The History Behind the Bellagio and Aria Mixes
By Brian Rast
The Bellagio and Aria mixes come from two high-stakes games I spent years playing in Las Vegas. There was some overlap in the players and the games, but they had different histories and very different approaches to mixed poker.
From about 2014 until COVID, I probably played more hours in high-stakes live mix than anyone in the world, which means I'm pretty qualified to talk about this subject! I joined the Bobby’s Room game long after it was established. At Aria, I was one of the founding players in the Big Bet Mix, which eventually became a hybrid Aria Mix.
The Bellagio Mix
The Bellagio Mix is based on the famous mixed game from Bobby’s Room. That game had been going for a very long time before I started playing it. I believe I joined around 2013.
When I joined, the mix was HORSE, Badugi, 2–7 Triple Draw, and 2–7 Razz. The big-bet games were No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, and No-Limit 2–7 Single Draw. It was a more classical type of mixed game with eight limit games to only three big-bet games, and a smaller 40 big-blind cap. The emphasis was on limit poker.
The mix was never negotiated. That was just the mix, and it stayed that way for years.
The limit stakes were usually $1,500/$3,000 or $2,000/$4,000, although the game could get bigger when the right people were in town or during the WSOP.
Like most games, it stopped during COVID. When poker came back, Doyle never really returned to playing the game regularly. The main reason the original mix had two versions of Razz was that Doyle wanted both. Without Doyle, one of those Razz games was replaced by Pot-Limit 2–7 Triple Draw.
That left seven limit games and four big-bet games:
The limit games: Hold’em, O8, 2–7 Razz, Stud, Stud-8-or-Better, Badugi, and 2–7 Triple Draw.
The big-bet games: No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, No-Limit 2–7 Single Draw, and Pot-Limit 2–7 Triple Draw.
In my experience, it has been the most common version of the Bobby’s Room mix since poker came back from COVID.
This will be the updated Bellagio Mix.
The Aria Mix
The Aria Mix originated with the Big Bet Mix, which we started at Aria in 2015. A group of us wanted to play a mix made up entirely of big-bet games, with no cap.
The original games were No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, Pot-Limit Omaha Eight-or-Better, Pot-Limit 2–7 Triple Draw, No-Limit 2–7 Single Draw, Pot-Limit Badugi, Pot-Limit Five-Card Double Draw High, and Pot-Limit Very Crazy Pineapple (where you discard on the turn after the betting completes).
The game was most commonly played with $300/$600 blinds and a $100,000 minimum buy-in, although it sometimes played bigger.
By mid-2017, the Big Bet Mix couldn’t get enough players to keep going. Some of us still wanted to play, so we made some concessions to put in some limit games and a 100 big-blind cap (a real big-boy cap, for people who wanted to play big-boy poker!). The game needed players and this made it more palatable for some of the more limit-centric players to come try their hand.
That became the Hybrid mix, which I posted about on social media: Instagram Link
It was usually 5–7 limit games and 6–8 big-bet games. Unlike the Bellagio game, the rotation was negotiated from time to time. Sometimes it stayed the same for a while, and sometimes we changed it. But the basic idea was a roughly even balance of limit and big-bet games, with a much larger cap than Bobby’s Room.
The most common stakes were $2,500/$5,000 limit and $500/$1,000 blinds in the big-bet games, with a $100,000 cap on the big-bet games and a $100,000 minimum buy-in.
Sometimes we played “double stakes”: $5,000/$10,000 limit and $1,000/$2,000 blinds in the big-bet games, with a $200,000 cap and a $200,000 minimum buy-in.
I coordinated the game for years, up until COVID. Scheduling usually revolved around when some of the regular players could make it to Vegas.
Many of the Bobby’s Room guys tried their hand in it, but the increased number of big-bet games and the higher cap were a lot for primarily limit players to take on. Most didn’t come over regularly.
The game took a break during the COVID shutdowns, but it came back while people were still being cautious and you could play in casinos again. After it restarted, I wasn’t doing the organizing anymore, but I still played.
The game is still going in 2026.
What we’re calling the Aria Mix is based on that later hybrid game, rather than the original uncapped Big Bet Mix. There wasn’t one fixed rotation for its entire history, but the version being put together for Phenom is intended to replicate it as closely as possible.
The Aria Mix we’re bringing to Phenom has six limit games and six big-bet games:
The limit games: HORSE and Badugi.
The big-bet games: No-Limit Hold’em, Pot-Limit Omaha, Pot-Limit Omaha Eight-or-Better, No-Limit 2–7 Single Draw, Pot-Limit 2–7 Triple Draw, and Pot-Limit Super Stud Eight-or-Better.
The reason for the names is simple: the Hybrid Mix was played almost exclusively at Aria, just as the Bobby’s Room mix was played almost exclusively at Bellagio.
That’s the main distinction between the two mixes. Bellagio comes from a more traditional, limit-heavy game with a smaller cap. Aria comes from an uncapped big-bet game that evolved into a unique mix with more big-bet games and a much larger cap.
Now both mixes are updated on Phenom to reflect this.
Check them out!
