For more pictures, head over to Wicked Chops Poker. There's also video, which is just as bad and awesome as you would expect.

For this year's event, the 11-time WSOP bracelet winner has arranged with the Las Vegas City Council to parade into the Rio dressed as Caesar on a chariot pulled by two black horses, surrounded by 100 models and greeted by 11 body-painted muses (one for each bracelet).

Caesar. One assumes Julius, and not Nero or Caligula, who were crazy egomaniacs…. wait. Oh, right, makes sense then. Does this mean he will be assassinated by angry senators poker players? Anyway, odd imagery to use, but whatever.

The 2009 WSOP Main Event gets underway in just a few days and the preparations have already started. PokerPalooza (aka the Gaming Life Expo) starts on Thursday and there are many, many parties to attend, including the exclusive Bodog shindig at the Kingpin Fantasy Suite at the Palms Hotel.

We'll bring you details and pics of all of the happenings so make sure to check out the 2009 WSOP updates page.

Oh, and if you didn't catch that, it's an Omaha event, which is weird for Hellmuth. All eleven of his previous bracelets have been in Holdem (No Limit, Limit, etc…), so a bracelet in this event would be especially meaningful for him, being number 12 and his first non-Holdem win. Joining him at the top of the chip counts are Scott Clements, David Benyamine and Josh Arieh.

Elsewhere in the Amazon Room today, the $5,000 No Limit Holdem is down to 17 out of 655 starting players. Current chip leader is Isaac Baron with David "The Dragon" Pham and online poker pro Mike "SowersUNCC" Sowers not far behind.

The $1,500 Seven Card Stud event is down to a final table that features Jeff Lisandro as the chip leader and John Juanda as not the chip leader. First place pays out $124,959.

In the $1,000 Ladies Event, the field narrowed from the 1,060 that ponied up their buy-in to the 146 who will return today to play out Day 2. Among the chip leaders are Svetlana Gromenkova and JJ Liu with notables Maridu Mayrinck, Susie Isaacs and Maria Ho also still in the running.

Aside from that the $2,500 Six-handed No Limit Holdem event gets underway today and should pull in a fairly large field and we'll keep you posted as that develops.

Don't forget that there is still plenty of time left to qualify online for the 2009 WSOP through Bodog Poker and win a $12,000 WSOP prize package that includes some sick gear and access to an exclusive Bodog WSOP party.

This year the line on Phil Hellmuth winning his twelfth bracelet is +300. That may seem a bit confident when you consider the size of the fields, but he always seems to battle for a bracelet. If you think he can’t do it in ‘09 you can get -500 on your wager. This year may be a good year to bet on Phil winning his 12th; there are extra 10K events, plus the big 40K event, that will have much smaller fields for Phil to beat.

Win a seat to the WSOP with Bodog poker now.

One should behave in a calm and collected manner, and not freak out like Phil Hellmuth does when you suffer a bad beat. One should maintain their cool, and take their beats like a man, not a child.

One should never slow roll when they have a big hand (taking your time to show your cards that are most likely the winning hand), and never berate an opponent or the dealer.

You should always act in turn, and you shouldn’t make others wait when it’s your turn, unless you really have a difficult decision to make. And always keep your cell phones off when you’re playing at the poker table. Don't want to deal with the jackasses? Play online poker with Bodog today.

Poker pro Phil Hellmuth busted out in 45th place when his Ah-Qh failed to make any headway against the pocket Jacks of Andrew Rosskamm, despite a series of draws after the turn. He makes $154,400 for his finish and extends his record of WSOP cashes to 68.

The current chip leader is Brandon Cantu, who has crossed the 10 million chip mark, followed closely by Albert Kim. Our favorite, Tiffany Michelle, is sitting with about 6.8 million and is in sixth place overall. Mike "The Mouth" Matusow is still as loud as ever and sitting on a stack of 3.58 million chips. Holding on as a short stack is online poker pro Garrett "GBecks" Beckman with 960k.

Stay tuned for more WSOP live updates as we're not sure if we'll be heading to 27 or 18 player mark tonight, but we guess we'll find out soon enough.

Every table Hellmuth has been at it's always the same thing. "You called me to the river with that? I'm looking forward to taking your chips." etc. etc. Not that he's only negative. We've heard him compliment players on what they've done correctly but the fact remains, he's still giving a lecture.

Hellmuth is pictured above giving one of his pateneted WSOP lectures to Keith Ferrera after they got into a hand together.

Hellmuth lead out pre-flop with an 18,000 bet. Ferrara called and the flop came . Hellmuth threw out 20,000 and Ferrara made the call. The turn came the , and both players checked. The river was the they both checked again.

"Ace high," announced Hellmuth and Ferrera turned over A-Q. Hellmuth sneered and mucked his cards.

"I just got called for 20,000 with ace high on the flop. I'm gonna get some bucks from that guy for sure."

Hellmuth is currently stting with 415,000 and Ferrara has 1.2 million. Bodog poker pro Evelyn Ng (seen above in seat 8) seems to be getting a little tired of the speeches. She is currently sitting with 190,000 here in Day 4 of the WSOP.

Stay tuned to the Beat for more live WSOP news from the poker tournament floor at the Rio Las Vegas.

Bellande came a hair's breath from nabbing his first WSOP bracelet in the last event before the Main Event when he finished second. We spoke to him about it at the recent Bodog party and he said even though he chopped the prize pool what he really wanted was the bracelet.

Now with 454 players remaining Bellande has 124,500 in chips and 11-time WSOP bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth on his left. It's a tight spot but Bellande is hungry to make the final table. We'll keep you updated on how it goes.

When Hellmuth enters an event he's always a favorite to win a bracelet, but that's usually just in holdem events. Every one of his 11 bracelets has come in this discipline, and when he reached the final table of the mixed game HORSE event he had his mind set on two things, breaking his own record for number of bracelets (11) and winning his very first mixed game bracelet.

Looking around the table must've been comforting for him as there wasn't a lot of name recognition or high-powered players shuffling their chips around him, except for maybe Victor Ramdin. Hellmuth managed to outlast and outplay all but two of them earning $93,168 for his third-place finish. Not many players would be disappointed with that result, but you know that he could almost feel the gold around his wrist.

Hellmuth will now have only one more chance to win his 12th bracelet at the 2008 WSOP and that will be in the Main Event, something he's won before and would love to do again. Thursday is the day that it all begins and we'll be here, but not before some serious partying.

Hellmuth will be gunning for his record breaking 12th WSOP bracelet which would incidentally also be his first in a non Holdem event. The first place payout of $256,412 is probably a very minor concern for the WSOP record holder who is probably much more interested in expanding his WSOP bracelet lead over poker legends Johnny Chan and Doyle Brunson.

The 20 remaining players will get back on the WSOP HORSE at 3pm and will supposedly play down to a winner tonight. We say supposedly because we expect that to take a very, very long time.

Here are the top five chip stacks heading into Day 2: Phil Hellmuth – 287,500, James Schaaf – 236,500, Art Young – 175,000, Victor Ramdin – 158,500, Matt Grapenthien – 151,000.

Stay tuned to the Beat for all of your WSOP news needs.