A couple years ago, reality was the magic word for any successful TV show as well as a score of other crappy ones. It seems that the new TV catch phrase is POKER.

Patterned after the Travel Channel's World Poker Tour, Game Show Network's new lineup includes, take a guess, a poker show. Titled "Poker Royale: The WPPA Championship", the show will be a six part series taped at the Orleans Hotel and Casino in Vegas. The first episode will be aired on Tuesday, December 7 at 9:00 p.m ET/PT.

For those who are wondering, WPPA stands for World Poker Players Association which, according to CNN Money (which we all know is the pillar of poker legitimacy), includes Chris Moneymaker, Carlos Mortensen and Kathy Liebert. If you haven't heard of it, don't feel bad, its actually a relatively new organization created in March 2004.

To the show's credit, there is an interesting twist. I'm feeling lazy so I will let CNN Moneyexplain:

The show also includes other highly skilled players, and will feature an added bonus -- the chance for the tournament champ and a GSN viewer to split an additional $10 million grand prize in the final episode. During the telecast of the final episode on January 11, the winner will be dealt five cards, if it's a full house or better, the player and the sweepstakes winner will split $10 million dollars.

To those of you who are wondering, the odds of that happening are about 590 to 1.

As a sidenote, Poker Royale's sponsor is Pizza Hut. Each episode, it will sponsor the "Full House" poker tip of the day which fits conviently with the name of its new pizza, the "Full House XL Pizza(TM)" and makes the full house requirement for the 10 million giveway less arbitrary (I mean come on, who would order the XL straight or XL Flush pizza?). So, if anybody cracked a joke about Corperate America jumping on the poker bandwagon only to be laughed at, make sure to rub this in.