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.

Starting this coming Monday, August 3, (one day after the next PartyPoker Monthly Million) Party Poker is starting its new Cash Rush promotion. In it a player will earn a scratchcard for every 20 Party Points they earn playing real money ring games, tournaments, and Sit ‘n’ Gos at PartyPoker.

The prizes that players can win on these PartyPoker Cash Rush scratchcards come in the forms of both cash and more PartyPoints. Cash prizes range from $5 to the one card that’s worth $50,000. A player can win an unlimited number of cards while the promotion is in effect.

Rather than expiring on a set date, the Cash Rush promotion will run until 1 million scractchards are distributed.

In the meantime, qualifiers are running now for this weekend’s PartyPoker Monthly Million, coming up Sunday, August 2 at 12:45 ET. Buying-in directly costs $640 so it’s well-worth at least trying to win your seat first.

One way to play winning online poker is to do whatever you can (within the rules, of course) to up your odds and get the most for your bankroll. One way to do both of those things at once is to seek out tournaments prone to overlays, and enter them. Aced Poker is one site experiencing some serious overlays in its regular tournaments.

An overalay is when not enough players have signed up and paid the buy-in to cover the guaranteed prize pool amount in a guaranteed tournament. When that happens, the site itself has to come up with the rest of the money.

In an tournament with an overlay there are fewer players competing for the prize money than anticipated (increasing your odds) and a greater value dollar-for-dollar on your buy-in (getting the most for your bankroll).

Aced Poker is having recurrent overlays at its regular Sunday $50K Guaranteed Tournament.  To learn more about Aced Poker we recommend this Aced Poker Review so that you can find out if this is the right room for you.

Two of UltimateBet’s Star Players team, and what’s more two of the newest players to have joined the team, have translated their online poker success to the offline poker world with major 2009 World Series of Poker accomplishments.

One is Brandon Cantu, who has only been a member of the Ultimate Bet Poker family for a few weeks. He came in runner-up in Event #39, $1,500 No Limit Holdem, against a field of 2,715 players, for a $403,951 payday. Cantu’s previous poker accomplishments include finishing 20th in the 2008 WSOP Main Event and winning the $1 million top prize in Event #2 of the World Poker Tour Shooting Star Championship.

The other is Matt Graham who won Event #40, Pot Limit Omaha, for a $679,379 payday. Matt was only just signed to UB’s Star Players Team this past March. Graham’s prior poker accomplishments include a $2.5 million total career winnings, including winning both the 2008 Five Diamond World Poker Classic and the 2008 World Poker Challenge.

In recent WSOP news, Event #12 ($10,000 Mixed Game World Championship) favorites Doyle Brunson and grandson Todd Brunson were outlasted by the 24-year-old who became the first Finnish player ever to win a WSOP bracelet, Ville Wahlbeck. With the historical significance of his accomplishment washing over him, you’d think Wahlbeck had altogether forgotten about the $492,375 prize that came with it.

Runner-up David Chiu had just come off of winning last year’s WPT season finale, the World Poker Tour World Championship for over $3.3 million, and beating Gus Hansen in heads-up play to do it.

A similar 2009 WSOP upset followed in Event #14 ($2500 six-handed Limit Hold’em) where favorite Daniel Negreanu was beaten at the last minute by online magician “t_soprano” aka former Magic player Brock Parker.

Sandwiched between those two events was Event #13 ($2500 No Limit Hold’em) where Keven “Stamdogg” Stamen took down the $506,000 prize. And most recently, Brian “ship_the_perc” Lemke won Event #15 ($5,000 No Limit Hold’em) for $692,000.