give you a chance to win a share of the prize pool. It’s all or nothing with these high-risk, high-reward babies. And Everest Poker has got them in spades.

Another Winner Takes All Tournament at Everest Poker starts every hour at a quarter after the hour (that is 15 minutes after each hour). In all that gives players 24 opportunities to walk away with entire prize pool and not just a measley share.

And to keep things interesting, not every Winner Takes All tournament at Everest Poker will be the same. Stakes and buy-ins will vary, for one. As will game types, like 6-max, shootouts, turbos, rebuys, etc.

Bodog Poker is celebrating its 15th anniversary with an exciting $15,000 freeroll tournament and a promotion it’s calling Bodog’s 15 Days of Poker.

Yesterday, Monday September 21st, Bodog Poker held its first qualifier for the event and tonight at 8:15 pm ET will be its second qualifier. Bodog Poker will hold $15,000 freeroll qualifiers every night hereafter for a total of 15 nights (thus the name: The 15 Days of Poker) through October 5.

The qualifiers range in buy-in from $5 to $15, all in Holdem but different ones in different Holdem variants, with Limit and Pot Limit in addition to No Limit as well as 6-max, turbo, and rebuy events.

A leaderboard competition is also set to take place alongside the regular events, with prizes that include seats in the October 15 finals, the October 8 semi-finals, as well as the Bodog Poker $100K Guaranteed tournament and qualifiers into that event.

All Bodog 15 Days of Poker events start at 15 minutes past 8, ET.

Titan Poker has a pair of great new jackpots running for the month of September, 2009.

One is called the Titan Double, and it’s based on winning two “doubles tournaments” scheduled for the same time (start times are 5 minutes apart). Pay the $5 + $1 buy-in for both tournaments – you must enter both to win – and take your best shot at winning the Titan Double Progressive Jackpot (at the time of this writing, around $2,250). You either have to win both of the tournaments you’re double-tabling or at least reach the final table of each.

The other progressive jackpot this month is actually a 3-in-1 jackpot in that, you only need to enter one contest to enter them all. This $50,000 Summer Race, as Titan Poker is calling it, is based on 3 cash game leaderboards with prizes awarded for scoring in the highest portion of the leader board for each given period – daily, weekly, and monthly.

Also, don’t forget that Titan Poker is starting its annual satellites to the European Championship of Online Poker V.

PKR has 3 big reasons to celebrate! First, it was their 3rd anniversary just last week, having launched on August 17th, 2006.

Second, they got to mark the occasion by signing up just the day before their 3 millionth player, continuing an annual streak in which PKR seems to grow by almost exactly 1 million player per year (having signed up their 1 millionth member around their 1st anniversary and their 2 millionth around their 2nd).

Third, the most lifelike 3D poker room online has just announced PKR Live III, the third running of its one live tournament series per year. PKR Live III is a 3-day poker festival taking place starting November 20 at the Loose Cannon Club in London, England.

This year’s main event takes place on Day 2, with a $40,000 grand prize for 1 of the 150 players at the $1,000 buy-in event (with the PKR Bounty Tournament on Day 3.)

PKR has just released a new poker software upgrade that offers a bunch of new and improved features. Among them are “Cards Up Tables” which are designed to make multi-tabling a whole lot easier by leaving a player’s hole cards showing throughout the given hand, rather than requiring the player to click the cumbersome Show Hands button.

Also added to the new PKR software is support for financial transactions via the ever-popular PayPal. This alone will probably get a lot more players to the PKR tables, especially from Britain and Denmark.

The look and feel of the PKR poker room has also been given a handsome makeover so as to seem more realistic, like an authentic live Las Vegas casino poker room.

There’s also a new “Jacks or Better” video poker side game at the site for in-between (or during) those big tourneys, Sit ‘n Gos, and cash games.

PKR says that most of the big changes with their newest poker software release come from customer feedback.